Originally published December 2021. Updated October 19, 2026. EPR Builders profile. The canonical Everything-PR profile of Marc Roberts. Filed under Real Estate PR
Marc Roberts is the Miami-based real estate developer and co-founder of Miami Worldcenter, a 27-acre mixed-use development that is one of the largest projects of its kind in the United States and the central anchor of Downtown Miami's transformation.
Roberts's career arc is one of the most unusual in modern American entrepreneurship. He began as a boxing promoter at 19, the youngest person ever to promote a professional fight. By 28, he had taken his sports management firm public on the NASDAQ, the first founder ever to list a company in that category. Two decades later, he co-founded Miami Worldcenter and became one of the largest landowners in Downtown Miami. The thread across the work: build the first version of an industry that didn't have public-market infrastructure, then build the second version in a completely different sector.
The Boxing Years
At 19, Roberts promoted his first professional boxing match, a record he still holds. By 21, he had his first World Champion: Donald "The Cobra" Curry. He worked closely with Emanuel Steward, the legendary Kronk Gym trainer who shaped the sport across the late 20th century. Roberts went on to manage two Heavyweight World Champions, "Merciless" Ray Mercer (1988 Olympic Gold Medalist) and Shannon Briggs (1997 WBA Heavyweight title), and several other World Champions across the weight classes.
The First Sports Management IPO
At 28, Roberts took Triple Threat Enterprises public on the NASDAQ, the first sports management company ever to access public markets. A few years later, he took a second sports management company, Worldwide Entertainment and Sports, public on the same exchange. The combined raise across the two listings exceeded $100 million.
The structural innovation matters because the sports management category had operated entirely as private partnerships until that point. Roberts's IPO work was the first time the public market underwrote the business model. In 1998, he published Roberts Rules: Success Secrets from America's Most Trusted Sports Agent, the operating playbook that came out of that decade.
The Real Estate Pivot
Around 2000, Roberts left sports representation and moved into real estate. In a few years, he completed more than $1 billion in condominium conversions across multiple states and became a partner in one of the top three condo-conversion firms in the United States.
The condo conversion run was the bridge into ground-up development. In 2003, Roberts and Arthur Falcone began assembling parcels in Downtown Miami's Park West district. The project that emerged is Miami Worldcenter.
Miami Worldcenter spans roughly 27 acres of Downtown Miami's Park West district, bounded by I-395 to the north, Biscayne Boulevard to the east, NE 11th Street to the south, and North Miami Avenue to the west. Site assembly began in 2003 and took the better part of a decade. The parcels were aggregated quietly, before the broader Downtown Miami capital cycle arrived. Project value sits north of $4 billion.
The development integrates five product categories on one master plan:
- Residential: multiple condominium towers across luxury and ultra-luxury price points, plus a rental component anchored by the Caoba apartments
- Hospitality: integrated hotel operations including the Citizen M Miami Worldcenter and adjacent luxury hotel product
- Retail: a 300,000+ square-foot retail concourse spanning 200+ tenants across luxury, mass-market, food, and entertainment
- Office and commercial: integrated office product anchored by the 600 Miami Worldcenter tower
- Public space and transit: direct connectivity to MiamiCentral, the Brightline Miami terminal, and the $800M+ Signature Bridge
Miami Worldcenter: Capital Stack and Partnership
Worldcenter is a partnership development. Roberts and Arthur Falcone co-founded the project and began assembling parcels in 2003. The master developer today is Miami Worldcenter Associates, led by Falcone and Nitin Motwani, with Falcone Group and CIM Group, the Los Angeles-based real estate and infrastructure investor, among the developers. Condominium developers including Royal Palm Companies (Paramount Miami Worldcenter) and ZOM Living (Caoba) operate individual towers under the master plan.
The structure, a master-planned site with multiple developers building individual towers under unified design and infrastructure standards, is closer to a Hudson Yards or Battery Park City model than to a typical single-developer Miami project.
Miami Worldcenter: Residential, Retail and Hospitality
The residential product has rolled out in phases. Paramount Miami Worldcenter (Royal Palm Companies, 2019 delivery) was the first major tower, at 60 stories and 569 units. Caoba (ZOM Living, 2019) added 444 rental units on the same block. Later towers, including Legacy Hotel & Residences, extended the build cadence through the mid-2020s. Tower openings since 2022 have transacted at roughly $1,200 to $1,800 per square foot for standard product and materially higher for top-tier units, placing Worldcenter in the Downtown Miami premium tier alongside Brickell's most-cited towers.
