Lennar wants to build 80 homes near Naranja

Miami-based firm has 11-acre site under contract

From left: Lennar’s co-CEOs Rick Beckwitt and Jon Jaffe along with Executive Chairman Stuart Miller and an aerial view of the Naranja site on the northwest corner of Southwest 236th Street and Southwest 133rd Avenue (Getty, Google Maps, Lennar)
From left: Lennar’s co-CEOs Rick Beckwitt and Jon Jaffe along with Executive Chairman Stuart Miller and an aerial view of the Naranja site on the northwest corner of Southwest 236th Street and Southwest 133rd Avenue (Getty, Google Maps, Lennar)

Lennar wants to build 80 single-family homes near Naranja in south Miami-Dade County.

The Miami-based homebuilder has an 11-acre vacant development site on the northwest corner of Southwest 236th Street and Southwest 133rd Avenue under contract for an undisclosed amount, according to a Lennar application submitted to Miami-Dade this week. The filing seeks the county’s permission for Lennar to avail itself of a construction density bonus allotted to projects that are within half a mile of a rapid transit corridor. 

The development site is roughly a half-mile from the busway. The current land use designation of “estate density residential” only allows for up to 2.5 units per acre, but the density bonus granted to projects near transit corridors would allow up to 36 units per acre, according to the filing. 

Powerline Land, an entity that only ties to trustee Joseph Brydon, owns the land, according to records. 

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Led by co-CEOs Rick Beckwitt and Jon Jaffe, publicly traded Lennar is one of the biggest homebuilders in the U.S. Stuart Miller is executive chairman. 

It has made hefty wagers on south Miami-Dade, which has ample supply of developable land tracts fit for residential projects. The area mainly consists of the cities of Homestead and Florida City, as well as the neighborhoods of Goulds, Naranja, Princeton and Leisure City. 

Last year, Lennar submitted an application to build a 1,000-plus home development and a golf course on 350 acres at 1800 Palm Drive in Homestead’s Keys Gate complex. 

Near Pinecrest, north of the south Miami-Dade area, Lennar paid $24.5 million for a 10-acre development site at 8290 Southwest 120th Street last year. 

The firm’s projects span South Florida. Near Opa-locka, Lennar is developing a Westview single-family home and townhouse project across 90 acres on the closed Westview Country Club golf course at 2601 Northwest 119th Street. In April, Lennar sold 75 nearly completed townhouses that are part of Westview for $30 million to Redwood Dev Co, which plans to convert them to workforce housing.