Affordable apartments for seniors slated for Ludlam Trail. Here’s the range of rental prices
Seniors will get affordable living options in a $25 million apartment development slated for an up-and-coming area along Coral Way on the Ludlam Trail.
Two five-story buildings called Ludlam Trail Towers will rise starting in May near the intersection of Coral Way and Southwest 69th Avenue, adjacent to a Chevron gas station and steps from Coral Terrace Elementary School, according to the project’s developer, MV Real Estate Holdings.
The development, including 64 apartments and event space, is part of the six-mile Ludlam Trail. The towers will be connected by a pedestrian bridge.
The apartments will vary from 760-square-foot one-bedroom, one bathroom units to 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom, two bathroom residences. Renters will need to be at least 55 to qualify and earn between 40% and 80% of the area’s median income of $59,100. They can expect to pay monthly rent between $678 and $1,628.
Ludlam Trail Towers is one of many planned residential projects for the trail, as part of redeveloping an abandoned railroad track running between Miami International Airport and Dadeland Mall. Other projects include an 84-unit workforce housing complex; a 950-unit apartment building with retail stores and a dog park; and a 312-unit apartment complex — another MV Real Estate Holdings project, in partnership with Altman Companies and Mattoni Group. All are in different phases of development.
The project will add housing at a time when Miami-Dade County suffers from a severe shortage of attainable housing.
However, the apartment development for seniors will only be a drop in the bucket considering the estimated 120,000 homes needed to alleviate Miami-Dade’s housing crisis, according to Miami Homes for All.
The county continues to struggle with a housing shortage that began long before the pandemic, when living costs far exceeded the pace of wage growth. The influx of tech and finance firms followed by their well-paid executives and employees during the ongoing pandemic exacerbated the problem. Landlords have hiked rents and sellers raised home prices to try to capture the opportunity of individuals willing to pay more to live in the county.
In particular, Miami-Dade has a looming senior housing crisis, said Kimberly Henderson, CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida. She supports the Ludlam Trail Towers project since it will be near public transit, parks and grocery stores and younger people will live nearby the older residents.
“If it’s an area that’s likely to gentrify with younger people, then what ends up happening is that you get a diverse and vibrant population,” Henderson said.
The apartments for seniors have been in the works a long time. MV Real Estate Holdings acquired the 37,000-square-foot tract from Miami-Dade County two years ago for $1.3 million. The development firm has a construction budget of $25 million with money coming from the firm, Miami Dade Surtax Funding and Miami-Dade County’s General Obligation Bond Fund, thanks to Ludlam Trail advocate Commissioner Rebeca Sosa.
With a year needed to build it, the project is expected to finish during the summer of 2023, said MV Real Estate Holdings Partner Alex Mantecon. People can start reserving apartments in April 2023.
Construction will include a new sewer line to Coral Way to ensure residents’ safety, given the traces of arsenic found along the Ludlam Trail in the past, Mantecon said.
“It is anticipated that soils are contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and arsenic, consistent with other parcels of the trail,” said Tere Florin, a spokesperson for the Miami-Dade County Department of Environmental Resources Management. “However, in lieu of assessment, the developer proposed to manage the exposure to contaminated soils with the use of engineering controls, which is the standard practice to render the soil safe for construction and habitation.”
Mantecon, a native of the Redlands historic agricultural area of Miami-Dade and a Florida International University graduate, said he’s building the Ludlam Trail Towers apartments for people like his mother-in-law. Unable to work due to a hip replacement and arthritis, she has a limited income.
“Elderly people will be sitting in front of their units and look at — hopefully — thousands of people going through the trail,” Mantecon said. “People will say ‘hi’ once, then two days later and eventually they share a name. They stop and talk. The elderly will have people that they can interact with. It’s one of the biggest needs that the elderly have.”
This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
