Doral on verge of development frenzy

City of Doral and Nathan Kogon
City of Doral and Nathan Kogon

The fledgling city of Doral, which became an independent municipality just 11 years ago, approved a slew of new residential and commercial developments to accommodate its growing population.

Developers of a whopping 12,000 residential units, 2 million square feet of new office space and 500,000 square feet of retail space received the green light to start construction, according to Miami Today.

Mixed-use development will be concentrated downtown, while industrial and commercial tenants will mostly flock to developments to the south and east. A Boston-based auto insurer, for example, recently took 31,000 square feet of office space at 8550 Northwest 33rd Street in southern Doral.

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Nathan Kogon, the director of planning and zoning for the city, compared Doral’s rapid development to that of nearby Coral Gables. Doral increased its tax base with residential and commercial construction while lowering the tax rate, and it still collected about $18.2 million in property taxes last year.

“We have the ability to keep it low … we have such a great amount of commercial and industrial property,” Kogon told Miami Today.

The city also doubled it’s assessed property value in the last decade, from $4.9 billion to $8.4 billion. That value could rise to $12 billion in another decade or so, according to projections. [Miami Today] Angela Hunt