It’s been in the works for weeks and weeks: Sunbeam Television‘s Miami-Fort Lauderdale studios and offices are poised to leave their longtime home in North Bay Village, Fla., along a flood-prone causeway traversing Biscayne Bay, in favor a sprawling new state-of-the-art facility in Broward County.
That move is moving forward, and Ansin family members are cheering the progress.
As RBR+TVBR first reported in August 2023, WSVN-7 and “ABC 18” (fed by WSVN-7.2) are following the lead of BH Media’s WPLG-10 and NBCUniversal’s WTVJ-4 and WSCV-51 by shifting to what is now the geographical center of a much wider and more diverse marketplace than in the late 1980s, when WSVN soared to the top of the local TV ratings as “South Florida’s News Station” and FOX programming in an era when “Married … with Children” and “21 Jump Street” were its signature programs.
Artist renderings of what Sunbeam Properties & Development, developer of the Miramar Park of Commerce, and Sunbeam Television Corporation, want for their South Florida operations first appeared in the South Florida Business Journal more than two years ago. Today, the southeast corner of Miramar Parkway and Red Road in Miramar, Fla., served as the site of a “tilt-up” ceremony for what will become a 70,108-square-foot, state-of-the-art broadcast studio and production facility.
Tilt-Up construction features a series of concrete panels tilted up into place to form a building’s exterior wall.
That was enough to get Miramar city officials, community leaders and invited guests to watch the first concrete walls of the new studio and headquarters rise into place. Guests were invited to sign a plaque commemorating the wall tilt-up that will be mounted on an interior wall of the new building.
“We’re building more than a television studio here at the Miramar Park of Commerce, as this is an investment in the future of local news and in the South Florida community we’ve served for over six decades,” said Andy Ansin, President/CEO of Sunbeam Television and Sunbeam Properties & Development. “The new facility will allow us to grow, modernize and remain deeply connected to the region we call home.”
The building is designed to withstand the strongest of hurricanes and has redundant water, electrical and air conditioning systems. WSVN expects to be fully operational by January 2027.
Miller Construction is the general contractor, with REES Architects providing architectural design.
Development of the Miramar site for WSVN’s new home comes following the October 2019 sale of 36.7 acres of land sitting on the northwest corner of Red Road and Miramar Parkway by the Ansin family, owners of Sunbeam Television. Today, the site is home to Miramar Park Place, a mixed residential-retail locale. The Ansin family made $41 million from agreeing to two transactions of $35 million and $6 million, respectively.
