Coconut Grove. Design District. Upper Eastside. Shenandoah. Coral Gate. From the bay to the boulevard — OGC designs and builds across Miami’s most distinctive residential neighborhoods.
In Miami, the conventional path looks like this: hire an architect, wait months for plans, shop those plans to contractors, pick the lowest bid, and hope it all works out.
The architect doesn’t know what things cost to build. The contractor doesn’t care what the architect intended. And you’re stuck in the middle managing two teams who never talk to each other.
OGC is a design-build firm. We design your project and build it. One team. One contract. One point of accountability from the first sketch through the final walk-through.
When the City of Miami rejects a design element — and on complex projects, they will — a conventional contractor calls the architect and waits. OGC owns the problem. We sit down with the reviewer, understand what’s required, and redesign the solution ourselves. No finger-pointing. No change order for “architect revisions.” No delay while two separate companies figure out whose responsibility it is.
This is the Master Builder model — unified design and construction authority. It’s how homes were built for centuries before the industry fragmented. We brought it back because your family’s home is too important to build any other way.
When people learn that OGC offers full design-build, they’re surprised. Most builders don’t. That’s exactly the point.
The City of Miami is a single jurisdiction with its own building department, its own permitting process, and its own review timelines. Whether your home is in Coconut Grove, the Design District, Coral Gate, the Upper Eastside, or Shenandoah, your permits go through the same office at Miami Riverside Center on SW 2nd Avenue.
Coconut Grove has bayfront estates on acre lots with protected tree canopy.
The Design District has some of the most valuable single-family homes in Miami.
The Upper Eastside has early-century homes with character that newer construction can’t replicate.
Shenandoah and Silver Bluff are full of mid-century homes on residential streets where families have lived for generations.
And Coral Gate has some of the strictest zoning requirements in the entire city.
OGC has built across this map. Residential additions, full rebuilds, and total property transformations south of the river. Commercial build-outs on NE 79th Street. Pre-construction throughout the city. We know the building department, we know the three departments that control your timeline, and we know what each neighborhood demands.
Beyond the building department itself, three City of Miami departments review your project before a permit is issued. Each one can slow your timeline by weeks if your design team doesn’t know what they’re looking for. OGC designs with all three in mind from day one.
Flood wants to make sure that all rainwater and drainage occurring on your property stays on your property. On every project, they require a drainage plan showing how stormwater will be managed.
In many cases, the Flood department will require you to design a solution — a berm or a swale along the perimeter of the property — to prove that stormwater is being retained within your lot and not draining onto neighboring properties or public right-of-way.
A design team that doesn’t anticipate Flood requirements submits plans that get rejected on first review. A builder who knows what Flood is looking for designs the drainage solution into the project from day one.
Planning and Zoning reviews every project for compliance with the city’s land use regulations. On residential projects, they focus heavily on the frontage — the first 20 feet of your property from the street.
Within that frontage zone, your driveway is typically limited to approximately 400 square feet. You must maintain a minimum green space area. Side setbacks require at least 5 feet of clearance from your property line to the edge of the driveway.
But here’s what most people don’t know: different Miami neighborhoods have dramatically different zoning requirements. Some neighborhoods — like Coral Gate and Coconut Grove — have restrictions buried deep in the zoning code that are far stricter than the general city requirements. A design that passes in one neighborhood can be rejected outright in another.
OGC researches the specific zoning district for your property before we begin design. We don’t submit plans based on general assumptions — we submit plans based on what YOUR neighborhood requires.
Any City of Miami project valued over $100,000 triggers a Public Works review. Since OGC’s average City of Miami project falls between $600,000 and $1.5 million, this applies to every project we do.
Public Works will inspect the condition of four things in front of your property: the roadway, the driveway approach (where you pull in from the street), the swale, and the sidewalk.
If any of these are damaged — and on older properties, they usually are — Public Works will require you to repair or replace them before your certificate of occupancy is issued. This can mean milling and resurfacing the roadway in front of your home, installing new sidewalks, or obtaining a sidewalk modification form. You may also need a separate permit to close the roadway during construction.
Public Works works hand in hand with the Zoning department. Together, they have the authority to require improvements to your property’s street-facing infrastructure as a condition of your building permit.
Most homeowners have no idea this is coming until it shows up as an unexpected cost and timeline item.
OGC anticipates Public Works requirements and budgets for them in the Concept Design phase — so there are no surprises.
Carlos and Nick’s home sits in the Coral Gate neighborhood — a small pocket of roughly 200–300 homes within the City of Miami that carries some of the strictest zoning regulations in the entire city.
The guidelines are buried deep in the zoning code, in an incredibly small section near the end of the book. The city is intentionally preserving Coral Gate as a strict single-family neighborhood.
When OGC originally submitted plans for the project, we proposed a gazebo structure in the rear yard. The city rejected it.
