A World of Its Own

Right-Sizing the American Dream: Armando Codina’s Next Chapter

What strikes you first about Regency Parc is the completeness of its design. As a “home” in the sky, the building not only provides smartly designed living accommodations, but also recreational areas, a private movie theater, a restaurant (with room service), a bio-hacking spa, swimming pool, recreational area (with electric BBQ grills), a tele-medicine room, postal facilities, and a handsome courtyard that provides a place to quietly read, reflect, or listen to music played on an outdoor grand piano imported from Jerusalem.

 Evening View Renderings Of The Exterior And Roof Deck Pool

When developer Armando Codina decided to sell his waterfront mansion in Coral Gables – a sprawling home where he and his wife raised four daughters, now listed at $45 million – he wasn’t motivated by necessity or nostalgia. He wanted to control the details of his future.

“You come to a moment in life when you say, ‘I’m going to have to move sometime,’” Codina says. “And I wanted to control my destiny. I wanted to simplify my estate, so my girls wouldn’t have to deal with a huge house, and I wanted to improve our quality of life.”

He calls it “right-sizing,” not downsizing. It’s a distinction that feels quintessentially Codina: practical, forward-looking, and faintly defiant. “We didn’t need to downsize,” he says. “We could stay where we were. But I wanted to simplify, extract the equity, and move somewhere that actually enhanced our lifestyle.”

The result of that decision stands today in the heart of Coral Gables, two blocks south of Miracle Mile on Salzedo Street: Regency Parc, a meticulously designed, technology-infused, resort-caliber residential building that reimagines what it means to age in place – and what luxury living looks like after the mansion years are over. It also reflects a growing trend, where Codina is ahead of the curve.

A Personal Solution to a Generational Question

Above: The Main Entrance and Lobby

For decades, Codina has helped shape South Florida’s skyline as one of its most influential developers. But Regency Parc, which he conceived and built through his firm Codina Partners, began as something more personal than professional: a solution to a problem he and many of his peers were quietly confronting.

“We raised four girls in that house. It’s a big place – too big,” he says. “They each had their rooms, they’re all married now, and suddenly it’s just my wife and me. You start thinking, ‘What’s next? Where do I go that still feels like home?’”

The easy answer – buy a condo – was never an option. “I’ve been on the other side,” Codina says, laughing. “I built them. I know what happens when you get the condo commandos running the board. I didn’t want that.”

That skepticism only deepened after the Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside in 2021. Codina doesn’t see that tragedy as a condemnation of condominiums themselves, but rather as a symptom of systemic problems: deferred maintenance, flawed governance, spiraling insurance costs, and aging infrastructure.

“When that building fell, it wasn’t one mistake. It was a perfect storm,” he says. “The engineer, the architect, the developer, the board – they all missed something. And now the pendulum has swung hard in the other direction. You can’t kick the can down the road anymore. You’ve got inspections, you’ve got insurance premiums doubling. The lending environment has changed. And getting people to serve on condo boards is almost impossible.”

Meanwhile, Florida’s insurance crisis has only added pressure. “It’s become a market of haves and have-nots,” he says. “The newer buildings that are elevated, with hardened glass and new roofs – they’re the haves. The older ones can’t even get [insurance] quotes.”

That’s the context in which Codina’s decision to “right-size” becomes more than a personal milestone. It’s emblematic of a national trend: affluent homeowners, many in their 60s and 70s, seeking an alternative to traditional condo ownership, one that prioritizes independence, walkability, safety, and wellness without the headaches of maintenance or association politics.

From Naples to Palo Alto, a generation of empty-nesters is trading square footage for convenience and liquidity, choosing well-managed, design-forward rentals that avoid the burdens of homeownership, such as skyrocketing insurance costs, HOA disputes (for condos), and constant maintenance. Leasing among the ultra-wealthy has more than tripled in the last five years, with more than 13,600 millionaire renters in 2025.

“There’s a generation that doesn’t want to own another asset they have to manage,” says a local broker. “They want freedom, but they don’t want to leave their community. Codina saw that before anyone else.”

The Vision: A Villa in the Sky

Regency Parc is the physical embodiment of that trend – but done with Codina’s standards in mind. “If I was going to move, it had to be an improvement,” he says. “I didn’t want to compromise.” Located just blocks from the dining and shopping amenities of downtown Gables, and steps from Codina’s own office, the building is at once a luxury residence and a personal manifesto about how design and community should intersect.

He calls its aesthetic “understated elegance” – a kind of Lake Como villa meets Coral Gables modernism. The building’s limestone façade and layered courtyards echo European residential proportions; the scale, Codina says, “makes it feel like a home, not a hotel.”

Inside, nothing is off-the-shelf. Regency Parc was “built from the inside out,” designed first around how residents would actually live, “not around what would look good on a brochure,” says Codina. Every floor plan was scrutinized for months. There are no interior columns, for example, no generic corridors, no layouts borrowed from Miami’s glassy towers. “Every unit had to feel like a home I could live in,” he says. “That was the test.”

