Miami Herald

The extravagant design proposal for the mammoth Miami gambling resort that would replace the soon-to-be-departed Miami Herald building on Biscayne Bay is inspired by a coral reef, its architect says.

If so, call it Sponge Bob Meets the Jetsons.

The proposed Malaysian-owned Genting resort would cover more than 10 acres with a futuristic, eight-story platform of undulating concrete and glass containing dozens of shops, restaurants, a colossal gambling floor and extensive kitchens. Atop it would sit an artificial outdoor lagoon and sand beach that starts near Biscayne Boulevard, spans North Bayshore Drive and ends in an infinity edge overlooking the bay.

At each of four corners, overlooking the lagoon, would stand 65-story hotel towers whose irregular, biomorphic shapes are taken from coral formations and the sea life that inhabits them.

Nowhere is there a straight line or sharp corner, except for the legally protected, historic Art Deco Boulevard Shops on Biscayne, which would be renovated and stand alone.

“It took all of two meetings to decide on this,’’ said Genting Group Chairman and Chief Executive KT Lim. “The more we look at it, the more we like it. It will be the face of Miami.’’

Lim said his group was looking for an “iconic design’’ that would lure visitors to Miami. “We feel it could be a transformational thing.’’

That’s exactly the message architect Bernardo Fort-Brescia wants to send.

Fort-Brescia is a principal with Miami-based Arquitectonica, which designed the master plan and every structure that would sit on the site. The globe-spanning firm is responsible for numerous iconic buildings in its hometown, including American Airlines Arena and Atlantis, the 1980s Brickell condo with the hole and the palm tree in the middle.

“It’s very different from anything we’ve done before,’’ said Fort-Brescia, an enthusiastic scuba diver. “In fact, it’s very different from anything else in Miami. It’s very soft and organic.”

Genting wanted open space and a resort feeling on the 14-acre site, he said.

“It’s an unusually large site. So we had the space and the freedom to be very sculptural.’’

And that’s just the main piece of the project, which also comprises a second, connected component behind the Boulevard Shops as well as a possible mega-yacht marina on the bay.

The hyper-ambitious plan, if approved by the city of Miami, would represent an exponential leap for development in South Florida in terms of scope, complexity and sheer spectacle. It would import a type of massively scaled, mixed-use multi-block project common in Asian mega-cities like Hong Kong and Singapore but heretofore unseen in America outside of New York City.

And though it would not be the first such prototype in Miami — that honor belongs to Arquitectonica’s recently approved plan for a mixed-use megacomplex for Hong Kong-based developer Swire Properties on 10 acres west of Brickell Avenue — Genting’s seems even more audacious.

In addition to the main resort, casino and shopping mall, two residential towers would rise behind the Boulevard Shops. Those towers would be joined to the rest of the resort by a continuation of the elevated platform and lagoon that would narrow and vault over North Bay- shore Drive. That western portion of the project would also contain a two-story conference center.

From that western end, another elevated span would shoot out over the adjacent Metrobus depot to the PeopleMover Omni station, which would be redesigned and integrated into the resort project at Genting’s expense. That station already is connected by skybridge to the Omni center, which Genting also controls.

The developer would pay to move the elevated tram’s guideways one block west between the Omni station and the Interstate 395 overpass, running over Bayshore Drive.

A pair of three-story underground parking garages would sit beneath the resort, and, to handle the auto traffic, a proposed new boulevard running along the north side of the Interstate 395 overpass would provide a new front entrance to the area, including the adjacent Arsht Center.

The project’s descriptions come from interviews with Fort-Brescia and a public presentation at a Wednesday news conference at the Four Seasons tower on Brickell. No plan has yet been submitted to the city.

If everything goes smoothly, Genting would apply to the city of Miami after the first of the year and approval could take several months. Then, Genting says, the entire project could be completed by the end of 2014.

The Omni building, which was announced as part of the purchase on Wednesday, is “decorator ready” and Genting says it will be ready to open a full-fledged casino there Omni within months if the Florida Legislature approves a casino bill in the upcoming session.

Jack Hertog, president of the Venetian Causeway Neighborhood Alliance, which has opposed previous plans for large-scale development on the Herald site, said island residents have not been shown Genting’s plans, but remain concerned about traffic and visual impacts. The Venetian Causeway entrance abuts the northern edge of the Genting site.

“It’s right next to our community, and we have real traffic concerns about getting on and off the islands and about the aesthetics for Miami as a whole,’’ Hartog said.

Fort-Brescia said the plan adheres to the city’s new pedestrian-friendly Miami 21 zoning code. It would be submitted as a Special Area Plan, which provides greater design flexibility for large properties, and requires city planning review as well as several public hearings. Ultimate approval rests with city commissioners.

An application timetable has not been settled on, Fort-Brescia said, but he doesn’t expect significant review roadblocks.

Certain elements would also likely require approval by environmental regulators, including the marina and a planned floating walkway under the MacArthur Causeway bridge that would connect a public bayfront promenade behind the giant resort to the planned baywalk at the new Museum Park to the south.

In fact, the architects and developers, touted the 50-foot wide promenade, which would run along the property’s entire 800-foot length of waterfront, as an example of how the project will enhance public access to and views of the bay, cut off by the blocky Herald building. A series of “cascading’’ terraces overlooking the promenade would hold bars and restaurants. Completion of that missing link would allow pedestrians to walk without interruption from Margaret Pace Park in the Edgewater district south to the mouth of the Miami River.

The Genting proposal would supplant previously approved but controversial plans by other developers for condo towers, a shopping mall and a pair of towering electronic billboards on the Herald’s parking lots. Those died when developer Mark Siffin failed to close on a deal to buy the company’s parking lots. Genting then stepped in with a successful $236 million bid to buy all of the newspaper’s property.

That created an opportunity to connect the surrounding neighborhood directly to the bayfront, Fort-Brescia said. The resort’s main drop-off and entrance, at North Bayshore and 14th Street, would open to a long, open breezeway that cuts through the center of the entire project, providing views from the street all the way to the bay and Miami Beach beyond. Access to and through the resort’s public areas will be unrestricted, Fort-Brescia said.

The north and southern ends of the resort structures would be set back 100 feet from the edge of the property and heavily landscaped to provide a buffer and preserve views of the bay, he said.