Kimco Proposes Apartments at Kendall’s Palms at Town and Country

Kimco Realty wants to redevelop a portion of Kendall’s Palms at Town and Country, adding 630 apartments, amid the trend of repurposing South Florida shopping plazas into multifamily projects.

The Jericho, New York-based real estate investment trust proposes a pair of 12-story apartment buildings with retail on the site of a Kohl’s-leased building at 11800 Mills Drive, according to Kimco’s application filed to Miami-Dade County last month. Palms at Town and Country is in an unincorporated area on the northeast corner of Southwest 88th Street and the turnpike.

Kimco plans one building with 269 units and nearly 13,000 square feet of retail, and the second building with 361 units and nearly 22,000 square feet of retail. Apartments will range from studios to three-bedroom units.

First, Kimco would replace the Kohl’s building with a new structure proposed for a parking lot owned by Kimco on the north side of Mills Drive, filings show.

The developer is asking for a pre-application meeting with Miami-Dade officials, which would allow it to get county departments’ insight on the proposed zoning change before filing an official application.

Kimco owns the majority of Palms at Town and Country, acquiring the property in 2021 when former plaza owner Weingarten Realty Investors merged into Kimco. The existing Kohl’s building and the parking lot for the new retail building span roughly 7 acres, according to property records.

Led by Conor Flynn, publicly traded Kimco focuses on open-air shopping centers, and has been growing its pipeline of mixed-use developments. In Dania Beach, Kimco was the lead developer of Dania Pointe, which includes 1 million square feet of retail and restaurants, as well as apartments, hotels and offices east of the I-95 and south of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Kimco’s retail portfolio consists of 528 properties nationwide, spanning 90 million square feet, according to its website.

Across South Florida, developers are repurposing shopping plazas into multifamily projects, in a push to breathe life into aging retail centers by adding foot traffic from renters. Like Kimco, many are preserving the existing retail space.

Miami-based Terra, led by David Martin, is developing a seven-building apartment complex with roughly 1,200 units behind the Central Shopping Plaza at 3825 Northwest Seventh Street in Miami’s Flagami neighborhood. The existing shopping center will remain.