Downtown Miami’s One Bayfront Plaza block is starting to look less like a former office complex and more like a war zone. At 100 S. Biscayne Boulevard, demolition crews have stripped the 19-story former VITAS tower down to a bare steel skeleton, while the podium and lower levels have largely been smashed into piles of rubble. The full-block footprint is being cleared to make way for a planned supertall, with work that picked up speed in 2025 now shifting from interior gutting to removing the heavy base structure that needs bigger machines and carefully sequenced takedowns.
According to Florida YIMBY, recent aerials show crews actively dismantling the remaining steel framing with heavy equipment while grinding through debris at ground level. The photos, shot by Oscar Nunez, show most of the lower podium already reduced to rubble as workers push across the full-block site, with clearing still underway as of March 2026.
Developer program and what’s on the books
On paper, the replacement is still as ambitious as ever. Florida East Coast Realty’s project outline describes One Bayfront Plaza as a more-than-3-million-square-foot mixed-use complex planned to rise to 1,049 feet. The program combines Class AAA office space, a luxury convention hotel, high-end residences, an upscale retail mall and a parking garage. As detailed by Florida East Coast Realty, a large pedestal base is supposed to stretch across two full city blocks, forming a massive podium beneath the future tower.
Permits, timeline and the heavy lifting
A total demolition permit arrived in mid-2024, clearing the way for interior gutting and exterior stripping through 2025, with B2 Group LLC listed as the demolition contractor. The initial expectation was that teardown could wrap by late 2025. Florida YIMBY notes that in early 2026 the job shifted to the serious structural components at the base, particularly the parking garage and retail podium, a more complicated phase that has stretched the schedule.
From graffiti canvas to construction site
Before the excavators really took over, the empty tower briefly lived a second life as a high-profile graffiti canvas during Art Basel. The building’s so-called “graffiti-bomb” drew national attention and kicked up arguments over public art, trespassing and enforcement ahead of demolition. Axios covered the episode and the city’s move toward greenlighting the structure’s removal.
Why the block matters
Once the last beams and concrete chunks are cleared, the full-block parcel directly across from Bayfront Park becomes one of downtown Miami’s rare waterfront sites big enough to host a supertall. That makes it a prime piece of real estate with the potential to reshape both the skyline and the pedestrian experience along Biscayne Boulevard. The scale of the vision, and the project’s front-and-center location, line up with Florida East Coast Realty’s longstanding ambitions in Miami, reflected in its own project description and development track record…