Treehouse Hotels will open their first US location in Brickell
The hotel will be part of 1 Southside Park, a 2.5 million square foot development planned beside Southside Park and the Brickell Metrorail station
*Originally published in March 2021. This article records the plans announced for Treehouse Brickell and 1 Southside Park at that time.
1 Southside Park Rendering, courtesy of SHoP Architects
Project: 1 Southside Park
Address: 1133 Southwest Second Avenue, Miami
Developer: JDS Development Group
Design Architect: SHoP Architects
Architect of Record: ODP Architecture and Design
Landscape Architect: James Corner Field Operations
Hotel: Treehouse Brickell
Hotel Interiors: Rockwell Group
Announced Height: Up to 64 stories
Total Development: Approximately 2.5 million square feet
Residential Program: Approximately 1,175 rental residences
Hotel Program: Approximately 191 rooms
Announced Hotel Opening: 2023
Treehouse Hotels is coming to Brickell. The hotel, announced as the brand’s first location in the United States, will form part of 1 Southside Park, the enormous mixed use project planned by JDS Development Group beside Southside Park and the Brickell Metrorail station.
Treehouse opened its first hotel in London in 2019. The brand belongs to SH Hotels and Resorts, an affiliate of Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group and the company behind 1 Hotels. Where 1 Hotels is polished, natural and carefully composed, Treehouse is supposed to be its more relaxed sibling. The Brickell hotel is being designed with Rockwell Group and SHoP Architects, with interiors inspired partly by the informal character of a boathouse and incorporating reclaimed materials, exposed wood and less predictable furnishings.
It sounds playful, but the location gives the announcement more weight. Brickell has no shortage of expensive hotels, although many speak the same international language of marble, glass and business travel. Treehouse is attempting something less formal and more social, with restaurants and public spaces intended to attract people who are not necessarily staying upstairs. If it works, it could give Brickell a hotel that locals use because they actually like being there, not simply because they have a meeting in the lobby.
The hotel is only one part of 1 Southside Park. Plans released around the announcement described a project of approximately 2.5 million square feet rising as high as 64 stories. It would include about 1,175 rental residences, a hotel of approximately 191 rooms, offices, restaurants, event spaces, extensive health and wellness facilities, parking and a new 32,000 square foot home for City of Miami Fire Station No. 4.
The fire station is not an incidental item on the site plan. The project combines privately assembled parcels with city owned land occupied by the existing station, along with development rights connected to Southside Park. The City of Miami approved a public benefit agreement with a JDS affiliate in February 2020. In exchange for the development arrangement, JDS would build a new fire station and contribute to improvements involving the park, transportation and other public facilities. Miami Dade County legislative record
This makes 1 Southside Park more complicated than a private tower beside a pleasant patch of green. JDS is proposing to build around an operating piece of public infrastructure while changing the way the surrounding block connects to the park, the Metrorail station and The Underline. The architecture may attract the first look, but the real test will be what happens where the building meets the ground.
SHoP Architects designed the project as a series of shifted volumes rather than a conventional single tower. A perforated exterior screen is intended to provide shade and privacy, while openings between the volumes create terraces and outdoor spaces at different heights. At street level, a pedestrian passage would connect Southwest Second Avenue with Southside Park, allowing people to move through the development rather than walking around an enormous base.
That passage may be one of the most important parts of the plan. Miami has become very good at approving ambitious towers and remains much less consistent about the experience beneath them. Parking entrances, loading areas and private lobbies often receive the most practical ground floor positions, while pedestrians are left with whatever space remains. At 1 Southside Park, the renderings show the building opening toward the park instead of treating it as scenery for the residences above.
James Corner Field Operations is designing the park and landscape. The firm’s involvement is significant because Southside Park is not an empty lot waiting for a designer to give it an identity. It already has mature trees, basketball courts, a historic schoolhouse and an established neighborhood use. The work should improve access, landscaping and programming without polishing away the parts that already make the park useful.
image via staytreehouse.com
The site also touches the Brickell Backyard section of The Underline, the linear park being built beneath the Metrorail. This places the development beside one of the few locations in Brickell where rail, park space, cycling and pedestrian movement already meet. A direct connection among the building, Southside Park, The Underline and the station could make the block genuinely easier to cross. It could also prevent the park from feeling like a private front lawn for a very large development.
Treehouse fits into this plan because its appeal depends on being open and approachable. The hotel was announced with rainwater collection and reuse, lower carbon materials, electric vehicle charging and bicycle parking among its environmental measures. Those features are especially relevant here. A hotel beside rail transit and The Underline should not be designed as though every guest and employee will arrive by car.
Barry Sternlicht described Brickell as a fitting location for the American debut because the hotel could become both a destination for travelers and a local gathering place. The language is expected from a hotel announcement, but the ambition is the right one. Brickell has accumulated restaurants, towers and hotel rooms much faster than it has created places where people can spend time without feeling processed through a commercial space.
The first American Treehouse was originally announced for 2023. Whether that date proves realistic is less interesting than the decision to introduce the brand here rather than in New York or Los Angeles. Miami is being treated as a market where a new hospitality idea can establish itself, not merely as a seasonal outpost after the concept has been tested elsewhere.
The project still carries real questions. A development approaching 2.5 million square feet can improve a park or overwhelm it. More than a thousand residences, a hotel, offices, restaurants and parking will bring a great deal of activity to the block. The new fire station and park improvements must remain central to the project as it advances, rather than becoming the civic wrapping around a private real estate deal.
For now, 1 Southside Park offers a more thoughtful idea of what a large Brickell development could be. The tower is not being presented as an object standing alone. Its hotel, residences, fire station, public passage, park and transit connections are supposed to work together at street level.
Treehouse may be the most charming part of the announcement, but Southside Park is the part that will tell us whether the project succeeds. A hotel can always change its interiors, restaurants or branding. The way a 2.5 million square foot building meets a public park is much harder to correct later.
*Editorial update, 2026: The 2021 version of 1 Southside Park described below did not move forward as originally announced. In 2024, JDS Development Group introduced Mercedes Benz Places Miami as part of a revised development at the same site. This article remains online as a record of the earlier proposal.
Renderings courtesy of JDS Development Group and SHoP Architects.