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MIAMI - One of the city's recent hot parties happened under a tent at 1060 Brickell Ave. to celebrate a sleek new debutante.

The guests were young, beautiful and well-dressed. The menu was carb-heavy pasta. Bartenders served white cosmopolitans.

The guest of honor was still on the drawing boards.

The soiree was thrown to generate interest in the Avenue, a 35-story, 570-unit condominium scheduled to be completed in 2007.

Even with spa services, Euro-style cabinetwork and a wine and cigar lounge, the Avenue has to find a way to stand out among the roughly 70 condominium projects that have been built, are under construction or are in the planning stages in downtown Miami.

While Miami Beach is a constant party, downtown Miami is like most other Sunbelt cities: a place for people to work. After 6 p.m., people head to the beach or Coral Gables for nightlife, or home to the suburbs.

But downtown Miami seems poised to be the place city planners have wanted for years: a place to live, work and play.

If all goes as planned, about 55,000 condominium units will be built in the city in the next 10 years at an investment of $9.9-billion; the majority are in the downtown area, although other high-rise projects are sprinkled throughout other neighborhoods. And they aren't cheap: Most units, even 700-square-foot studios, start at $200,000 and go dramatically higher.

Take the Miami Four Seasons Residences, for instance. Built in 2003, it features one- to four-bedroom homes. At 70 stories tall, it is the tallest building in Florida. Price for one unit: $695,000 to $6.2-million.

Yet many of the condo buildings haven't been built, like 1390 Brickell Bay, whose design was finished just this month. Groundbreaking on the $150-million tower in the financial district is expected sometime in early 2005 - yet developers tell Multi Housing News, an Internet trade newsletter, that the building is already 75 percent sold.

Almost every luxury-style building offers high ceilings, granite counter tops and stunning views. Others come with ground floor shops, movie theaters and health clubs. The developers are marketing the condos like fashionable clubs - most have one word names such as "Cite," or "Platinum," and all offer the fantasy of a car-free, hip, urban lifestyle.

City officials and prospective buyers say downtown living has its advantages: Residents are closer to Florida's financial and cultural hub, where international banks are rubbing elbows with a new performing arts center, which is also under construction.

Buyers are selecting units and making down payments before they are even built.

"It's totally unprecedented," said Luciana Lamardo, Miami's special projects coordinator. "Downtown is just exploding with development."

Downtown living is nothing new in cities such as Boston, New York and San Francisco. Florida is only now beginning to rediscover urban living.

Billboards on Interstate 275 in Tampa advertise a downtown condo called Grand Central, while St. Petersburg showcases pricy penthouses near the yacht club. Orlando has its own crop of high-rise projects near Church Street Station, and Jacksonville is trying to draw residents to its downtown river area.

But no Florida city has experienced the condo craze like Miami.

Long a no-man's-land of vacant buildings, weed-strewn lots and sleeping homeless, downtown Miami is undergoing a renaissance.

Turn onto almost any major street - Brickell Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard, for example - and a maze of cranes greets the eye. Dump trucks and men in hard hats swarm near the Miami River in the heart of downtown. Empty lots are surrounded by colorful banners advertising the new condos - with photos of leggy models in swank apartments, gazing at a million-dollar view of Biscayne Bay.

The buildings wind around the Bay, populate Brickell Key and stretch toward Coral Gables. Many are near the People Mover, an elevated subway. Almost all are high-rise apartments, and the choice units have water and city views.

There have always been high-rises in downtown, just not this many. And the high price of real estate, combined with skyrocketing construction costs, is gentrifying the traditionally working class neighborhoods of Little Haiti, Overtown and Liberty City.

To be sure, development is booming throughout Miami-Dade, because the population is growing.

But Miami Beach, long the haven of the rich, is nearly built out. Single-family homes are going up as far away as Homestead - more than an hour's commute to downtown - and some people are leaving Miami for Broward County. But for many who are sick of commutes, can't afford a big, single-family home or want to live a more urban lifestyle, downtown Miami is suddenly the best option.

"You cannot get a single family house in a good neighborhood for under $500,000," said broker Susan Kasen of EWM Realtors in Coral Gables. Although she notes that younger couples just can't afford the homes, she has also sold several pricey condos recently - almost all to out-of-staters who want a vacation pad.

But even local officials are stunned by the rapid pace of development - and the cost of the condos, which can fetch millions.