Units range from 1,768 to 12,000-square-feet, each with spacious terraces, generous storage, and stone floors. Kitchens feature WOLF and SUB-ZERO appliances; bathrooms are organized around what Codina calls “wet rooms” – fully enclosed, serene, spa-like spaces. “I see all these glossy condos with floating tubs and nowhere to put a towel,” he says, half amused. “That’s not how people live.”

But Regency Parc’s appeal isn’t just physical comfort. It’s philosophical. Codina designed it for people like himself – longtime Coral Gables residents who want to stay rooted but live differently. “We wanted to walk to dinner, to the office, to our favorite places,” he says. “And we wanted everything on one floor. That’s quality of life.” One of the first Gableites to join him was Richard Fain, former chairman of Royal Caribbean Group, who will take the entire floor below Codina’s penthouse. “We are empty nesters, and this was an opportunity to do something different,” says Fain. “We’ve been in our existing home for 36 years and weren’t thinking of moving into an apartment. But this is not an apartment. It’s a home inside a 20-story building.”

Interior Art

The courtyard of Regency Parc will enjoy lush plantings, privacy from the outside world, an outdoor grand piano, and one monumental work of art. Unlike the sculpture being placed in front of the entrance – the golden “Power Tower,” by artist Lynda Benglis – inside the courtyard is a mammoth mural painted by South Florida artist Magnus Sodamin. Known for his expressionist-style canvases of native flora (including celebrated depictions of the Everglades), Sodamin was chosen from a pool of ten artists presented to Codina by Jessica Goldman Srebnick, founder and CEO of Goldman Global Arts, and her team.

“I’m mostly a studio artist, and I make oil paintings and sculpture, so, for me, a mural at this scale is like an extension of my studio practice, almost like a giant painting,” says Sodamin, who sketched and painted the work from scaffolding raised with pulleys and ropes. “We went back and forth on many designs and came down to the idea that this is kind of like an orchid garden,” he says, which he approached with photos of orchids, photoshop renderings, and collages.

While the work will not be visible from the street, and is essentially for the enjoyment of residents, Codina Partners is exploring the idea of art tours to Regency Parc so it can be viewed by the public.

Painting with a couple of assistants (like the High Renaissance masters did) Sodamin spent five to seven hours a day for 18 days finishing the mural. At 54 by 120-feet, “In Paradium” (Latin for “into paradise”) is the largest mural in the city.

Technology, Wellness, and “Biohacking”

If the building’s architecture is rooted in classic proportions, its infrastructure is thoroughly 21st century.

Entry is managed by facial recognition software and AI-enhanced security. Packages and deliveries have their own separate access corridor (no more FedEx drivers wandering the lobby). Regency Parc’s power grid is tied to Coral Gables’ public safety network, meaning it’s among the first zones to be restored after a hurricane. And the site itself sits outside any flood or evacuation zone, a rarity in South Florida.

“Wellness” is not just a buzzword here; it’s a building system.

Amenities include a telehealth suite where residents can connect directly with a physician; a spa with red-light therapy, infrared saunas, full-body “biohacking pods”; yoga and meditation terraces with real greenery; even a dog park and hair salon.

The planning for Regency Parc extends to the operational details, too. It has on-site staff apartments – rare in residential projects – ensuring continuity of service. Residents can valet or self-park in a custom-designed garage with gentle ramps (“no corkscrew nightmares,” Codina jokes).

For all its amenities, Regency Parc is as much a civic statement as a personal one. “I could have built 360 units on this site,” Codina says. “We built 126. Less impact on traffic, less pressure on schools, and it keeps Coral Gables people here.”

That restraint – rare in a market obsessed with density and spectacle – feels almost radical. While nearby Miami neighborhoods chase the next starchitect skyscraper, Regency Parc quietly redefines what sustainable urban luxury can look like: intimate, intelligent, and integrated into the city’s fabric. “This isn’t a place to impress people,” Codina says. “It’s a place to live.”

“You Reach a Point in Life, Where You Don’t Want More – You Just Want Better.”

Developer Armando Codina
Above: Kitchen, Dining, and Living Room Areas

At 78, Codina still speaks like a man mid-project, not post-career. When he describes the building’s courtyard or the private garden terraces for the 26 penthouse-level units, his enthusiasm sounds less like a developer’s sales pitch than a homeowner’s pride. “This building,” he says, “is what I wanted for myself, for my wife, for my family. But it turns out there are a lot of people in the same boat.”

He’s right. Nearly 90 percent of tenants committed thus far are local Coral Gables residents – neighbors who, like Codina, wanted to stay rooted while lightening their load. One of them is his daughter, Ana-Marie Codina, CEO of the development company they founded together in 2009. She and other young families have gravitated to Regency Parc. For all these residents, Regency Parc isn’t just another address. It’s the next logical evolution of the South Florida lifestyle: less about status, more about substance.

When Codina steps onto his terrace now, the view isn’t of the water, but of the city – its tree-lined streets, its historic architecture, its restaurants and offices and medical facilities just blocks away. Everything, finally, within reach. “You reach a point in life,” he says, “where you don’t want more – you just want better.”

In that sense, Regency Parc isn’t just a Coral Gables story. It’s a preview of how America’s aging elite intend to live: elegantly, efficiently, and on their own terms. Codina just happened to build the prototype for himself first.