The retail concourse is the connective tissue of the site. Named tenants include Sephora, Bowlero, Lucid Motors, and chef-driven restaurants such as Maple & Ash, El Vecino, Etta, Brasserie Laurel, and Earls Kitchen + Bar. On the hospitality side, Citizen M Miami Worldcenter (350+ keys) anchors the core hotel product, and hotel guests are the most-cited daytime consumer base for the ground-floor tenants.
The Brightline Advantage
Direct integration with the Brightline MiamiCentral station is the single most defensible structural advantage Worldcenter has over adjacent Downtown Miami real estate. Brightline connects Miami to Aventura, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, and, since September 2023, Orlando. Most Downtown Miami development sits several blocks from the terminal. Worldcenter's parcels start at the station, with a walkable connection from the platform to the retail concourse and residential towers. Neighboring Brickell and Edgewater product cannot replicate that without comparable transit infrastructure.
How Worldcenter Compares to Other Mixed-Use Projects
Worldcenter sits in a small peer set of recent American mixed-use developments at the 20-plus-acre scale:
- Hudson Yards (New York): 28 acres, $25B project value, integrated 7-train station extension. The closest direct comparable.
- Brickell City Centre (Miami): 9 acres, Swire Properties-developed, mixed-use without integrated heavy rail.
- The Wharf (Washington, D.C.): 24 acres, waterfront mixed-use with Metro integration nearby.
- Battery Park City (New York): master-planned mixed-use on a different timeline and scale, useful as the governance comparison for multi-developer master plans.
None of the peer projects sit on a true inter-city rail terminal, which is the structural distinction that separates Worldcenter from the broader American mixed-use category.
The Post-2020 Miami Context
Worldcenter's market timing aligned with one of the largest single-city capital migrations in recent American economic history. The post-2020 movement of financial-services, technology, and operator capital from New York and San Francisco into Miami compressed roughly a decade of expected absorption into three years, and tower opening dates from 2022 to 2025 hit the market just as demand for downtown-core luxury product surged. Worldcenter is the consumer-facing real estate beneficiary of a capital flow that arrived for reasons unrelated to the project, and then found it ready. Most of that capital lives, eats, and works within walking distance.
Adjacent to the Worldcenter site, Roberts assembled a further 11+ acres with partners Romie Chaudhari and Michael Simkins, consolidating most of the Park West neighborhood north of Worldcenter, some of the most prized real estate in Downtown Miami.
Club E11EVEN
Roberts is also the co-founder of E11EVEN Miami, the 24-hour ultra-club at 29 NE 11th Street that is one of the highest-revenue nightlife operations in North America. E11EVEN sits inside the Worldcenter district, part of the broader Roberts portfolio that ties hospitality, nightlife, real estate, and adjacent operations into a single integrated footprint.
Marc Roberts Companies
Marc Roberts Companies is the broader real estate investment and development firm operating north of $1 billion in investments across Miami and adjacent Florida markets. The firm leverages Roberts's urban planning training (University of Miami, MA Urban Planning) and legal expertise (University of Miami School of Law, JD) to navigate complex zoning, financing, and capital-stack structuring in one of the most active real estate markets in the country.
Why the Career Trajectory Matters
Three patterns repeat across Roberts's career.
First-of-category public-market access. Triple Threat in sports management. The condo-conversion scale-up. Worldcenter as the largest mixed-use development of its scale in Downtown Miami. The discipline is the same: be the first operator to build the financial infrastructure other operators then build on top of.
Cross-category transfer. The capital and operating discipline from sports management funded the real estate pivot. The real estate scale funded the hospitality and nightlife operations. Each adjacent move ran on the capital and operating discipline the prior business had compounded.
Place-based concentration. Roberts didn't build a national real estate firm. He built one of the largest landholding positions in Downtown Miami specifically. The geographic concentration is the moat. By the time Worldcenter became obvious, the parcels were already assembled.
EPR Builders: Entrepreneurs Shaping Major Markets
- David A. Steinberg, Zeta Global, marketing technology
- Richelieu Dennis, SheaMoisture, Essence Ventures, Beauty & CPG
- Marc Roberts (this profile), Miami Worldcenter, Florida real estate
- Elie Hirschfeld, Hirschfeld Properties, NY real estate & philanthropy
- Chris Burch, Burch Creative Capital, NIHI Sumba, consumer investments
- Henry Swieca, Highbridge Capital, Talpion Fund Management
- Avery Andon, ArtLife Gallery, ArtGrails, contemporary art