"Who's buying these things?" wondered Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, who says the new buildings in the city are a boon for the county because the new residents will eat at local restaurants and shop at local malls. "I didn't know there were people with so much money."

Some of the buyers, real estate experts say, are rich Central and South Americans; a recent survey by the Downtown Development Authority in Miami showed that 21 percent of all people moving to the area are from another country.

"There's a tremendous amount of flight capitol coming out of South America, looking for a safe haven," said Brad Hunter, the South Florida director of Metrostudy, which tracks housing demand in U.S. markets. "It's a logical place to put their money."

Charles Intriago, a money laundering expert and former prosecutor who runs Global Media Alert, a Miami consulting firm, says some of the investment in Miami real estate is not on the up-and-up.

"There's at least $10-billion to $15-billion in corruption proceeds sitting in Miami real estate and private banking accounts," asserts Intriago.

He cites the case of Byron Jerez, a former Nicaraguan tax commissioner who allegedly embezzled money from his home country, then bought a $4-million condo in Key Biscayne. A U.S. federal judge ordered Jerez to forfeit the condo because it was purchased with cash that was subject to U.S. money laundering laws.

But the majority of buyers aren't so nefarious. Many are retirees, or lawyers who work downtown. Others are brokers or investors trying to make money in the red-hot market.

"Some of the wealthiest people in the world have migrated here and are buying and investing in real estate," said Hank Rodstein, a mortgage broker and owner of Miami's HR Mortgage.

Metrostudy's Hunter and others wonder whether there will be a condo glut in the coming years, similar to the 1980s, when speculators helped fuel a boom of construction along Brickell Avenue.

"That's the $64-million dollar question," said Hunter. "If all of the 55,000 were to come on at the same time, it would be a bloodbath."

During the 1980s, more than 15,000 condos went unsold when Miami's housing market crashed.

Hunter said it is now up to bankers to be the "custodians" of the housing market.

"They're the ones that will either keep the money flowing . . . or they will, at a point, draw the line and say that's enough," he said. "I think so far, some banks have already drawn that line. They're looking on a case by case basis and putting each deal under more scrutiny than before."

Miami's Lamardo doesn't see an end to the boom.

"There's a lot of speculation, I've been to conferences from the Urban Land Institute that talk about there being a drop," she said. "There's no signs of drop."

Yet Hunter points to another downside to all of this redevelopment.

"Working-class people can't afford these condos," he said. "I think affordability is going to become more and more of a problem - it's difficult for somebody making the median income to afford the median new home price."

For years, Miami was the nation's poorest city, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2003, it dropped to the fifth poorest, which means that about 27 percent of its residents live below the poverty level, set at $18,400 annually for a family of four.

Even now, in the shadow of the construction, homeless people sleep on the sidewalks and line streets waiting for free meals at feeding stations.

Tony Villamil, a Miami economist and CEO of the Washington Economics Group in Coral Gables, says that while there are pockets of poverty in Miami, the statistics belie the fact that people are "moving up" and acquiring skills to lift them over the poverty line.

Those folks are moving to Little Havana, where there is an increase in affordable housing, he said.

"The county here is doing very well," said Villamil. "That's reflected by the people that are coming here."

Activists and advocates for the working poor are becoming increasingly worried.

"We're very concerned about how the spiraling prices are going to affect low income people who have called Miami home for a number of years," said Max Rameau, a Miami activist. "They're all getting priced out of this boom."

Rameau says property values are rising in traditionally low income parts of the city - his home in Liberty City has nearly doubled in value in two years - and landlords are raising rents. Families are forced to live with other families to survive, he said, and others are subjected to long commutes.

And it's not just the poor who are suffering. Rameau says Miami's middle class is shrinking as the super rich move in.

Mary Nesbitt, a 62-year-old on disability who lives in a $185-a-month subsidized apartment, recently took in her niece, and her niece's five children.

"She was paying about $450 for a one bedroom," said Nesbitt. "She wasn't able to pay her rent and was evicted."

Because of federal housing rules, Nesbitt's niece was only allowed to stay with her for two weeks. Recently, her niece found an apartment at $500 a month, but Nesbitt worries she won't be able to afford it - after all, the young woman works at Burger King.

"I came to Miami in 1969," said Nesbitt. "It was an affordable place to live then.

"Now, it's not like that anymore."

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Tamara Lush can be reached at 727-893-8612 or at lush@sptimes.com