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Miami Herald
24-06-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Apartment buildings are opening next to a Tri-Rail station. Here are 5 takeaways
A neighborhood in Hialeah is undergoing major transformation with new residential developments rising around Tri-Rail and Metrorail stations. This initiative aims to create a community that offers affordable housing options with modern amenities, all within walking distance of mass transit that connects with downtown Miami. FULL STORY: How a housing village rising at a Hialeah train station is changing a community Here are the highlights: New developments: The Metro Station 1 project, alongside other residential buildings, is part of a larger plan to introduce over 3,000 new housing units in Hialeah, providing convenient access to major transit lines and connecting residents to downtown Miami and housing: Developers are leveraging Florida's Live Local Act to offer many of these new apartments at below-market rates, aiming to make housing more accessible for the local workforce and young impact: The new developments are designed to foster a pedestrian-friendly environment with amenities like fitness centers and pool decks, encouraging younger residents to stay in Hialeah rather than moving away for career concerns: While the transformation promises modern living spaces, some long-time residents express concerns about rising costs and the potential impact on local businesses, as single-family homes are replaced by high-density vision: Developers anticipate that the Metro District will evolve into a bustling neighborhood with retail and service businesses at street level, drawing parallels to successful urban developments in other cities like New York's Long Island City. The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists in the Miami Herald newsroom. The full story in the link at top was reported, written and edited entirely by Miami Herald journalists.
Miami Herald
23-06-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
How a housing village rising at a Hialeah train station is changing a community
As commuters unload from carpools passing through the parking lot of a Tri-Rail station on a recent weekday morning, they're greeted by a symphony of construction while waiting for their trains. Buzz saws and percussion drills crank up just 10 feet from the train platform, where workers in green vests and yellow safety helmets are building a new housing development. The eight-story residential building, named Metro Station 1, broke ground in May with a target completion by January 2026. The building will offer 55 apartments in a convenient place: next to Tri-Rail's Metrorail Transfer Station in Hialeah. The structure's balconies are under construction directly above the tracks, and the building will even share a parking lot with the station. Mere seconds, not minutes, from the train platform, Metro Station 1 is the closest new housing going up, but it's far from the only residential project near the transit hub, which connects to Metrorail and a rail route to the downtown Miami Brightline station. Within three blocks of the station, three new rental apartment buildings broke ground in May and June — and more are being planned. They are the latest additions to what developers have dubbed Hialeah's 'Metro District,' a high-density residential area of buildings within blocks of Tri-Rail and Metrorail. Seven buildings are either planned, under construction or newly opened in the neighborhood, each between 8 and 10 stories, totaling over 3,000 units of new housing. The intersection of the Metrorail and Tri-Rail lines has become the center of an ambitious plan to transform the area. Renters started moving into the first building earlier this year, following completion of Metro Parc on East 26th Street. 'The apartment is super nice and incredibly convenient,' said John Martin, 64, one of the first people to move into Metro Parc. 'Just look at the location — you walk across the street to the station and you can be in Orlando in an hour and a half or West Palm Beach in 30 minutes. You can get to Brickell in 25 minutes — a couple moving in definitely wouldn't need two cars.' According to the developers, rent at Metro Parc ranges from around $1,800 to $3,000 a month; the average rent in Hialeah is around $2,100, according to estimates made by national real estate broker Redfin. Developers say they are aiming to rent about 75 percent of the apartments at below market rates, making use of Florida's Live Local Act, which rewards companies with tax incentives if they set aside units for workforce housing, requiring prices to be at least 10 percent below an area's average rental cost. 'It's the genesis of the transit district in Hialeah,' said Ivo Fernandez Jr., co-founder of Modis Architects, the Miami firm involved in the design of Metro Parc and the six other buildings that will form the Metro District. Fernandez said the new housing projects will create the kind of 'vibrant and pedestrian community that's hard to find outside of downtown Miami.' Modis Architects hopes that high-density residential development around the transit hub will persuade younger people to stay in Hialeah instead of moving away to pursue careers. 