Exclusive: Budding urban arts hub Allapattah getting discounted homes. We’ve got details
The next up-and-coming arts hub in Miami, the gentrifying Allapattah neighborhood, is going to get something it desperately needs: a $47 million housing development with homes carrying leases local workers and lower-income residents can afford.
The urban neighborhood, directly west of Wynwood, already has drawn many real estate developers that built homes at the going rate in Miami — which is double that of three years ago and out of reach for many people.
After developers flipped Wynwood into a trendy tourist destination, many of them, along with investors, flocked next door to Allapattah making it a hot bed for development. The River Landing Shops & Residences was built. Warehouses turned into high-end art collections and attractions, including the Rubell Museum, Superblue and El Espacio 23. More development plans are set for market-rate apartments and retail, including 18 acres of public land and the starchitect mega development of retail, a trade school and possibly an urban farm.
Centennial Management Corp. of Miami Lakes has a different idea: build an affordable and workforce housing community on a 1.5-acre vacant lot on the northwest corner of Northwest 23rd Street and Northwest 8th Avenue.
The firm plans a seven-story building with 149 apartments called Stadium Towers Apartments. Residences will range from 600-square-foot one bedroom units to three-bedroom apartments covering 1,050 square feet. The mid-rise will sit adjacent to Centennial’s last development in the area called Miami Stadium Apartments.
Single renters would qualify if they earn $47,810 per year — 70% of Miami-Dade’s median income of $68,300 — or less. All tenants would pay a discounted rent.
Attainable housing is needed in Allapattah, said Mileyka Burgos-Flores, founder and CEO The Allapattah Collaborative CDC, a nonprofit organization focusing on sustainable community development. As a result of the area’s rapid and ongoing transformation, longtime residents are priced out. In a span of a decade, single-family homes that sold in the area for $100,000 now go for $400,000. Commercial buildings that closed for $300,000 can now fetch millions. Simultaneously, rents soared for commercial and residential tenants.
“We have the real workforce of Miami living in Allapattah,” Burgos-Flores said, saying a large number of residents work in service jobs at Miami International, PortMiami, hospitals, warehouses and in the tourism and hospitality industry. Stadium Towers Apartments will be “more aligned with Miami housing needs,” she said.
Construction should start in December, after building and demolition permits are secured. Completion is slated for early 2025.
The project will cost $47 million, including $29.4 million for construction. The county, state and the city — as of Thursday with a $1.8 million contribution — will chip in for a portion of tab for the development .
“It is an excellent location. There is a tremendous need for the community,” said Lewis Swezy, president of Centennial Management. “In Allapattah, rents have escalated 100% in the past three years.”
Allapattah has a long history, said Seth Bramson, a Florida historian and lecturer at Barry University who has written 33 books, mostly on South Florida’s history.
The neighborhood’s borders are Northwest 7th Avenue to Northwest 27th Avenue, Florida State Road 112 and the Miami River. The area dates to Native Americans who traveled on the Miami River, and derives its name from the Native American word — likely from the Seminole Indian tribe — for alligator.
The community became a thriving residential and small business during the 1920s, after Florida East Coast Railway relocated its packing operations from what’s now known as Midtown Miami into the warehouses dotting Allapattah. Both railway employees and downtown Miami and Miami Beach’s service workers called the area home, because people could land cheap home rents.
“It was a good solid working-class neighborhood,” Bramson said.
Starting in the 1960s, Allapattah gained a large Black and Latin population, as political upheaval spread across the Caribbean and Latin America, Burgos-Flores said. Progress in the neighborhood crashed during the 1980s, following the McDuffie riots. It took years for the area to recover. In the 1990s, the Dominican community grew so much so that in 2003 the city designated Northwest 17th Avenue Little Santo Domingo.
Centennial Management’s Swezy expects high demand for his coming apartment building, since Miami Stadium Apartments has remained nearly fully leased since it was built in 2002.
“There’s a strong demand and there’s a lot of employment in the area,” the developer said. “There’s every reason to want to do it.”
This story was originally published October 31, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
