Question about the 'Design District'?? (Miami, South Miami: lease, condos, crime)

[jessiegirl123456]

hello all,
How safe/dangerous is the Design District? I've heard the north side of Miami is still pretty dangerous; does that include the design district? Is there any website that lists Miami neighborhoods and their major attractions and things to watch out for and if there's a lot of crime or not?
Thanks!

[crisp444]

Keep with Little Havana. The Design District is not a very nice neighborhood. If you want to live in that area, I would ONLY recommend the area EAST of N. Miami Ave. where Midtown Miami shops and condos are.

[305guy]

Design district is an up-and coming neighborhood in a historically poor and high-crime area. One block can be really nice but if you go the wrong direction for 3 blocks you'll be in a bad part of town real fast. I'd look into Brickell even though it's more expensive...or South Miami.

[illini84]

Yeah, I looked into living here as well, but changed my mind after I drove through it. There are only a couple of nice blocks, but it looks pretty rough otherwise. I consider the "up-and-coming", halfway decent part of the Design District to be between NE 36th Street (northern border), NE 29th Street (southern border, but maybe not quite this far south), N. Miami Avenue (western border), and the Biscayne Bay as your eastern border. A lot of new development is happening in this part and there are some existing "big box" developments at the corner of N. Miami Ave. and NE 36th St. (Target, Marshall's, Circuit City). Go one block north of here though, and it gets pretty bad looking. Seems to be a lot of unique art galleries and other design-type stuff emerging. We'll see if it can really take off...

[Chelito23]

I would choose Little Havana over the DD anyday. Also interesting to note, the Design District has been up and coming for years now....so if you move in tomorrow, it will still be what it is today, and most likely so in a year when your lease would be up...so keep that in mind.