Launch parties? This must be the top... I remember those launch parties during the dotcom era...
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Salsa Dancers and Stunt Men? Must Be a Miami Condo Project
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: May 23, 2005
MIAMI, May 22 - In the last month alone, you could salsa with dancers in fringed hot pants at Aqua, hear a drag queen D.J. at Cynergi or watch stunt men ricochet off a trampoline at Soleil.
Nightclubs? No. Carnival acts? Not quite.
These were launch parties for condominium projects, one of the stranger forms of nightlife in a city obsessed with real estate. Alcohol and music were abundant, but so were sales agents and brochures with statements like, "It is the impeccable aesthetic of textures and calming shades - limestone and blue marble - that further distinguish these voluminous spaces."
Deep-pocketed developers, forced to be ever more creative in the pursuit of buyers for condos still years from being built, pay for these lavish affairs - another take on the "froth" in the housing market that Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, described last week. Though the parties emulate the club scene, most take place in hastily erected sales centers or parking lots near the future construction site. Guests encounter model kitchens and scan price lists while sampling mojitos and tuna tartare.
"Everyone needs to one-up each other more and more with these things," said Jorge Luis Garcia, a real estate agent attending a party for Vitri, an unbuilt project in South Beach where prices start above $600,000. "The food's got to be better, the lighting's got to be better, the D.J.'s got to be really good. The new norm is the quarter-million-dollar party."
No expense is spared because the stakes are high: about 70,000 condo units are planned, under construction or newly finished in Miami proper, home to fewer than 400,000 people. Builders need early deposits to get construction loans, so they work hard to entice the buyers they covet - image-conscious people, many from Latin America and Europe, with money to burn on a second home, a speculative investment or a status symbol.
The bait includes small initial down payments, slick marketing - and parties. Usually held just before a project begins selling units, the events are meant to create buzz among brokers, who make up the bulk of invitees and bring clients and hip, attractive friends. Live with us, the parties say, and ooze wealth, sex, fitness and mystery.
Jon Graney, who owns two condos in South Beach and is looking to buy more, said launch parties were beginning to rival clubs.
"I mean, look at the women here," Mr. Graney said at the party for Vitri, a smallish project with about 70 units next to a busy overpass on Biscayne Bay. He gazed around the sales office courtyard. "Look at all these pretty women."
He added, however, that he would probably not buy at Vitri because the building was too low. "If I spend six hundred grand," he said, "I want to go high."
While the Vitri party whispered "gallery opening," with waiters padding about and artwork on display, the one for Paramount Bay, a much larger project in Miami, screamed "movie premiere." Guests walked a red carpet, mingled among models at martini bars made of ice and watched Star Jones of "The View" interview the architect, sales director and other luminaries of the project. The models and Ms. Jones were paid to attend.
To stir up fresh interest in a project called Aqua, Craig Robins, the developer, held a party so sprawling that arriving guests got maps with their promotional packets. Aqua's 105 condo units sold out this month, but 46 town homes, which start at $2.65 million, have been a tougher sell.
The theme was "A Day in the Life of Aqua." Dancers in fringed shorts coaxed some guests to salsa to a 10-piece band while other guests hovered around giant pans of paella and ropa vieja. A lounge singer belted out "Respect" in a model living room while chefs whipped up crepes in the model kitchen. Near a newly planted mango grove, guests drank mango caipirinhas and gazed at the Intracoastal Waterway.
Marian Davis of New York City gushed as she showed other party guests the view from a penthouse unit she bought with her husband.
"I think of this as Park Avenue or the Champs-Ãlysées," Ms. Davis said, "except you've got water in the middle of it."
Some guests were overheard sounding less impressed:
"A million eight? You've got to be kidding me."
"Marble countertops are kind of over."
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Salsa Dancers and Stunt Men? Must Be a Miami Condo Project
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: May 23, 2005
MIAMI, May 22 - In the last month alone, you could salsa with dancers in fringed hot pants at Aqua, hear a drag queen D.J. at Cynergi or watch stunt men ricochet off a trampoline at Soleil.
Nightclubs? No. Carnival acts? Not quite.
These were launch parties for condominium projects, one of the stranger forms of nightlife in a city obsessed with real estate. Alcohol and music were abundant, but so were sales agents and brochures with statements like, "It is the impeccable aesthetic of textures and calming shades - limestone and blue marble - that further distinguish these voluminous spaces."
Deep-pocketed developers, forced to be ever more creative in the pursuit of buyers for condos still years from being built, pay for these lavish affairs - another take on the "froth" in the housing market that Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, described last week. Though the parties emulate the club scene, most take place in hastily erected sales centers or parking lots near the future construction site. Guests encounter model kitchens and scan price lists while sampling mojitos and tuna tartare.
"Everyone needs to one-up each other more and more with these things," said Jorge Luis Garcia, a real estate agent attending a party for Vitri, an unbuilt project in South Beach where prices start above $600,000. "The food's got to be better, the lighting's got to be better, the D.J.'s got to be really good. The new norm is the quarter-million-dollar party."
No expense is spared because the stakes are high: about 70,000 condo units are planned, under construction or newly finished in Miami proper, home to fewer than 400,000 people. Builders need early deposits to get construction loans, so they work hard to entice the buyers they covet - image-conscious people, many from Latin America and Europe, with money to burn on a second home, a speculative investment or a status symbol.
The bait includes small initial down payments, slick marketing - and parties. Usually held just before a project begins selling units, the events are meant to create buzz among brokers, who make up the bulk of invitees and bring clients and hip, attractive friends. Live with us, the parties say, and ooze wealth, sex, fitness and mystery.
Jon Graney, who owns two condos in South Beach and is looking to buy more, said launch parties were beginning to rival clubs.
"I mean, look at the women here," Mr. Graney said at the party for Vitri, a smallish project with about 70 units next to a busy overpass on Biscayne Bay. He gazed around the sales office courtyard. "Look at all these pretty women."
He added, however, that he would probably not buy at Vitri because the building was too low. "If I spend six hundred grand," he said, "I want to go high."
While the Vitri party whispered "gallery opening," with waiters padding about and artwork on display, the one for Paramount Bay, a much larger project in Miami, screamed "movie premiere." Guests walked a red carpet, mingled among models at martini bars made of ice and watched Star Jones of "The View" interview the architect, sales director and other luminaries of the project. The models and Ms. Jones were paid to attend.
To stir up fresh interest in a project called Aqua, Craig Robins, the developer, held a party so sprawling that arriving guests got maps with their promotional packets. Aqua's 105 condo units sold out this month, but 46 town homes, which start at $2.65 million, have been a tougher sell.
The theme was "A Day in the Life of Aqua." Dancers in fringed shorts coaxed some guests to salsa to a 10-piece band while other guests hovered around giant pans of paella and ropa vieja. A lounge singer belted out "Respect" in a model living room while chefs whipped up crepes in the model kitchen. Near a newly planted mango grove, guests drank mango caipirinhas and gazed at the Intracoastal Waterway.
Marian Davis of New York City gushed as she showed other party guests the view from a penthouse unit she bought with her husband.
"I think of this as Park Avenue or the Champs-Ãlysées," Ms. Davis said, "except you've got water in the middle of it."
Some guests were overheard sounding less impressed:
"A million eight? You've got to be kidding me."
"Marble countertops are kind of over."
