Lennar, Easton Group Reveal Plan For $2B '15-Minute City' On 1,000 Acres Of Farmland
The application process for a $2B, 990-acre mixed-use development in West Kendall is underway.
The Easton Group, Lennar and Dallas-based MPKA LLC are seeking approval to build a massive mixed-use district in Miami-Dade County called City Park at West Kendall.
The “15-minute city” would incorporate nearly 8,000 residential units, 1.4M SF of retail, 500K SF of office and 526K SF of industrial space, which will target aerospace suppliers and training partners due to its proximity to the Miami Executive Airport.
“City Park sits on the only site in Miami-Dade County with the scale and connectivity needed to deliver a sustainable community of this kind, complete with the long-overdue jobs and entertainment center West Kendall has been missing,” The Easton Group founder and CEO Ed Easton said in a statement.
“It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ease traffic, shorten commutes, and leave a legacy of job growth and substantial recurring tax revenues that will benefit Miami-Dade County now and for generations to come.”
The project would be built on farmland between Southwest 136th and 152nd streets and Southwest 162nd and 177th avenues. The site is about 5 miles west of Kendall’s Country Walk and a roughly 30-mile drive to Downtown Miami.
The developers in August filed preapplications with Miami-Dade County to expand the urban development boundary by 960 acres and rezone the property to “urban development boundary planned area development district.” It will require majority approval from the county commission, the South Florida Business Journal reported.
School and civic facilities for approximately 3,800 students would be built on 20 acres, and more than 250 acres of the project will be made into parks, lakes, trails and open space.
The community's downtown district would span 144 acres. The 7,800 planned residences are divided into 4,500 townhomes, 2,200 multifamily units, 1,000 single-family homes and 975 workforce housing units — dedicated to teachers, nurses, police officers and other first responders.
“Lennar understands the critical need for housing that working families can afford, especially townhomes, which are one of the most in-demand yet undersupplied formats in the County,” Lennar Regional President Carlos Gonzalez said in a statement. “Without new communities like City Park, many middle-income families are forced to either downsize into costly high-rises or leave the County altogether.”
The developers of City Park expect the project will generate $2.3B in annual economic output at full build-out, plus create 32,000 jobs — 13,000 permanent jobs with an expected average annual salary of $75K and more than 19,000 construction jobs.
Miami-based Easton Group has largely been an industrial developer in the 51 years since Easton founded the firm, but under the leadership of his son, Eddie Easton, it has taken on increasingly complex projects.
Lennar, also based in Miami, is a Fortune 500 homebuilder, and MPKA is a Texas homebuilding consultant. The developers say they plan to alleviate traffic in the area by working on traffic patterns and reducing the need for residents of southwest Dade to commute to Downtown, Brickell, Doral and Coral Gables.
“Now that our application is filed, we look forward to working collaboratively with local neighbors, government officials and community stakeholders to fine-tune our plan and bring this vision to life,” MPKA partner Bill Abers said in a statement.
