Key Biscayne

Key Biscayne is an island village lying east of Miami and south of Miami Beach, reached by the Rickenbacker Causeway, opened in 1947. It covers 1.7 square miles, of which 1.25 are land, and the 2020 census recorded 14,809 residents. The village incorporated in June 1991, the first new city in Miami-Dade in more than fifty years. Because the island sits low and faces the Atlantic directly it is in Evacuation Zone A, first to clear ahead of a hurricane, and in 2020 residents approved a $100 million bond for sea-level defenses.

The village keeps its own rhythm. Crandon Park, a county park, borders it to the north; Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park borders it to the south and holds the Cape Florida Lighthouse of 1825, the oldest standing structure in Miami-Dade County. Residential streets run between the Atlantic on one side and the bay on the other. Brickell, downtown Miami, the airport and South Beach are all a short drive back across the causeway, which is rather the point: proximity without the density that comes with it.

Buildings here are mostly oceanfront and mid-rise, running to twelve or fourteen floors rather than forty. Several date from the 1970s and hold a hundred or more residences; the work since 1996 is smaller and more finished, down to an eleven-residence building on Sunrise Drive. The largest by far is Key Colony, a forty-acre beachfront property with 1,200 residences.