Hialeah makeover focuses on arts district, transit hubs, big bet on Factory Town, and much more
Bit by bit, the snarl of aging warehouses, train tracks and potholed streets that make up east Hialeah’s old industrial districts are seeing something novel: new buildings mixing housing and shops, plans for new public spaces and a bike trail beneath the elevated Metrorail lines, and even an unusual music and entertainment district in a vast old mattress factory called Factory Town that’s generating considerable buzz.
The new development, already under way or in the planning stages, clusters around the industrial corridors’ two Tri-Rail stations, one of which, known as the Hialeah Transfer Station, connects to Metrorail. Between the two, there’s the rising Leah Arts district and Miami developer Avra Jain’s ambitious plan for Factory Town. There’s even a Freebee shuttle running between the Transfer Station, Hialeah city hall and the Leah district.
READ MORE: Read all about Factory Town, a music, arts and food venue
READ MORE: Miami developer Avra Jain preserving Hialeah’s history
The reappraisal of east Hialeah taps into the city’s history and its characteristically funky mix of utilitarian, everyday architecture. The four-block Leah Arts District includes many of the once-legendary factorias where squads of Cuban exile seamstresses manufactured clothing in the 1960s and 1970s for Jewish owners, who had established textile businesses in the city after World War II.
The city has growing demand for housing and soaring home prices and rents. That has forced first-time homebuyers to look beyond the city’s Hialeah’s borders to Brownsville and also historically Black Liberty City, where developers have been rehabbing aging ranch houses as starter homes.
That demand has spurred developments mixing apartments and commercial uses west of the old industrial corridor, in the city’s historic heart.
Those include a 29-unit garden-style apartment building on West 69th Street from Boschetti Realty Group. Near the city’s downtown, off Okeechobee Road, developer Shoma is building a complex with 304 apartments and its own food hall on the site of a former strip mall. By the famed but dormant Hialeah Race Track and the Hialeah Metrorail Station, Station 21 Lofts will offer 90 workforce housing units in three low-rise buildings.
Until recently, east Hialeah was considered a sketchy prospect at best.
Perceptions began to change with the establishment of the compact Leah Arts District around that time. Warehouses were painted with colorful street murals, a la early days of Wynwood. Though the district remains largely an industrial section, several artists work in studios in old warehouse spaces, and the district’s first art gallery is opening soon.
Today, the district is anchored by the hip Unbranded Brewing, a vast microbrewery that opened a tasting room and restaurant in February 2020. The Kush Hospitality Group, known for Lokal in Coconut Grove and its Kush by Lokal in Wynwood, took over Stephen’s, an old-fashioned 1954 Jewish deli, one of the last remaining in Miami-Dade, and added a few Hialeah-centric touches and a craft cocktail bar in the back. Thrift stores in the district are an added attraction.
With a state transportation grant, The city established a Freebee shuttle service linking the arts district to Hialeah City Hall and the Metrorail/Tri Rail station, where several redevelopment projects are under construction or in the planning stage.
Redevelopment projects and plans around the Transfer Station include:
* Metroparc, a 10-story complex with 433 apartments and ground-floor retail by Coral Gables-based MG Developer, better known for its luxurious townhouses in the City Beautiful. Amenities are more akin to a new building in Wynwood, including a co-working space and a shared, open-air kitchen. Completion is expected in spring of 2024.
* Two new four-story buildings, each with 12 apartments, at 859 and 853 East 24th Street that are nearly ready for occupancy.
Near the Tri-Rail Market Station, a set of very different projects are getting started.
* Factory Town, on the site of the old Dixie Bedding factory, is a raw industrial site already serving as venue for music events featuring DJs and electronic dance music, light displays, art installations and pop-up food and beverage stands. Developer Avra Jain, who has made a name for herself reinventing historic places and buildings across Miami, has a still-evolving plan that includes botanical gardens, a spirits distillery, artists’ studios and exhibition space, food start-ups and a boutique hotel.
READ MORE: Learn why Chris Burch, ex-husband of Tory Burch, is investing in Factory Town
* At the Market Station, just blocks south of Factory Town, the city is working with a developer on a proposal for a project mixing residential and retail. So far, it’s the only one to come up in the district, but the city has high ambitions for it. The station property, controlled by the state and the Tri-Rail authority, includes the original Seaboard Air Line Railway depot from 1926, shuttered for years along with an adjacent, failed market that could become a commercial draw if renovated.
* The city also hopes to create a public space like Barcelona’s Las Ramblas on a narrow state-owned spit of land behind an abutting Home Depot. The space could host festivals and food trucks, said Debora Storch, the Hialeah planning chief.
As the transit districts grow, planners hope to knit them together into a cohesive new urban neighborhood, in part with Hialeah’s own version of The Underline, the 10-mile linear park now under construction beneath the Metrorail tracks through Miami, Coral Gables and South Miami along U.S. 1. Hialeah planners described their version as “a safe linear path for bicycles and scooters.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2022 at 12:55 PM.