'Hialeah is what I consider the backbone of Miami-Dade County; it's a workforce community,' Fernandez said, noting that the area's multi-generational family housing has sustained working-class families but often led their ambitious children to eventually move away. 'In the past, what you got in Hialeah was just apartments and parking lots,' Fernandez said. 'What Metro Park offers is beyond that. It's higher-level living with nice lobbies, lounge areas, multi-purpose rooms, fitness centers, pool decks, outdoor amenities.' MG Developer, the Florida real estate development firm behind Metro Parc and Metro Station, hopes the new buildings and their amenities will appeal not just to young professionals in the area, but also downtown Miami residents seeking to escape rising rents. 'Miami is not getting any cheaper,' said Diego Torrealba, executive vice president of MG Developer. 'People are getting squeezed out of markets like downtown, Brickell, Coconut Grove and are looking for transit-oriented developments that can allow them to quickly get to where they work.' The changes underway and planned for Hialeah are rooted in a proposal led by Debora Storch, the director of planning and zoning for the city. Storch championed rezoning the area where Metrorail and Tri-Rail intersect, creating a transit district that allows developers to build high-density housing. Blocks that were filled with single family homes are rapidly being bought up and cleared to make way for the new apartment complexes. What's rising in the train station neighborhood? Following the rezoning, Metro Parc was the first construction to go up in the district. Its a 10-floor building with a pool in the courtyard and 559 studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments. Similar buildings are planned to fan out from all sides of Metro Parc. Across East 26th Street, the entire block between 9th and 10th avenues, once the site of over a dozen single family homes, was cleared earlier this year for 'Metro Parc North,' a 661-apartment development. Construction began last month. A Metro Parc West project of 420 apartments is in the preliminary design phase and a Metro Parc South project broke ground earlier in June, which will add 347 rental units. Finally, to the east, one block over along East 11th Avenue, the Metro Station 1 project next to the Tri-Rail station will also bring an adjacent and larger sister building. Metro Station 2 is in the permitting process, with construction on an additional 110 apartments planned to begin next year. Homeowners are leaving the transit area The neighborhood is experiencing a rapid period of change, with potentially thousands of new residents moving in over the next years. But many of the area's longtime residents are in the process of moving out. 'They've got me surrounded on all sides; I'm boxed in,' said Vivencio Bello, an 84-year-old retired construction worker who has lived in the neighborhood for 42 years. 'Everyone here bought houses to live in them, not to sell them. 'But,' Bello said, chuckling, 'you have to remember this is a capitalist country.' Bello said he and his neighbors were all offered above-market prices by developers eager to buy their single-family homes, clearing the way for yet another city block-sized housing development, The Edgar, a project planned to add 642 apartments just a block away from the Metro Parc and Metro Station buildings. 'Everyone's moving out,' Bello, who plans to relocate to North Carolina, said of his neighbors. 'But hey, they are paying good prices for our houses.' Stuck in the middle of it all, surrounded in each direction by buildings either planned or already raised, diners at the Cuatro Esquinas Restaurant expressed some trepidation about the changes in the neighborhood. 'I don't know where they're going to find people to live in these buildings,' said Moreno Suarez, 62, a mechanic who regularly stops in for lunch between shifts at the auto shop across the street. 'Who's going to rent them? They're too expensive.' he added. Suarez and his co-workers said they expected economic uncertainty and anxiety over immigration issues would deter many of the neighborhood's residents from signing yearlong leases and moving into the new apartments rising around them. The mechanics also worried that their auto shop, which services primarily commercial trucks, won't profit from the incoming changes in the neighborhood. 'There's no benefit for us or the businesses here from these big buildings,' Suarez said. Matthew Baron, president of Baron Property Group, which partnered with MG Developer on Metro Parc, said around 10 percent of the building has been leased so far. 'We're in the early innings of this stage of the area's growth around the transit-oriented district,' Baron said. 