Developer switches office park plan in Pembroke Pines to mixed-use apartment project

Commission rezoned the 25-acre site from commercial to mixed-use development

TPA's J Bradford Smith with conceptual site plan for Edison Pembroke (TPA,Nelson)
TPA's J Bradford Smith with conceptual site plan for Edison Pembroke (TPA,Nelson)

TPA Group plans to build a mixed-use project with 350 rental apartments around its ongoing office development in Pembroke Pines.

City commissioners voted Wednesday to rezone the 25-acre Edison Pembroke development site between I-75 and 145th Avenue just south of the Shops at Pembroke Gardens.

Atlanta-based TPA Group has built a three-story, 165,000-square-foot office building on part of the assemblage, which is mostly surface parking lots. TPA has site plan approval to develop another office building of the same size next to the existing one.

Dennis Mele, an attorney for the developer, said at an April 28 meeting that the developer is in permitting for the second office building and also plans a hotel.

The developer of the Shops at Pembroke Gardens, Duke Realty, previously owned the 25 acres as part of a larger, 35-acre site where the Indianapolis-based company built only one of four office buildings it had planned for a commercial development called Pembroke Pointe. Duke Realty sold the 25 acres to TPA about five years ago for $12.2 million, records show.

TPA planned to build a cluster of office buildings on the site before switching to a two-phase, mixed-use project.

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The first phase of Edison Pembroke would include all 350 rental apartments and two 165,000-square-foot office buildings. The second phase would add 125 hotel rooms, a 5,000-square-foot bank with a drive-thru, and another 30,000 square feet of office space.

The Pembroke Pines City Commission approved ordinances on second and final reading Wednesday to reduce the size of the Pembroke Pointe Planned Commercial Development from 35 acres to 10 acres and to rezone the remaining 25 acres from commercial to mixed-use development.

Commissioners also approved mixed-use development design guidelines for Edison Pembroke that include an 80-foot limit on building height and at least two parking spaces per residential unit.

Based on comments by city commissioners at their May 18 meeting, TPA amended the design guidelines for Edison Pembroke by tripling the number of electric car charging stations from four to 12, adding exercise stations along a recreational path, and increasing the ratio of parking spaces to apartments to match the ratio at the nearby Altis apartment building.

Edison Pembroke would complete a series of real estate developments along 145th Avenue south of the Shops at Pembroke Gardens.

The Edison Pembroke site “is the last piece of property along the 145th Avenue corridor between Pines Boulevard and Pembroke Road that isn’t fully developed,” Henry Rose, a member of the city’s planning and zoning board, said at its April 28 meeting.