A conventional contractor would have told Carlos and Nick to go back to their architect and pay for revisions. But OGC is the design team. So Miguel scheduled a meeting directly with the zoning planner and the zoning department manager to understand exactly what Coral Gate’s guidelines would allow.
The solution: instead of a freestanding gazebo, OGC redesigned the structure as a canopy — structurally connected to the home.
Under City of Miami zoning rules, a structure attached to the home is permitted to encroach 10 feet into the 20-foot rear setback. A freestanding gazebo is not.
The result was better than the original design.
The canopy is built with steel columns and an open roof system, clad in architectural wood. Because it’s open on all sides, it created more outdoor square footage than the original gazebo would have. Instead of a steel column for the rear wall, OGC designed a structurally load-bearing masonry wall that houses an outdoor TV and integrated storage.
The family now has a direct sightline from the moment they walk through their front door, through the center of the pool, to that rear canopy with the summer kitchen. It’s one continuous living experience from the street to the back fence.
That’s what design-build means. When the city said no, OGC didn’t pass the problem to someone else. We sat down with the city, understood the rules, and designed something better.
A 1,000-square-foot addition and complete home redesign for a growing family in Miami’s Design District. Full design-build: OGC handled the architecture, engineering, permitting, and construction.
The Design District is one of the most valuable single-family home markets in Miami — surrounded by galleries, luxury retail, and some of the most architecturally distinctive properties in the city.
A second-story addition and first-floor redesign currently in pre-construction. Plans are being prepared for City of Miami submission.
This project adds to OGC’s active presence in the city and demonstrates the structural work — vertical additions to existing homes — that requires builder expertise at the design table from day one.
A complete rebuild in Coral Gate — 85% of the existing home demolished, two exterior walls retained. New tie-beam construction increasing ceiling heights to 10 feet throughout. A practically custom home combined with a Total Property Transformation: new driveway, landscaping, pool, and the canopy structure that emerged from the zoning story above.
This project represents the full range of what OGC delivers: structural demolition and rebuild, custom interior design, unified exterior transformation, and the design-build problem-solving to navigate one of Miami’s strictest zoning districts — all under one contract.
Originally built as WabiSabi, a Japanese restaurant, and now operating as Midorie 79th. OGC completed the full build-out of this restaurant space — one of the first projects that brought OGC into the City of Miami market.
A large commercial retrofit for one of Miami’s most recognized independent sneaker and fashion retailers. OGC completed the build-out of their flagship location on NE 79th Street.
shoegallerymiami.comCoconut Grove is the oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood in Miami — and today it’s the city’s most expensive. Bayfront estates on acre-plus lots. Protected tree canopy that shapes what you can build and where. A character that blends historic charm with some of the most ambitious new residential construction in South Florida.
The families who live in the Grove chose it for a reason. The homes range from historic Mediterranean estates to mid-century waterfront properties to contemporary new builds. What they share is an expectation: whatever is built here needs to honor the neighborhood’s character while meeting the family’s vision for how they actually want to live.
Whether you’re expanding a waterfront estate, adding a guest house on a canopy lot, or transforming an entire property with pool, outdoor living, and unified landscaping — the process starts with a conversation about your vision and your lot.
From the Design District to Shenandoah, we engineer and build the additions and custom homes that define Miami's most distinctive residential neighborhoods.
Second-story additions. Master suites. Full-home remodels. OGC’s most common service in the City of Miami. Full design-build: we design it, we permit it, we build it.
For properties where the existing home has reached its limit — Carlos & Nick’s Coral Gate project is a full rebuild that retained only two exterior walls. OGC designs and builds custom homes under 5,000 square feet with City of Miami permitting managed end-to-end.
Pool. Canopy. Summer kitchen. Driveway. Landscaping. Carlos & Nick’s project includes a complete Total Property Transformation alongside the rebuild. Especially relevant for Coconut Grove’s larger lots where the property is as important as the home.
Flood. Zoning. Public Works. Three departments, three sets of requirements, and three opportunities for your project to stall if your builder doesn’t know how to navigate them.
OGC designs and builds with all three in mind from day one. No surprises. No rejections we didn’t see coming. No costs we didn’t budget for.
Book a Concept Design Consultation with Miguel. One conversation about your property, your vision, and how OGC can bring it to life in the City of Miami.
Or call directly: (305) 968-1739
Building a luxury home in South Florida is complex. We've condensed 15+ years of engineering secrets into one essential checklist.
At Ozzy’s Golden Construction, excellence is our foundation. With 15 years of experience in luxury home building, we focus on each project’s technical mastery and design, ensuring meticulous, custom homes and renovations in South Florida. We specialize in creating legacies, offering exceptional quality and personal service by limiting our portfolio to select projects each year.
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