ORA by Casa Tua Residences: The Brickell Tower From the Family Behind Miami's Most Members-Only Restaurant

The team behind Casa Tua — South Beach's quietest, most exclusive dining room — is building a 76-story Brickell tower where residents get hotel service and direct lineage to one of Miami's storied hospitality brands.

Key Takeaways

• ORA by Casa Tua is a 76-story Brickell tower from the family behind one of Miami's most exclusive members-only restaurants.
• Residences come fully furnished with Casa Tua-branded interiors, hotel service, and full short-term-rental flexibility.
• Pricing starts in the high $700K range — putting Brickell branded-residence access within reach of a wider buyer pool than St. Regis or Cipriani.

There are a few restaurants in Miami where you cannot get a reservation. Not on OpenTable. Not by calling. Not because the room is small — though the rooms are small — but because the restaurant is genuinely members-only, and the membership is by invitation, and the invitation requires the kind of social proof that takes years to accumulate.

Casa Tua South Beach is one of those rooms. It's been one of those rooms since 2001. Carlos and Miky Grendene, the family behind it, built one of the quietest, most enduring, most genuinely exclusive hospitality brands in Miami. Casa Tua isn't loud. It doesn't need to be. The right people know.

Now that family is bringing the brand to Brickell as a 76-story residential tower called ORA by Casa Tua Residences. And it's structured in a way that deserves attention from any buyer who's been priced out of the established luxury branded residence ladder.

I'm Partnership Realty, Miami real estate agent with Partnership Realty, and this is the project breakdown for the buyer who wants Brickell branded-residence access without the $2,500+/SqFt price tag of the major hotel marques.

The Brand: Why Casa Tua Matters

Before we get into the tower, the brand story is the whole point.

Casa Tua South Beach opened in 2001 as a Mediterranean restaurant and small inn inside a converted 1925 villa on Collins Avenue. From day one, it was different — no signage, no website worth speaking of, a reservations process that quickly evolved into a membership model. The restaurant has now operated for over two decades with virtually no public marketing, and it remains arguably the hardest reservation in Miami.

The Grendene family expanded the brand carefully: Casa Tua Cucina in Brickell, a more accessible casual restaurant; Casa Tua Aspen, which became a winter destination for the same membership; and now, the most ambitious move yet — ORA by Casa Tua Residences, the family's first standalone residential tower.

What makes the Casa Tua brand commercially powerful is exactly what made the original restaurant work: it doesn't try to be everything. It doesn't compete with the global hotel brands on amenity arms races or starchitect design. It competes on a specific, defensible, hard-to-replicate taste level — quietly luxurious, distinctly Italian, deeply hospitable in a non-performative way. The brand's actual buyer is someone who has already done the global luxury tour and is now buying for the things money cannot fake.

That's the buyer ORA is built for.

The Tower: What's Actually Being Built

ORA by Casa Tua Residences is a 76-story tower on Brickell Avenue, developed in partnership with Major Food Group's affiliated development arm and Fortune International Group. The project is one of the tallest in the current Brickell pipeline and is positioned at the heart of the financial district.

What buyers should expect:

• 697 residences ranging from studios to multi-bedroom layouts, plus penthouse collection at the top of the tower.
• Fully furnished and turnkey delivery with Casa Tua-branded interiors. The Grendene family is personally curating the design language across the residences.
• Casa Tua dining at the base of the tower — a full restaurant venue from the Casa Tua group, accessible to residents and members.
• Hotel-style service including 24-hour concierge, housekeeping, and in-residence dining.
• Full short-term rental flexibility — no minimum stay restrictions, with an opt-in branded rental program managed by the on-site hospitality operations.
• Amenity floors featuring pool deck, fitness center, spa, members-only club spaces, and outdoor entertaining venues.

This is the model that DUOS Wynwood and 72 Park Miami Beach pioneered — branded residences specifically engineered for owner flexibility, including unrestricted short-term rental — but with the Casa Tua name and a Brickell address, which is a meaningfully different positioning. For context on how this category has been performing, my earlier piece "DUOS Wynwood: The 49-Unit Hotel-Condo Built Purposely for Short-Term Rentals in Miami's Hottest Arts District" lays out the investor case.

Pricing: The Real Story

This is where ORA gets interesting.

While the established Brickell branded residences (St. Regis at $2,700+/SqFt, Cipriani at $1,800+/SqFt, Mercedes-Benz Places at premium pricing) have moved the entry point for branded Brickell ownership into the $1.5M–$3M+ range for two-bedroom units, ORA's pricing reportedly starts in the high $700,000 range for studios and runs to several million for larger units and the penthouse collection.

That entry price is the story. It opens Brickell branded-residence ownership to a buyer who has been priced out of the heritage brands — younger professionals, secondary-residence buyers, investors looking for cash-flow units in the short-term rental segment, and international buyers seeking Brickell exposure at a more accessible entry point.

