Elite Private School Backs Out Of $180M Miami Campus
Wealthy new Miamians who are desperate to place their children in private schools have one less option to hold out hope for.
Avenues: The World School has canceled its plans to build a campus in the city's Little Haiti neighborhood that could have accommodated 2,500 students, the private school confirmed to Bisnow.
Avenues had a deal in place to build a $180M, 717K SF facility on a 15-acre site at 4949 NE Second Ave. that would have spanned 11 buildings. Construction for the school was already on hold amid financing struggles last summer, Avenues spokesperson Tara Powers told Bisnow at the time, but it was still pushing for a fall 2025 opening.
Those plans were approved in January 2023 but won't be realized, Powers said in a statement Wednesday. Bloomberg first reported the news that the school had dropped its Miami plans.
Avenues opened its first school in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood in 2012 and has expanded to campuses in Silicon Valley, China and Brazil. The private school, founded by former Yale University President Benno Schmidt and education entrepreneur Chris Whittle, sold its New York and Brazil campuses to British private school system Nord Anglia Education.
Avenues also plans to exit its China and Silicon Valley locations, Bloomberg reported. Powers said the company was unable to land financing to develop the Miami project.
“The board of Avenues decided to sell Avenues New York and São Paulo to Nord Anglia Education as opposed to securing additional investment or financing to continue the expansion of Avenues campuses around the world, including Miami,” Powers said in an email Wednesday.
The organization has been maneuvering to open a Miami school since 2018, when an entity registered to the family that founded The Gap bought the former Archbishop Curley school for $60M. The family purchased the land on behalf of Avenues, and Powers told Bloomberg it hasn't been listed for sale.
“While there were parents who had expressed interest in Avenues Miami, admissions for the campus had not yet started as it was still early in the process,” Powers said. “The approvals from the city were received in January 2023 and construction at the site had not yet commenced at the time of the announcement of the Nord Anglia acquisition.”
The collapse of the Avenues school comes amid a shortage of private school seats relative to demand in Miami. The inability to find space in private schools has prevented potential transplants from moving to the city, Bisnow reported last year. Residential brokers said it is among the top issues facing the real estate industry in Miami.
“When you buy a house or a condo in a certain neighborhood, then we go on the hunt to find seats in schools,” Related ISG Realty CEO Craig Studnicky said last summer. “And that's where we always hit a wall. Not some of the time, all the time.”
