Sunny Isles Beach · Miami

The Estates at Acqualina

Two towers, two separate condominiums, one oceanfront address — with an indoor ice rink, a bowling alley, a Karl Lagerfeld lobby, and a five-acre private park between the buildings and Collins Avenue.

Two Towers, One Address

The Estates at Acqualina occupies 17901 and 17975 Collins Avenue, and the first thing worth understanding is that it is not one building. The Miami-Dade roll records two entirely separate condominiums: 777 Via Acqualina at 17901, the South Tower, and 888 Via Acqualina at 17975, the North or Boutique Tower. They are stitched together by a master covenant under The Estates Master Association, share the amenity programme and the grounds, and are marketed as a single address — but they are governed by two declarations, with two sets of documents. Anyone comparing residences across the two should know which one they are buying into.

The county roll dates the South Tower to 2022 and the North Tower to 2023, and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat records the same completion years, with both towers rising to 672 feet. The developer is The Trump Group, the investment firm of Jules and Eddie Trump — Forbes has noted explicitly that it is unaffiliated with Donald Trump or the Trump Organization. CFE Architects, PA of Miami Lakes is architect of record under Florida licence AAC000779. Suffolk Construction built it.

The design story that matters here is the lobbies. In June 2016 the developer announced that Karl Lagerfeld would design the public interiors of both towers — the only completed residential lobby commission he took in the United States. He died in 2019, three years before the South Tower was finished, and the completed lobby was later unveiled by the developer. Molteni&C's contract division lists the project in its own portfolio.

One honest footnote, because it comes up: published unit counts disagree. The architect of record and CTBUH both say 245 as designed; the resort's own page says 247; the developer's 2021 release said 248. The county roll today carries 232 active residential folios across the two condominiums, and part of that gap is genuine — the roll now shows merged folios where two originally separate residences were combined into one. Both numbers are true; they are counting different things.

An Amenity Deck That Actually Earns the Word

Most towers on this stretch of coast publish an amenity list. This one publishes an inventory, and the specifics are unusual enough to be worth reading rather than skimming. The centrepiece is Villa Acqualina, which the developer describes as a 45,000-square-foot indoor amenity building, with AcquaFit — a 13,000-square-foot fitness centre and spa — inside it.

What is in there is the part that surprises people:

• An indoor ice-skating rink — genuinely rare in a Florida oceanfront tower
• A four-lane bowling alley with its own lounge, big-screen TV, sound system and snack bar
• A movie-screening theatre
• A Formula One racing simulator and a separate golf simulator
• A FlowRider wave simulator
• The Wall Street Trader's Clubroom
• A cigar lounge and billiards room, a wine room, and a speakeasy disco
• A children's play area and game room, and a separate teen game area

Outside, the developer lists a zero-entry pool, an infinity-edge pool, an adults-only pool, a lap pool and children's pool slides, with private poolside cabanas — it never publishes a single total for the pool count, and third-party sites disagree, so treat the arrangement as something to walk rather than tally. Beyond the decks there is a soccer field, a basketball court, a bocce court, an outdoor pool table, a dog park, walking and jogging trails, sculpted art gardens, meditation areas, gazebos and a pedestrian promenade. The green space is real and it is on the public record: the master association holds a 230,699-square-foot park parcel — 5.30 acres, county-coded as private park and recreation area — which the developer markets as a five-acre park.

Dining is on the property, not merely near it. The county roll confirms 16,311 square feet of purpose-built restaurant space across four parcels, built in 2023. Avra Miami — the Greek house with a 12,000-square-foot space and a 330-seat main dining room — operates at 17945 Collins Avenue inside the Estates and is open to the public. Beach service and a beachfront restaurant and bar run through Acqualina Resort next door.

What is not here: a marina. This is a straight ocean site with no waterway access, and no boat dockage. Slips are a short drive south, not a walk down your own dock.

