A key city approval advanced the development of Gateway Luxury Apartments, a 128-unit, mixed-income multifamily complex planned for Pompano Beach.
The Pompano Beach City Commission last week approved an allocation of 19 “flexibility units” for moderate-income tenants that will allow development of the apartment complex on a commercially zoned site. The 4.2-acre site at 950 North Powerline Road is in the city’s general business (B-3) zone.
The 19 flexibility, or flex, units qualified Gateway Luxury Apartments for a total of 128 units, including 114 bonus units with market-rate rents, because of a new Broward County policy to encourage affordable housing development.
Under the policy, each housing unit set aside for tenants with moderate income by a 30-year deed restriction can qualify a developer for a maximum of six bonus housing units, according to an Oct. 26 report by the staff of the Pompano Beach Planning and Zoning Board. Gateway Luxury Apartments qualified for a maximum total of 133 units, but the applicant proposed a total of only 128, the report said.
Jean Dolan, principal planner of Pompano Beach, told commissioners last week that Gateway Luxury Apartments will be the first mixed-income multifamily development in the city to take advantage of the new county policy. “This project is the first one to take the county up on that,” she said.
The city commission agreed to allocate the 19 flex units to the project after the Pompano Beach Planning & Zoning Board recommended approval of the allocation on Oct. 26. The allocation trimmed the number of unallocated flex units in Pompano Beach from 420 to 401.
Gateway Luxury Apartments is designed as a three-story, four-building apartment complex with 60 one-bedroom apartments, 62 two-bedrooms, and six three-bedrooms, according to a report by civil engineering firm Keith.
Keith filed the application for flex units on behalf of US Gateway Investments LLC, which owns the development site on Powerline Road. Mehmet Olcar and Husnu Olcar are listed as managers of Pompano Beach-based US Gateway Investments, according to state records.
Moderate income is defined as 80 percent to 120 percent of area median income in Broward County under the county’s new affordable housing policy. Median household income is about $61,000 a year in Broward, according to Census Bureau data.