SobelCo wins approval for 67-unit townhouse project in Dania Beach

City commission voted to rezone the 12-acre dev site, now occupied by a house

Dania Preserve, SobelCo
Dania Preserve

SobelCo won rezoning and site plan approval for Dania Preserve, a 67-unit townhouse development in Dania Beach on a 12-acre site just west of I-95.

The Dania Beach City Commission voted Tuesday to rezone the development site, which currently has one house, at Southwest 31st Avenue and Griffin Road, from “estate residential” (E-1) to “residential multifamily” (RM).

The site plan for Dania Preserve shows 12 townhouse buildings with four to six units per building, a 2,360-square-foot clubhouse, and a 3,774-square-foot swimming pool deck, all wrapped around a lake at the center of the property. The townhouses will be for sale.

The commission awarded seven “flexibility” townhouse units to SobelCo for Dania Preserve, boosting the total number planned to 67 units. The land-use designation (L5) for the 12-acre site limits its residential density to 60 dwellings, or five per acre.

Dania Beach commissioners also approved two variances from zoning regulations for Dania Preserve. One allows buildings with a maximum length of 159 feet, or 9 feet more than the zoning limit. The other eliminates a requirement to build a sidewalk along Southwest 31st Avenue.

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SobelCo also agreed to install two speed bumps and two speed warning lights on a section of Southwest 31st Avenue on the west side of the Dania Preserve site. “There’s a lot of speeding going on along 31st Avenue,” Dennis Mele, an attorney for SobelCo, said at the commission meeting.

John Schaaf, who owns the development site at 4900 Southwest 31st Avenue in Dania Beach, applied to the city to rezone his one-house property.

Boca Raton-based SobelCo, led by owner and President Jeffrey Sobel, applied not only for the allocation of flexibility units, but also for approval of a related plat proposal that the commission approved.

Over the course of multiple appearances this year before the Dania Beach City Commission, SobelCo reduced its request for flexibility units from 16 to 15 to seven. The developer also enlarged its design of the property’s lake from 2 acres to 2.3 acres and increased the pervious portion of the site to 52 percent.

Dania Beach Vice Mayor Marco Salvino cast the sole no votes against the rezoning and site plan. Salvino said the townhouse development is too dense, and that he would have voted for a plan to build a dozen single-family homes there, instead.