AI-Powered Private School Opens Miami Beach Campus

• Alpha School paid $19 million for the former Le Petit Papillon Montessori campus at 997 and 1021 Biarritz Drive and 6946 and 6915 Rue Versailles in Normandy Isles.
• The 1.06-acre, 16,779-square-foot site works out to roughly $1,132 per square foot and about $17.9 million per acre.
• The K-8 campus opens for the 2026-27 school year at $65,000 a year, among the highest tuitions in Miami-Dade.

The Deal

Alpha School 33141 LLC, signed for by Andrew Prince, closed on the three-building Normandy Isles campus on June 23, buying it from Le Petit Papillon Montessori Corp, represented by longtime owner Damarys Corso. The property spans four parcels totaling 1.06 acres and 16,779 square feet, most of it dating to the 1930s and 1940s, and has operated as a Montessori school since 1999. It comes with a pool, a koi pond, a playground, and outdoor classrooms, and can hold up to 250 students. Alpha plans no redevelopment. It is taking the campus as-is for its K-8 model, which pairs roughly two hours a day of AI-driven core academics with adult "guides" who run afternoon workshops on leadership, entrepreneurship, financial literacy and public speaking.

Why It Traded

Papillon's exit followed financial strain. Miami-based Terrabank filed a $4.48 million foreclosure suit against the school and Corso as guarantor in January 2025, and the campus later hit the market through Alpha Commercial with an asking price near $26.5 million, pitched partly on its redevelopment zoning. The $19 million sale keeps the site in educational use instead.

At $65,000 a year, Alpha Miami Beach undercuts nothing in the market: Ransom Everglades runs about $54,300 and Gulliver Prep about $56,000, putting Alpha's new campus ahead of both. Backing the price tag is Joe Liemandt, the Trilogy Software and ESW Capital founder who has committed $1 billion to build out Alpha's AI-tutoring platform, Timeback. The Miami Beach campus is one of roughly a dozen Alpha campuses opening through 2026-27 across Florida, New York, California, Illinois and elsewhere, adding to existing locations in Austin, Manhattan and Miami.

What's Next

Alpha Miami Beach is scheduled to welcome students in August. The model has drawn national scrutiny over academic verification, student monitoring, and data practices, criticism that Alpha disputes. For Normandy Isles, the near-term story is simpler: a shuttered Montessori campus gets a well-capitalized operator and a fall reopening instead of a redevelopment fight.