During the last decade or so, Brickell was mostly identified with investment houses, banks and law offices housed in towers of glass and steel.
But Brickell is a community of thousands of homeowners who, for years, haven't had the kind of services and businesses that residents of South Beach and Coconut Grove enjoy.
That is changing.
Soon to arrive: More shops, services and eateries.
That's because Brickell continues to grow.
''By 2010, we expect the overall population of downtown to have doubled, and Brickell is a huge component of that,'' said Leo Zabezhinsky, economic development manager of the Downtown Development Authority.
That brings businesses wanting to cater to Brickell's expanding number of upscale residents.
''There have been about 8,000 new condos opened just in Brickell since 2004,'' Zabezhinsky said.
By now, more than 12,000 of the condos which sprouted during Miami's most recent building boom have been closed on, with thousands more to come. Many of those homes are in the Brickell neighborhood.
Sinclair ''Tory'' Jacobs, longtime president of the Brickell Homeowners Association and one the neighborhood's go-to folks, said that a sizable percentage of Miami's population can now be found living in the area's tony condos and townhomes.
''We're rather a sleeping giant,'' he said. ``But sometimes you don't really notice it because here we're arranged vertically instead of horizontally like in the suburbs.''
Those suburbs, such as Kendall, are packed with strip malls offering just about every service a resident could need.
In Brickell's expensive corridor of buildings by the bay, the growing array of merchants at Mary Brickell Village is filling the same role -- but perhaps more fashionably than what is found in most suburban neighborhoods.
Constructa, responsible for CocoWalk in Coconut Grove, broke ground on Mary Brickell Village in 2002. At the time, the company's vice president spoke of a perceived demand for businesses that support a neighborhood's needs.
Today, the open-air mall on South Miami Avenue boasts about 10 other restaurants plus a bank, a shoe-repair shop, a pharmacy, a FedEx Kinko's and a hairdresser, among many other merchants.
According to the mall's website, a supermarket, a fitness center and a cellphone store are among the new businesses about to open there.
Something that has been missing: one place where different segments of the area's population can go for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night partying any day, according to English restaurateur Prady Balan. His new Balans (pronounced BAY-luhns) location in Mary Brickell Village, is packing them in.
He already has several successful eateries in the London area and his Lincoln Road location has been going strong for 11 years.
He is also developing a site on the Upper Eastside's Miami Modern, or MiMo, district, which is undergoing a renaissance of sorts after receiving protection from the city's historic preservation department.
Balan said he is attracted to locales in up-and-coming neighborhoods and that, save for the Miami Beach restaurant, locals vastly outnumber tourists at all his locales.
''In England, I'd say that about 90 percent of our customers are local people, meaning we see them repeatedly,'' Balan added.
Zabezhinsky said Balans and other Mary Brickell Village tenants account for close to half of all new businesses opening in the area during the past few years.
''It serves the residential population that for a long time hasn't had a lifestyle center they could go to,'' he said. ``The residents used to have to go to places like Coral Gables and the Grove for places like that.
''Now, the situation has kind of reversed and Mary Brickell Village is attracting people from the Gables and the Grove to come and spend time in the Brickell community,'' he added.
