I used to live near the Omni and would go down there with my little girl at the time. Lots of high end shops but no shoppers. It was a strange location for a mall, though.
The whole thing was bizarre. It was like a haunted house. It is on the north end of downtown Miami right on Biscayne Bay but you also have the expressway going to Miami Beach there. Weird. The area went downhill in late 1980s. I think oddly when the Feds really cracked down on drugs, Miami’s economy imploded.
There is a documentary called Cocaine Cowboys that documented Miami rise as a cocaine hub, the crime and then the financial crash caused by better enforcement.
The Omni is right next to the Miami Hearld newspaper HQ that looked out on Biscayne Bay. The Hearld appears to be cutting more and more staff. They are dead meat like most newspapers. I do not live down there but follow some of the news on the web.
The newsroom was in a Kurt Russel movie where his girlfriend gets kidnapped and he is a reporter or something. The movie was called The Mean Season.