For Hispanic Heritage Month, Hola Latinos honors the developer who gave Miami its modern silhouette — and never forgot that a city is measured by more than its towers.
Stand anywhere along Biscayne Bay at dusk and you are, in some measure, looking at the work of Jorge M. Pérez. The glass towers catching the last light, the art that greets residents in their lobbies, the neighborhoods that have risen where empty lots once waited: few people have written their signature across modern Miami so legibly. Yet to call him simply a builder would be to miss the larger story. Pérez is, above all, a man who understood early that a city is made not only of concrete and steel, but of opportunity, beauty and belonging.
His own story reads like a map of the Americas. Born in Argentina to Cuban parents and raised partly in Colombia, he came to the United States to study economics, then earned a master’s degree in urban planning at the University of Michigan. It is telling that his first work in Miami was not in luxury but in affordable housing. Long before his name became synonymous with the skyline, he was building homes for working families — an origin that still anchors his legacy today.
In 1979, he cofounded Related Group with Stephen Ross, and over more than four decades he shaped it into one of the most consequential residential developers in the country. The company reports more than 100,000 residences built and managed and more than $50 billion in real estate sold, across a portfolio that ranges from landmark condominiums and rental communities to mixed-use destinations and affordable housing. In places such as the Paraiso District and SLS Lux Brickell, architecture, design and art are not ornaments; they are the very grammar of the residential experience.
The vision is far from finished. More than 20 condominium projects are now in active development, among them The St. Regis Residences, Miami; Baccarat Residences Miami; NoMad Residences Wynwood; and The Residences at Six Fisher Island. At the same time, the company’s commitment to housing endures in the redevelopment of Liberty Square and SoMi Parc — proof that the ambition that reshaped Brickell has not eclipsed the one that began in Miami’s neighborhoods. With his sons, Jon Paul and Nicholas, now in leading operational roles, the enterprise is already passing to a new generation.
Culture as a Civic Calling
If real estate gave Pérez a platform, art gave it purpose. A devoted collector and philanthropist, he is a principal benefactor of Pérez Art Museum Miami and the founder of El Espacio 23, a contemporary art space in Allapattah. In 2025, he and his wife, Darlene, gave Joan Mitchell’s monumental painting Iva to Tate Modern, honoring a conviction he has held for decades: that great art should belong to everyone. That same belief lives inside Related Group’s buildings, where significant works are part of daily life rather than sealed behind museum walls.
The honors have followed. TIME named him one of the 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America in 2005. He has received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year recognition and the Beacon Council’s 2015 Jay Malina Award, and Related Group has earned the National Building Museum Honor Award for its contributions to architecture and development.
Why We Chose Him
Hispanic Heritage Month asks us to celebrate those who carry our history forward and widen the path for others. Jorge M. Pérez has done both. He is a son of the Americas who turned a planner’s training into a city-shaping vision; a developer who has built across the entire housing spectrum, from first homes to landmark residences; and a patron who insists that culture is not a luxury but a public good. His achievements can be counted in towers, but his legacy is measured in something harder to quantify: a Miami that meets the world with confidence — and does so with an unmistakably Latin accent.
For that, Hola Latinos is proud to honor him in this Hispanic Heritage edition.
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