Swire Properties Replaces President After Sale Of Brickell City Centre
Following the sale of some of its prime South Florida holdings, Swire Properties has replaced its head of Miami operations.
David Martin was named president of Swire Properties, replacing Henry Bott, the South Florida Business Journal reported. A native of England, Bott moved to Miami from the UK in 2023 to take the role, and he plans to move back there for family reasons.
“We have come a long way since the beginning of my tenure in Miami in January 2023, and I am proud to have been part of a team that has accomplished so many momentous milestones in that time,” Bott said in a statement, according to the SFBJ.
The London-based, Hong Kong-listed developer has been developing the Brickell neighborhood of Miami since 1979. Bott was hired as Swire planned a major development push, including Florida's tallest commercial building, dubbed One Brickell City Centre.
One of Bott's first acts as president was presiding over a ceremonial demolition of the buildings on the site where Swire, with the Related Cos. as its partner, planned a 1,000-foot, 1.6M SF trophy tower.
Bott told Bisnow in July 2023, two months after the developers started demolition at the site, that One Brickell City Centre is “the best site with the best partner in the best market in the U.S. right now.”
But the tower project never got off the ground. Swire sold the land last May to condo developer Melo Group for $212M. A month later, Swire sold the Brickell City Centre mall, its signature property, to Simon Property Group for $512M. And it offloaded another undeveloped Brickell City Centre site to a Dubai-based developer in August for $45M.
All of those sales reduced its local holdings to just one project: the two-tower Mandarin Oriental Hotel & Residences project on Brickell Key, a manmade island just off the shore from Brickell. Swire bought out Mandarin Oriental's 25% stake in the site last year for $37M and already has more than $1B in presales, Commercial Observer reported.
