NORTH BAY VILLAGE, FLA. — For a generation of Miami residents, there’s always been a familiar site on what locals call the 79th Street Causeway connecting the mainland to the northern part of Miami Beach. On the north shore of Treasure Island sits the home of the local FOX affiliate, the Sunbeam Television-owned station that famously rocketed to No. 1 as a local news-focused station that had just lost its NBC affiliation, ahead of FOX’s rise to “Big Four” status.
Soon, that TV station will be packing up and leaving the longtime site. Just don’t call it a climate change move, but recognition of a very different metropolitan area that led the NBCUniversal owned stations and the ABC affiliate owned by Warren Buffett to move to Broward County — where WSVN-7 is heading.
According to the South Florida Business Journal, WSVN seeks to relocate to Miramar, Fla., home to WTVJ-6 and WSCV-51, the NBC and Telemundo stations that long ago relocated from a downtown Miami locale to better serve the market.
WSVN is likely using the same reasoning to shift inland, with better access to a region stretching from Parkland to the northwest to Homestead to the southwest.
While WSVN’s North Bay Village parcel rests on land that could be highly threatened by a rise in sea level, its current home is highly desired among developers. For WSVN, a state-of-the-art broadcast facility is in the works for the southeast corner of Miramar Parkway and Red Road in Miramar — today a big swath of undeveloped property three miles east of the NBCUniversal Miami studios and offices for WTVJ and WSCV.
Artist renderings of the new facilities were shared by the South Florida Business Journal.
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.
Completion of the new WSVN home is on track for 2026. It will boast 71,000-square-feet of space and house two studios. It would also allow WSVN to operate with backup air conditioning, two generators and a fuel tank for station vehicles; while WSVN’s home survived Hurricane Andrew in August 1992, its waterside site today, in addition to its proximity to a collapsed residential tower in Surfside, Fla., likely make insurance rates exceptionally high.
For Sunbeam, the move to Miramar is contingent on the approval by the city government of other development in the area, which would provide sufficient services for the station and other business park tenants.