'We're putting a lot of density in, retail is going to follow that density, and it's going to become a self-fulfilling cycle where the area will become its own neighborhood.' Baron said his aim is to repeat in Hialeah what his company accomplished in New York two decades ago, where he leveraged lower land costs in Long Island City to develop high-density housing. Ever-higher rents just across the river in Manhattan led residents to flock to Long Island City, where rent was more affordable and transit options made it easy for residents to commute for work. 'The things that attracted us to Long Island City 20 years ago, when I came to Hialeah, I was like, this is the same thing, all of those characteristics, it's perfect,' Baron said. 'It allows us to deliver a product that can be 25, 30, maybe even 35 percent less than what you would pay for rent in areas like Brickell and Wynwood.' Average rent in Miami in May was around $2,962, according to estimates from Redfin. For both Brickell and Wynwood, the average cost was well over $3,700 a month for rentals. Most of the new housing developments in Hialeah's Metro District have street-level space for retail and services. Developers hope that dry cleaners, nail salons and grocery stores will move into buildings. No outside businesses have set up yet on the bottom floor of Metro Parc, but, Baron said 'we do have a lot of interest and we're pretty close on a couple of deals.' With the next decade, Baron said he expects the Metro District to look entirely different. 'I think that there'll be more density, there'll be more retail, and that area will just continue to grow.'
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Senator who championed Live Local Act says local governments must embrace it to work
Kathleen Passidomo championed the Live Local Act during her time as Florida Senate president. She saw it as a way to provide much-needed workforce housing across the state, including in her own backyard of Naples, where there has long been a critical shortage of it. "There had been study, after study, after study. Everybody gave it lip service. But nobody wanted to do anything about it," Passidomo said. There had been a strong "not-in-my-backyard" attitude, when it came to affordable and workforce housing. Since its adoption in 2023, Live Local has attacked the shortage on many fronts. "It's tax credits. It's things like density bonuses, making smaller units. And also, trying to cut through the red tape that often happens with government, to expedite some of these projects," Passidomo said. When reflecting on Live Local's success so far, she said: "It is working in many, many places. And it's all about leadership on a local level.' SPECIAL REPORT: Florida's Live Local Act wanted to spur affordable housing, but has it? The Republican senator has represented the 28th district, which includes Collier, Hendry and part of Lee County in Southwest Florida, since 2016. The region has some of the highest housing prices and rents in the state. Around the state, some cities, counties and towns have been more willing than others to accept or adopt the new Live Local rules, with some finding unexpected ways around them. "The local governments that recognized the need were welcoming the bill. And developers in those communities were being very successful," Passidomo said. In response to critics, who see the state law as an attack on home rule, she said: "The bill I don't believe was draconian or overreaching on the state's part." More: Q&A on Florida's affordable-housing Live Local Act: What is it and why is it controversial? She acknowledged some local governments, even in her own district, have found a way to "put the brakes on Live Local," by "opting out" of issuing property tax exemptions, based on certain criteria, which she isn't happy about. One of the proposed Live Local projects she's most proud of is in her own district. It would replace the defunct Sanibel Outlets, near the causeway to Sanibel Island, in Lee County, with a mixed-use development that would include workforce housing. "The people who work on Sanibel just have a quick shot over the bridge to get to work," Passidomo said. "That's an example of a good public-private type partnership." She sees the opportunity for more conversions like that one, with the help of Live Local, in Southwest Florida, and elsewhere in the state. "We have shopping centers that are virtually empty, so my thought is those are commercial properties that could be redeveloped into residential apartments," including workforce housing, Passidomo said. "So you could live where you work," she said. There are still misperceptions about the types of people who can benefit from Live Local, which include the "missing middle," who could be making $75,000 to $85,000 a year, Passidomo said. She pointed out that could include a starting attorney, or a myriad of city, county or state workers. "A lot of it is education and getting our local governments to understand and appreciate that the people who work for us, and with us, the bank tellers, the people who manage the grocery store, who work in retail, they have no place to live," Passidomo said. She continued: "And they have to drive hours and hours sometimes to get to work, which clogs our roads and creates all sorts of problems.' RELATED: The first 10 days of 2025 featured new projects, new deals, new