A developer landed preliminary approval for a 287-unit apartment project at the Park at Broken Sound in Boca Raton, following a year of record apartment construction in South Florida.
Mutual of America Life Insurance Company plans a seven-story building with 2,000 square feet of retail at 1150 Northwest Broken Sound Parkway, according to an application submitted to the city last week. The Park at Broken Sound is a 700-acre commercial and residential campus.
Of the 287 apartments, 29 will be at affordable rents and 15 will be at workforce rents.
The Boca Raton Planning and Zoning Board approved the project at its meeting last week. Next, the project is headed to a vote by the city council at a yet unscheduled meeting.
New York-based Mutual of America owns the 11.7-acre site, which now is home to a two-story office building where the firm has an office.
The project, called Mutual of America Residential, is part of the insurer’s larger redevelopment of the property. The plan is for the apartment building to rise on the west side of the site, and for a seven-story, 158,000-square-foot office building and a six-story garage to be built on the remainder of the site and replace the existing office building, according to the application. The seven-story office building is already approved, and Mutual of America has applied for a building permit.
The proposal comes on the heels of record multifamily construction in South Florida, which has saturated the tri-county region with apartments and pushed some landlords to give concessions. As of last June, Berkadia estimated that a record of nearly 24,000 units would be completed by year-end, a portion of the nearly 35,000 apartments under construction at the time.
Developers jumped on building multifamily after an influx of residents from late 2020 through 2022 led to unprecedented demand and rent hikes. Now, as construction continues, the demand has waned and fewer out-of-staters are moving to South Florida.
Proposals for new projects continue to abound across South Florida, though some of these projects won’t get built until the new supply is absorbed and demand catches up, developers have said.
Also in Boca Raton, Arnaud Karsenti’s 13th Floor Investments plans a 340-unit apartment building at the city’s Tri-Rail station at 680 West Yamato Road. A partnership among the Pérez family’s Related Group, the Toledano family’s BH Group and Pebb Enterprises scored preliminary approval from the Boca Raton planning board for an eight-story, 500-unit apartment building that will replace an office building at the Office Depot campus at at 6600 North Military Trail. The project also will have 43,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, as well as a 36,400-square-foot gym.