Right: The open-air design of Florida's

Bal Harbour Shops allows wafting
breezes from the Atlantic Ocean to
keep shoppers cool. Ranked the No.
1 most productive mall in the United
States by Woman's Wear Daily, the
Shops' sales for 2007 are projected
to average $1,993 per square foot
— compared to the national average
of $340 per square foot. No wonder,
then, that there's a two-year waiting
list for space in the mall, which has
operated at 100-percent occupancy
for more than 20 years. Below: Need
to refuel? Modeled after a traditional
European tea salon and named for
the owner's granddaughter, Lea's Tea
Room offers light fare and decadent
Parisian sweets. For heartier fare,
try Carpaccio, a sophisticated Italian
eatery, the Bal Harbour Bistro, a
Mediterranean-style indoor/outdoor
café; or refresh with a popover at
Neiman Marcus' Zodiac Café.

Some of the best shopping in the world can be found amid a lush and balmy tropical paradise.

WRITTEN BY LYNNE KONSTANTIN

The only stress you'll encounter in a
visit to Bal Harbour Village, Fla., is the
daunting decisions to be made. Laze in
your private poolside cabana, tropical
cocktail in hand? Learn to jet ski? Or
you can indulge in some of the most
decadent shopping — and people watch-
ing — in the world, rivaling that of
Beverly Hills, Monaco and St. Tropez.
Nestled at the northern tip of Miami
Beach on the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne
Bay between Miami, Fort Lauderdale
and South Beach, the area that is now
Bal Harbour Village is one square mile of
luxuriously pristine and secluded beaches.
It's also an area that has attracted Detroiters
since the early 1920s.
At that time, the land was owned by
the Miami Beach Heights Corporation,
which was headed by Detroit indus-
trialists Robert C. Graham, Walter 0.
Briggs and C.T. Fisher. The corporation
began to develop the land in the 1930s,

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SEPTEMBER 2007 •

platinum

and following a brief interruption by
the Second World War — when the
land was rented to the United States
Air Corps for S1 per year — real-
estate developer Stanley Whitman
purchased 16 acres in 1957.
Though Whitman had no experi-
ence in retail development, he became
an unflinching trailblazer in the field
when he created the Bal Harbour
Shops on the famed Collins Avenue.
Paying more than 20 times
what his local competitors paid for
their land, he was determined to
make something of it that had not
been seen before on these shores.
Whitman refused the plans drawn up
by groundbreaking architect Victor
Gruen (designer of Southfield's origi-
nal, open-air version of Northland
Center), which allotted only about 100
square feet of retail space without the
attached parking Whitman desired. He

then hired architect Herbert Johnson to
design the existing space, with the ability
to incorporate 750,000 square feet of retail
space.
And so, in 1965, the first outdoor
luxury shopping mall — containing 30
stores — opened to immediate dizzy-
ing success. It has remained virtually
unchanged in design and concept — and
emulated all over the world. Today, ele-
gant and refined, punctuated with stately
palm trees and permeated by ocean
breezes, the Bal Harbour Shops offers
100 high-end boutiques and flagship
stores amidst an equally decadent back-
drop. Designed to build upward rather
than outward, the mall now includes a
second floor of shops with a third floor
of storage and office space.
At the time of its opening, retail
shops were typically scattered between
service tenants — not a destination
in themselves. With nary a hardware