data for Southwest Florida She hopes there will be more improvements to the Live Local Act, making it more effective and attractive to developers, through more amendments. "When I envisioned this bill, I naively thought that the local governments would embrace the concept and be thrilled about it," Passidomo said. "I never thought for a minute they would say, 'We don't want these people living here.' Because these people are the people that we work with every day." RELATED: DeSantis signs 'Live Local Act' in Naples Live Local will sunset in 2033, giving the Legislature a chance to automatically revisit it after 10 years, and to consider its renewal. While it may not be perfect, it is helping to move the needle, Passidomo said. "I have heard from a lot of people who do this as a business — that build workforce housing — that this has been transformative," Passidomo said. "So, all in all, I think it's successful and it will be for some time." Laura Layden is a senior reporter focusing on business and government for the Naples Daily News. This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Senator Kathleen Passidomo says Florida's Live Local Act has big upside
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Q&A on Florida's affordable-housing Live Local Act: What is it and why is it controversial?
In 2023, the Florida Legislature approved Senate Bill 102, known as the Live Local Act, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law. The next year, lawmakers revised the legislation. Further updates to the act were approved by the legislature in the spring of 2025, and they will go into effect July 1. The Live (pronounced "liv") Local Act is intended to address the state's growing housing-affordability crisis by encouraging development with significant land-use, zoning and tax benefits. It makes various changes and additions to affordable-housing-related programs and policies at both the state and local level. It also requires certain information be made available on local government websites. However, things have not always run smoothly for the statewide housing strategy. Among the key criticisms: The plan has not reached those most in need; that it has the potential for developers to prioritize tax incentives over affordability; and that it intrudes on local authority and planning efforts, infringing on the surrounding community. Here are some key provisions and everything you need to know: The Live Local Act has a provision that gives developers a 75% exemption on property taxes when they build rental housing targeted for middle-income families — those with incomes that fall in the range of what a family with 80% to 120% of the area median income of the community would be able to comfortably afford. This group is sometimes called "the missing middle." There must be more than 70 affordable units in a development to qualify for this tax break, and only the affordable units would qualify. So, for example, in a 200-unit project with 75 affordable units, only the portion of property taxes covered by the 75 affordable units would get the tax reduction. Under a separate provision, developers can get a 100% property-tax exemption for qualifying developments with units targeted to families with incomes that are less than 80% of the area median income of the community. SPECIAL REPORT: Florida's Live Local Act wanted to spur affordable housing, but has it? In a training session on the act, Marisa Button, managing director of strategic initiatives for the Florida Housing Finance Corp., said this tax break provides "another tool in the tool belt of affordable-housing providers." There is a two-step application process to get approval for this tax break — going through the Florida Housing Finance Corp., then to the local county property appraiser. A governing board of a county, city or school district can opt out of the missing-middle property-tax exemption through a "supermajority" vote of at least two-thirds of the board. The board can opt out only if the geographic region it is in already has more affordable-housing units than the number of households at or below 120% of the area median income of the community — in other words, it has a "surplus" of affordable housing. More: Senator who championed Live Local Act says local governments must embrace it to work Among cities that now have a deficit of affordable housing — and are thus not eligible to opt out of offering the tax break — are the metropolitan areas that include Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Port St. Lucie, Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, Lakeland, and Ocala. There is no opt-out provision for the tax break for developments targeted to families with incomes that are less than 80% of the area median income. Local governments also have the option to enact an ordinance providing property-tax exemptions to certain affordable-housing development of 50 or more units that set aside at least 20% of the units as affordable to household at or below 60% of a community's median income. The exemptions apply only to the property taxes for the affordable units. The tax break can be up to 75% if