The Arts & Entertainment District, often known as Omni, is a neighborhood in greater Downtown Miami, FL area, located immediately south of Edgewater. It was established in the late 1970s. Approximately bordered by North 19th Street to the north, North 10th Street to the south, North East 2nd Avenue to the west, and Biscayne Boulevard to the east, it is a small neighborhood near the Little River, Fl area.
The Arts & Entertainment District is served by the Omni Loop branch of the Metromover as well as the Metrorail via the Omni Loop branch of the Metromover, both of which are located at Government Center.
A high-end retail district with numerous prominent department shops along Biscayne Boulevard from the 1920s through the 1950s, including Sears, Roebuck and Company and Jordan Marsh (NE 15th Street and Biscayne Boulevard), which opened in 1956, and a Burdines store. Biscayne Boulevard's Sears (later Burdines) Store, the Shrine Building, and other Art Deco structures were all constructed in this region by 1930, all of which were designed and built by the Biscayne Boulevard Company in the Art Deco style.
Originally, the area between NE 13th and NE 16th Streets was intended to be a high-end shopping zone. Among the initial tenants in the Shrine Building in 1930 were the Piggly-Wiggly grocery shop, Biscayne-Page Electric Company, and the John Turner Piano Store, all of which were located on the ground level. In 1930, the Home Drug Store and the Burroughs Adding Machine Company were among the building's occupants.
A suburban-style retail mall, the Omni International Mall, built in 1977, displacing a large number of the city's street-side businesses. The mall introduced a slew of high-end businesses to the Omni, including Emilio Pucci, Givenchy, and Hermes, among others. But by the 1990s, the mall was in trouble, and Jordan Marsh shuttered its doors in 1991, and JC Penney followed suit two years later in 1998. If you're looking for a mall near the Princeton, FL area then this would've been it!
The mall closed in 2000, and the land was subsequently transformed into offices in 2007 and 2008. A few office tenants as well as the Miami International University of Art and Design occupy the building today. Furthermore, it serves as the corporate headquarters of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. The name of the neighborhood, which is still in use today, is derived from the name of the Omni Mall.
The fast construction of high-rise residential skyscrapers in the 2000s has helped to rehabilitate the neighborhood, which had been suffering from urban degradation. Between 2000 and 2010, the population of the area surrounding Margaret Pace Park increased significantly. Omni now has a considerable residential population, and as a result of the continuing retail and residential development in the neighborhood, it has developed into a distinct community inside the city limits.