Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Bal Harbour, FL

Bal Harbour is a village in Miami-Dade County at the northern tip of the Miami Beach barrier island, running from Biscayne Bay to the Atlantic Ocean, with Baker's Haulover Inlet at its northern end and Surfside to its south.

The name Bal Harbour was invented for a village that stretches from the bay to the ocean — the community was first called Bay Harbour, but planners coined 'Bal' by taking the 'b' from 'bay' and the 'al' from 'Atlantic.'

Bal Harbour was incorporated on August 14, 1946, and then reincorporated as the Village of Bal Harbour under its own charter on June 16, 1947.

During World War II, developer Robert C. Graham rented the land to the U.S. Air Corps for just one dollar per year; the oceanfront served as a rifle range, and a prisoner-of-war camp stood on the site where Bal Harbour Shops stands today.

To qualify for incorporation in 1946, Graham moved 25 families into the Air Corps barracks he had converted into apartments, because a new municipality needed at least 25 male registered voters living in the area.

Bal Harbour was the first planned community in Florida to have all of its utilities placed underground.

Bal Harbour had a population of 3,093 at the 2020 census, up 23.1% from 2,513 in 2010, with residents living in 1,521 households.

More than half of Bal Harbour's homes sit empty much of the year — 56.6% of its 3,507 housing units were vacant in the 2020 census, reflecting the village's many second and seasonal residences.

Bal Harbour Shops, an open-air luxury mall of roughly 100 boutiques anchored by Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, opened in 1965 under Whitman family developer Stanley Whitman, himself one of the village's incorporators; the village's own financial report notes the Shops has ranked first in the United States for decades in sales per square foot.

The St. Regis Bal Harbour resort stands where the Hotel Americana opened in 1956 — the old hotel, later a Sheraton, was imploded on November 18, 2007, to make way for the current development.