fewer than 100% of the units are considered affordable, and up to 100% of all the units are considered affordable. Jacksonville and St. Petersburg were among the first cities to adopt such programs. There are provisions for more flexible zoning for affordable housing in areas within a county or city that had been designated for commercial, industrial and mixed-use development. For example, this includes easing of rules on building height, under which a residential building can be built to the highest currently allowed height for a residential or commercial building in that county or city that is within a mile of the proposed development site, or three stories, whichever is higher. There also is more flexibility related to site use (the category of development allowed on a parcel), as well as to density standards (the number of housing units allowed per acre). These provisions override the local government's height, zoning and density regulations for a specific parcel of land. To qualify for these zoning rule exemptions, a developer must set aside at least 40% of the project's rental units for affordable rental housing geared to households earning no more than 120% of the area median income for at least 30 years. Such projects would be administratively approved, with no action required by county or city governing bodies, such as a zoning board or a city council, as long as the development otherwise complies with the local government's comprehensive plan. The Live Local Act assures full funding of two long-established state housing programs through the Sadowski Trust Fund program, which gets revenue generated through a portion of documentary stamp taxes collected on real estate transactions. These housing programs are the State Apartment Incentive Loan or SAIL program, which provides low-interest or no-interest loans for development of affordable housing; and the State Housing Incentive Partnership or SHIP program, which deploys funds to Florida's 67 counties and 55 eligible municipalities for various housing programs. The act also codifies the state's Hometown Heroes Program into state statute. This program provides down-payment and closing-cost assistance to eligible first-time homebuyers who are Florida residents and work for a Florida-based company. Counties and cities must compile an inventory of publicly owned land that could be appropriate for affordable-housing projects, if such land exists in the community. The resulting list of those properties must be posted on the local government's website. Property-tax exemptions on the value of the land are provided on land owned by a nonprofit organization and leased for a period of 99 years to predominantly provide affordable housing to households at or below 120% of a community's median income. The Florida House on April 30 and the Florida Senate on May 1 unanimously approved a series of changes to the Live Local Act, as part of Senate Bill 1730. They would take effect July 1, unless vetoed by DeSantis. In analysing the legislation, Kody Glazer, chief legal and policy officer for the Florida Housing Coalition, believes the amendments are generally beneficial for spurring efforts to build more affordable-housing projects. Glazer said he believes the most significant change in the bill is that it clarifies that the act applies to properties within planned unit developments, which sometimes also are known as master planned communities. Among other changes, the measure offers more flexibility for approval of affordable-housing projects on parcels owned by religious institutions. This type of provision is considered a "Yes In God's Backyard," or a "YIGBY," reform. Such reforms are becoming more common across the country as a way to unlock land owned by religious institutions to address local housing shortages. The bill also prevents local building moratoria that have the effect of delaying the permitting or construction of a Live Local Act land-use project unless: The moratorium lasts no more than 90 days in any three-year period after a local assessment of the jurisdiction's need for affordable housing. The moratorium is imposed or enforced to address stormwater or flood water management; to address the supply of potable water; or due to the necessary repair of sanitary sewer systems, if such moratoria apply equally to all types of multifamily or mixed-use residential development. The amendments also have some added restrictions. For example: They create more building height limits for sites in certain historic parcels. They also exempt the Wekiva Study Area in Central Florida and the Everglades Protection Area from Live Local Act land-use mandates. Dave Berman is business editor at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Berman at dberman@ on X at @bydaveberman and on Facebook at This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Live Local Act: Questions and answers
Business Journals
16-06-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
High-rise Live Local Act project proposed near Wynwood (Photos)
Expand Bazbaz Development has proposed a Live Local Act project at 70 N.W. 36th Street in Miami's Wynwood Norte.
