When Starwood Capital Group moved its headquarters from Greenwich, Connecticut, to Miami Beach in 2018, it bought prime South Beach property from Avis, the rental car company.

It has now secured financing to build a six-story headquarters for itself. A Starwood subsidiary has secured a $76.16M construction loan from Citizens Bank to build a 144K SF building at 2340 Collins Ave., which is expected to be completed in late 2021.

The project, designed by Gensler, will have 8K SF of ground-floor retail, a pedestrian paseo, water features, an internal breezeway on the third floor and more than 300 parking spots, one for each worker who is expected to fill the building.

Bilzin Sumberg helped Starwood acquire the property and counseled it through the two-year approval process.

“Starwood Capital’s new headquarters will be the first-of-its-kind, Class-A office space in Miami Beach, and a significant symbol of the domestic inbound investment we are seeing in South Florida,” Bilzin Sumberg partner Carter McDowell said in a statement. “Beyond creating a new corporate headquarters that will attract talent and new investment to Miami Beach, the project will create an economic boost and new amenities for residents and visitors.”

Coastal Construction is serving as the project’s general contractor for development manager Integra.

Starwood is just one in a string of hedge funds and financial services firms that have relocated from the Northeast to South Florida in the past few years. Carl Icahn relocated his firm, Icahn Enterprises, from New York and White Plains to the just-completed Milton Tower in Sunny Isles Beach. Dozens of other firms have moved to Palm Beach County, with some dubbing it the "Wall Street of the South."