The Residences, and the Case for the North Tower

The two towers live very differently, and the county's own unit numbering tells you how. Every residential folio at 17975 Collins — the North or Boutique Tower — carries a unit number ending in line 01 or line 02, and nothing else. Eighty-three residences, two per floor, for the full height of the building. Seven of those floors are given over entirely to a single full-floor Tower Suite of roughly 7,800 to 8,100 square feet, on levels 9, 21, 22, 37, 47, 48 and 49.

The South Tower at 17901 is the larger of the pair — 149 folios, with unit lines running 01 through 07 — but the roll never shows more than four residences on any single floor. Floor 13 is skipped in both buildings. Two 52-storey towers carrying 232 residences between them is a low density for this height, and it is the number that explains why the elevator lobbies feel the way they do.

The developer delivers residences furniture-ready rather than through a single house interiors package, which leaves the specification open to the buyer. Molteni&C's contract division lists the project in its portfolio, and one published Platinum Collection plan — Casa Di Coba — is credited to the Wimberly interior design group of Beverly Hills. Floor plates vary enough between the two condominiums that a plan-by-plan walkthrough is worth the afternoon.

Collins Avenue, and What a Short Drive Buys

The site has direct Atlantic frontage — the county classifies every folio in both condominiums as an Ocean Front Lot, and the master parcel sits on Tract Q of North Biscayne Beach. Nothing stands between the buildings and the water. The developer publishes 502 linear feet of oceanfront, a figure repeated widely across listing sources.

What is genuinely walkable is short and good: the sand, Avra Miami on the Estates' own parcel, and Acqualina Resort & Spa immediately south at 17875 Collins Avenue. Sunny Isles Beach is a barrier island and Collins Avenue is the only road frontage, so be clear-eyed — almost everything else is a drive, though a short one.

Three or four miles south on Collins, Haulover Park runs 177 acres with 1.4 miles of beachfront, a skate park and pump track, a dog park and a kite shop, and — for anyone who wants a boat without wanting a dock — the Bill Bird Marina, with 152 gated wet slips taking vessels from 35 to 120 feet. Further south, Bal Harbour Shops has been the open-air anchor of luxury retail on this coast since 1965: Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Chanel, Gucci, Cartier, Valentino, and per-square-foot sales among the highest of any retail centre in the world.

West across the William Lehman Causeway, Aventura Mall runs over 2.7 million square feet — the fifth-largest mall in the United States — with Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's and Macy's, more than fifty dining venues, a 24-screen AMC, and the Arts Aventura programme threaded through it. Brightline's Aventura station opened alongside it in December 2022, which puts Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and downtown Miami on a train rather than I-95. Oleta River State Park, Florida's largest urban park, sits across Biscayne Bay in North Miami Beach with mangrove trails and kayak launches.

The airports are the quiet advantage. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International is roughly 11.5 miles north — about 21 minutes by car. Miami International is roughly 18.8 miles southwest, about 29 minutes. Two international airports inside half an hour is not something every oceanfront address in South Florida can say.

Who This Building Is For

The Estates suits a buyer who wants a large floor plate and does not want to leave the property to have a full day. If your second home needs to be locked and left for months and then walked back into — with 24-hour security, valet and concierge, a resort next door and a restaurant on your own parcel — the operating model here is built for exactly that.

It suits people who entertain. Sixteen thousand square feet of restaurant on site, a wine room, a cigar lounge, a screening theatre, a bowling alley and a five-acre park mean you can host thirty people without booking anything off-property. And it suits anyone who wants brand-new construction on the sand: both towers were finished in 2022 and 2023, which puts them among the youngest oceanfront buildings in Sunny Isles Beach.

The North Tower is the one to look at if two-residences-per-floor is the point — and the seven full-floor Tower Suites are a different proposition again. Because the two towers are legally separate condominiums with separate documents, including their own leasing rules, that is worth sorting out before you tour rather than after. Call and we will pull the declarations and set up both.