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Firm proposes 22-acre, mixed-use special area plan in Miami’s Little Haiti
A Miami-based company has submitted plans to the Urban Development Review Board for a large-scale, mixed-use project on 22 acres it owns in Little Haiti.
The Eastridge Special Area Plan (SAP) proposal would replace the Design Place Apartments at 5045 Northeast Second Avenue in Miami. SPV Realty owns the existing apartments, built in 1948. Kobi Karp is the architect and Kimley Horn the landscape architect.
The Miami board on Wednesday will review the application, which is requesting buildings varying in height from eight to 28 stories, 2,798 residential units, 418 hotel rooms, 283,798 square feet of commercial/retail space, 97,103 square feet of office space, 295,343 square feet of open space, 4,636 parking spaces and 231 bike parking spaces.
Plans show the project would have a farmer’s market, open green space, green facades and green roofs with public benefits of up to 25 percent of the total development. Edward Martos, an attorney at Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman, is representing the applicant, Eastside Ridge LLC. In the application, Martos said the SAP also “encourages the development of medical uses” that would complement the Jewish Health Systems campus that’s immediately west of the Design Place Apartments. The location is also a “logical site for a future transit stop,” Martos said.
Little Haiti spans about 3.5 square miles with the Design District to the south and the MiMo District to the east. The neighborhood was home to waves of Haitian immigrants fleeing poverty and oppression in the 1970s and ’80s. By the late 1990s, real estate investors like Peter Ehrlich began scouting Lemon City and Little River for deals as land prices and rents skyrocketed in South Beach.
And there are already signs of gentrification. In 2014, Panther Coffee announced it was converting a 3,000-square-foot warehouse space in Little Haiti into a combination roaster, training facility and coffee shop on the corner of Northwest 59th Terrace and Second Avenue. Last year, Conway Commercial Real Estate and Urban Atlantic Group opened MADE at the Citadel, a co-working space at 8325 Northeast Second Avenue.
Nearby, a partnership between developer Tony Cho and tech entrepreneur Bob Zangrillo recently launched plans for Magic City, a phased, $1 billion mixed-use development with studios, an innovation center, office space, retail space, workforce housing and potentially a boutique hotel. That project would be between Northeast 60th and 64th streets and from Northeast Second Avenue to the railroad tracks.