Lennar expects to break ground by year-end on 50 townhouses in Wilton Manors and sell them at prices starting above $800,000.
The Wilton Manors City Commission unanimously voted Tuesday to approve the development on 5 acres at 1550 Northeast 26th Street, four blocks west of U.S. 1.
Before the city approved Lennar’s townhouse development, other developers had proposed a parade of projects that never materialized at the site, which is composed mostly of a surface parking lot and some vacant land.
“We welcome this development to our neighborhood, after all the previous proposals of hotels and Wawas and 150-unit apartment buildings,” John Fiore, president of the Wilton Manors East Side Neighborhood Association, told commissioners at their meeting.
“These [townhouses] are going to be for sale, and they’re not going to be cheap,” Fiore said. “This will improve our tax base and bring quality people into our neighborhood.”
Miami-based Lennar, led by Executive Chairman and co-CEO Stuart Miller and co-CEO and President Jon Jaffe, plans to build an eight-building complex of two-story and three-story townhouses, each with three or four bedrooms and a garage. The townhouses will range from 1,485 square feet to 2,374 square feet. Lennar’s site plan also includes 45,192 square feet of landscaped open space, which will span 26 percent of the development site, and a dog park.
Lennar plans to acquire the development site from Miami-based real estate firm Elion, led by managing partner Shlomo Khoudari. A company controlled by Elion paid $3.2 million last year to acquire the two-parcel site, according to records. It is bounded by 26th Street to the north, 24th Street to the south, 15th Avenue to the east, and 16th Avenue to the west.
Among other approvals, the Wilton Manors City Commission accepted a declaration of restrictive covenants on the development site that limits the number of four-bedroom townhouses to 10. In addition, the covenants prohibit townhouse owners from converting their garages to dwellings, and from offering their townhouses as short-term vacation rentals. One year is the minimum period that owners can rent their townhouses.
City commissioners also approved Lennar’s site plan for the townhouse development and a related plat proposal, and rezoned the two-parcel development site from “community facilities” (CF) and “single-family residential (RS-5) to “planned unit development” (PUD-R).
Dennis Mele, an attorney for Lennar, told commissioners at an earlier May 27 meeting that Lennar would start horizontal site work for its townhouse development, such as construction of water and sewer infrastructure, by December, if Broward County grants final plat approval for the development by September. Mele said construction will take about a year to complete.
Mele also responded to a commissioner who asked about prices for units in the townhouse complex. “If we were opening today, prices would start at about $800,000,” he said. “We anticipate these prices are going to be significantly more than that as we work our way through the [construction] process.”
At its meeting Tuesday night, the city commission also approved a developer’s agreement with Lennar. Among other requirements, it compels Lennar to install at least two sanitary stations for pets on the development site, in addition to one at the dog park, and to build a crosswalk that connects the site to an existing sidewalk on the east side of 16th Avenue.
The developer’s agreement also requires Lennar to pay a public art fee equating to 0.5 percent of the total cost of the townhouse development, up to a maximum of $100,000, or pay as much as $50,000 to put public art on the property.
Lennar has multiple residential developments in the pipeline in South Florida, particularly in south Miami-Dade County.
The homebuilder proposed construction of 192 houses in two developments in unincorporated Miami-Dade, including 138 houses on the southeast corner of Southwest 220th Street and Southwest 133rd Court, and another 54 on the southeast corner of Southwest 212th Street and Southwest 127th Avenue.
This year, Lennar also paid nearly $25 million for three residential development sites in south Miami-Dade, totaling about 25 acres. They include the Portobello Estates, Century Park Villas East and Century Estates Royal subdivisions.
Last year, the homebuilder paid $16.6 million for a 38.2-acre development site in Homestead, including five parcels bordered by Southwest 162nd Avenue and Southwest 276th Street.
Earlier in 2024, Lennar and BH Group paid $17.5 million for a shuttered golf course near Aventura that spans 104.3 acres, with plans to tear up the fairways and build 103 houses on the site at 19650 Presidential Way. Their redevelopment of the golf course, known as Presidential Estates, will expand an existing gated community of the same name with 136 houses.
In Palm Beach County, Lennar paid $54 million for 52 acres in Wellington with 172 homesites that are part of a mixed-use development called Lotis Wellington, which would include 100 houses and 72 townhouses.