Per-square-foot pricing across the project is reported in the $1,200–$1,800 range depending on floor, view, and unit configuration — meaningfully below the $2,000+ range now standard at the heritage brands.

Why the Short-Term Rental Story Is the Real Investment Case

Brickell's short-term rental market has matured significantly over the past three years. Buildings that were once primary-residence dominated have shifted to allow flexible short-term rental, and the supply of explicitly short-term-friendly buildings is now a defined sub-market.

As I covered in "The Short-Term Rental Tax Loophole: How Miami Investors Use Airbnb Properties to Offset W-2 and Business Income in 2026," there's also a specific federal tax strategy that depends on owning a property with sufficient personal-management hours that qualifies as a "non-passive" activity under IRS rules. The combination of short-term rental flexibility, branded-residence service standards, and Brickell business-traveler demand creates an unusually clean investment thesis for ORA-type product.

The math typically looks like this for a $900K turnkey furnished Brickell unit with short-term rental:

• Gross rental potential (12 months): $90,000–$140,000 depending on occupancy.
• Net to owner (after management fees, HOA, insurance, taxes): $35,000–$70,000.
• Effective cash-on-cash yield: 4%–8% with full leverage, before depreciation tax shielding.

That math doesn't work in most traditional Miami condos because the operating costs eat too much of the gross. With turnkey-furnished, on-site hospitality operations and Brickell business demand, the math improves materially.

• Miami Market Snapshot — June 2026:
• Brickell short-term-rental-approved new construction inventory: 4,200 units (across 11 projects)
• Average Brickell furnished studio nightly rate (Q1 2026): $285
• Brickell hospitality occupancy (full-service rentals): 78% YTD
• Brickell median condo $/SqFt (new construction): $1,650

Why a Miami Business Owner Should Pay Attention

For a Miami business owner specifically, ORA has three angles worth considering:

1. Pied-à-terre with optional income. For business owners who live in Coral Gables, Pinecrest, or Miami Beach but spend significant time in Brickell for meetings, a Brickell pied-à-terre at ORA can serve as both a working residence and an income-generating asset during the weeks you're not using it.

2. Casa Tua brand affinity. If you're already a Casa Tua member or familiar with the Grendene family hospitality, the residence-level integration is genuinely valuable — restaurant access, event programming, and a social context that aligns with the membership you already participate in.

3. Strategic Brickell exposure without trophy pricing. Brickell remains the strongest commercial submarket in Miami (office rents above $200/SqFt, vacancies declining), and owning residential exposure in the district has historically tracked well with the district's commercial growth. ORA lets you take that exposure without writing a $3M check.

The Risks Worth Naming

• 697 units is a high-density project. This is not a 65-unit Vita at Grove Isle scarcity play. ORA's investment case depends on rental performance and brand execution, not unit scarcity.
• Short-term rental regulations can shift. Miami-Dade and the City of Miami have generally been STR-friendly, but local rules can and do change. Buyers building investment models on STR cash flow should plan for some regulatory variability over a 10-year hold.
• Brand execution is everything. The Casa Tua brand carries serious weight with the right buyer, but the brand has never operated at the residential scale of 697 units. The first 18 months of operations will be the proof.

Read the complete pre-construction buyer's guide at "How to Buy Pre-Construction in Miami: The 2026 Deposit Schedule, Timeline, and Risk Playbook Every Buyer Needs" before signing any contract.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the expected delivery date for ORA by Casa Tua Residences? A: Based on the project scale (76 stories) and standard Miami pre-construction timelines, buyers should plan on a 36–48 month build from groundbreaking. Confirmed delivery timing will be published in the official offering documents.

Q: How does ORA's deposit schedule work? A: Typical Miami pre-construction projects of this scale require 10% at signing, 10% at groundbreaking, 10% at top-off, and the balance at closing. Total pre-closing deposit typically runs 30%–40% of purchase price. The specific ORA structure will be in the contract.

Q: Can I do short-term rentals (Airbnb) in my ORA residence? A: ORA is being marketed with full short-term rental flexibility, including unrestricted minimum stays. The optional on-site managed rental program handles bookings, housekeeping, and guest services for owners who want full passivity.

Q: How does ORA compare to other Brickell branded residences? A: ORA is positioned at a meaningfully lower price point than the major hotel brands (St. Regis, Mandarin, Mercedes-Benz, Cipriani) while offering branded turnkey delivery and short-term rental flexibility. The trade-off: a smaller, more boutique brand and a higher-density project. For investors prioritizing yield and entry price, ORA's case is compelling. For pure ultra-luxury status, the heritage brands still hold the edge.

Explore the full ORA by Casa Tua Residences project and other Brickell new development on my website: carloscabalerealtor.com/new-development

Whether you're buying, selling, or investing — I've got you.

Partnership Realty / Partnership Realty Inc / +1 (561) 629-0358 / carloscabalerealtor.com