MANA Wynwood: Planning for a Creative District
Some development assignments are about a single building. Others ask a larger question: how can a district grow while retaining the creative energy that makes it distinctive? The MANA Wynwood Special Area Plan was that kind of assignment.
From a district vision to an approved plan
The plan emerged as Wynwood was becoming one of Miami’s most recognizable centers for art, culture and new investment. In 2015, MANA and Zyscovich presented a proposal for a large, coordinated development district. The Special Area Plan, or SAP, provided a way to consider land use, buildings, streets and public space together rather than as a collection of isolated projects.
The proposal evolved through discussions with City staff, neighboring owners and the Wynwood Business Improvement District. In September 2016, the Miami City Commission approved the MANA Wynwood SAP. That approval established a development framework; it was a milestone in the entitlement process, not a statement that the entire vision had been built.
My role in the entitlement process
As managing director of MANA Miami, I helped lead the entitlement effort and coordinate the work required to move the plan forward. That meant bringing together the development team, Zyscovich Architects and Greenberg Traurig, while working through community meetings, Wynwood BID discussions and the City Commission process.
The work sat at the intersection of vision and execution. Design ambition needed to be translated into a coherent approval strategy. Stakeholder concerns needed to be understood and addressed. The team needed a shared direction through a process with many participants and competing priorities.
For owners and investors, this is where development advisory can make a meaningful difference: organizing the right expertise, clarifying decisions and keeping a complex initiative moving toward an actionable outcome.
A personal connection to Black Mountain College
There is also a personal thread in this story. My grandfather, John Andrew Rice, was a founder of Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1933. The college became known for an experimental approach to education that placed the arts, collaboration and learning through experience at the center of community life.
For me, that family connection adds a personal dimension to thinking about creative communities. Black Mountain College and Wynwood belong to different places and histories, but both invite reflection on how people, ideas and physical settings influence one another.
That is a useful perspective to bring to development: a place is shaped not only by what can be built, but by the conditions it creates for people to gather, work and contribute. The entitlement process is one of the first opportunities to put that thinking into practice.
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