Robins Hood: Craig Robins was a leading force in the transformation of South Beach. The Miami Design District came next. Now, he's creating a neighborhood from scratch- Aqua - that will become a model for New Urbanism in the heart of Miami Beach

South Florida CEO, May, 2002 by J.P. Faber

A strong across Miami Beach this Saturday afternoon, whipping an otherwise light rain across the patio where Craig Robins is standing. The patio straddles the tip of Allison Island, an almond-shaped slice of land that sits in the middle of Indian Creek, the waterway dividing high-rise Collins Avenue from the elegant Lagorce-Pinetree neighborhood to the west.

The land where Robins is standing -- the southern half of Allison Island -- was once occupied by St. Francis Hospital. Only one of the medical buildings is still standing. It faces 63rd Street, the east-west road which divides Allison Island neatly in half as it heads towards Collins Avenue and the Atlantic Ocean.

Robins is watching a procession of yachts churn south on Indian Creek as they head towards the Miami Beach Boat Show. There is something vaguely Naval about the convoys moving through the drizzle. "I'm standing where the pool will be," says Robins, backing up to avoid the rain. "This is really the best land on the island."

If you didn't know who Craig Robins was, you'd be hard-pressed to peg him as one of Miami's leading real estate developers. At 38, he looks too young for the role. Nor does he dress the part. His trademark business suit is a designer T-shirt and sandals. And his manner is way too laid back. He is simply too relaxed, smiles too much and doesn't raise his voice enough.

Yet Robins is now master of this cone-shaped spit of land, the southern half of Allison Island below 63rd Street. On these eight-and-a-half empty acres will rise, in another 18 months, a $225 million quilt of townhouses and mid-rise buildings called Aqua. If Robins' vision is realized, it will be a jewel in the crown of the New Urbanism movement -- and the culmination of all that Robins has done as a developer on Miami Beach since 1987, when he formed his Dacra Development firm.

"When St. Francis Hospital came up for sale, the idea of reclaiming it and doing something with it was intriguing" says Robins. "It was especially intriguing because I was born here."

Not only was Robins born in Miami Beach; he was one of the town's few native sons to see the potential of South Beach. It was there, along with now-legendary developer Tony Goldman and a handful of other New Yorkers, that Robins began his real estate career by focusing on refurbishing low-rise, historic communities. First came South Beach, then the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall, then the Miami Design District - the neighborhood of interior design firms across the Julia Tuttle Causeway from Miami Beach. Aqua will be Robins' first creation from a blank slate.

Robins has a reputation for hiring top creative talent, and, true to form, brought in Andreas Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk of Miami-based architecture firm DPZ to help conceptualize Aqua. Duany and Plater-Zyberk are recognized national leaders in the New Urban ism movement; their Seaside project in the Florida panhandle -- where the Jim Carey movie The Truman Show was Filmed--is considered a model of the idea. (In essence, New Urbanism is a return to the old world of Europe, where city centers mix residential, retail and commercial space, and where everything is within walking distance, as distinct from the suburban world of isolated homes and malls that depend on the car.)

"Craig asked us what we would do with this if we had no restrictions. So we did the master plan--the footprint--and the floor plans. The building designers came in after that," says Plater-Zyberk, who is also the dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Miami. In the end, a total of eight architects contributed designs, including such luminaries as Alison Spear, Walter Chatham and Alexander Gorlin.

The result is a project both ambitious and humble--ambitious in what it hopes to achieve, and humble in the human scale it relies upon. When complete, Aqua will have 46 townhouse 'island homes,' along with three mid-rise buildings that add another 105 units. The one remaining structure from the old St. Francis Hospital will become a 350-space garage, topped by a residential mid-rise designed by Chatham.

Robins loves to talk about the new ideas that Aqua will realize, and to show what they look like. Inside the sales center on Allison Island there is a huge and detailed model of the project. The model cost $150,000, and will be donated to a museum when the project is complete. In the meantime, Robins indicates everything on the model with a hand-held, laser-beam pointer.

"We thought we would try to prove, against conventional wisdom, that urbanism could work better than high-rises, in terms of lifestyle, and in economic returns," says Robins. "There is less height, more land and a focus on urban design, art and architecture. It's a totally different type of product than Murano, Setai, Portofino or Il Vilaggio. People are doing variations of those, but there is only one Aqua."

Robins points out how each home on the island has a view of the water, how each street ends on the water, and how the perimeter of the island is a common road and greenspace to be shared by residents, and not cordoned off. "Everyone who lives here has 3,000 feet of water frontage," says Robins. That's a refreshing idea in this part of Miami Beach, where the nearby ocean is hidden by the notorious 'Condo Canyon,' a stretch of Collins Avenue so densely populated with high rise condominiums that you cannot see, let alone access, the water that is a mere stone's throw away.