The first real Treehouse news in three years just came from a real estate reel. Last week Jamie Bederak, Director of Commercial Real Estate at The Agency, posted a walkthrough of 323 23rd Street in Miami Beach, calling it the city’s most famous address, freshly upgraded and about to hit the market. She never says the club’s name in the video, and she didn’t need to. Anyone who has been to an OG Miami Music Week knows the address, and the comments knew the venue immediately.
The reel shows a $20 million renovation still in progress, with the full listing promised for later. The two rooms that made the club what it was look like they have been opened into one, and that is what the replies keep coming back to. Miami DJs who played there, Jesse Perez and DJ Gio Andres among them, pushed back on the front room being touched at all. Regulars asked whether the underground room they knew was being turned into a bottle-service club. Desert Hearts fans were already mourning the Mikey Lion shows. The listing isn’t up yet. The people who danced there have already decided how they feel about it.
Part of why it stings is that 323 23rd Street carries more than one club’s history. Before Treehouse ran the room from 2011 to 2023, it was Rain from 2001 to 2004, and before that it was Groove Jet, the mid-90s South Beach club that gave its name to one of the biggest house records ever made.
What’s for sale
The listing has its own backstory. Owner Michael Freundlich bought the building in April 2015 for $3.25 million, then put it on the market in March 2021 through Avison Young with a pitch that made the national real estate press: he would take cash, Bitcoin, or a mix, in what would have been the first known commercial property sale closed in crypto. Early offers were reported above $15 million. The club kept running through that listing, got past a 2017 near-closure and the pandemic, and then shut without explanation over the weekend of August 4 and 5, 2023. EDMTunes covered the closure at the time…