Coral Gables Rising
With more than $1.5 billion in new mid-rise development, Coral Gables is making its core denser. But it’s doing so in a controlled fashion envisioned by city founders, creating more of a live-work-play city.
The Plaza at Coral Gables
In all his years living and working in Coral Gables, William Holly of Patton Real Estate Group can’t remember a time when he’s seen so much multi-story development in the city. Holly recalls years when there was one or maybe two major projects, but now there are more than half a dozen. They include what may be the city’s largest yet: The Plaza Coral Gables, set to cost almost $550 million and feature apartments, offices, retail, a hotel, townhouses and garages, all just a stroll from Miracle Mile.
“This wave of development is transformative,”says Holly, because it expands the city’s existing core of live-work-play neighborhoods, creates new ones, and knits more of those vibrant communities together. “Twenty years ago, that existed really just in downtown Coral Gables.”
Many of the projects tear down smaller, single-use structures and replace them with taller, mixed-use complexes on the same lot. New buildings typically offer ground-floor retail, with residences or offices above, plus multi-story parking. Planners hope the mixed-use hubs will lure more people to live in the neighborhood, and encourage workers and other visitors to forgo their cars when in the area. More people walking – or using local transit – to shop and eat should also keep local traffic in check.
Over the next five years, at least $1.5 billion in mixed-use projects are planned across Coral Gables, interviews with developers reveal. And that does not count some just finished residential projects, such as the Biltmore Parc condo on Valencia Ave, with 32 luxury units starting at $1.2 million more than half sold, according to Alirio Torrealba, who leads Coral Gables-based MG Developer.
But the City Beautiful is pursuing urban development in its own unique way – not like Miami’s Brickell Avenue and Downtown neighborhoods, where skyscrapers stand shoulder to shoulder and often top 70 floors. Coral Gables maintains strict codes that limit heights to 190 feet, or roughly 16 floors, and then only in buildings in its elegant Mediterranean style.
“The average building in Brickell is twice as tall as the tallest building in Coral Gables. The scale is completely different,”says Coral Gables’ director of planning Ramon Trias. What’s more, the 190-foot buildings in Coral Gables are set for commercial areas that offer varied transit options, including the central business district and on major thoroughfares such as South Dixie Highway, near Metrorail stations.
The rising live-work-play neighborhoods are attracting multinationals and other major firms who want walkability from Class-A office space without the traffic headaches of Brickell or Downtown Miami. They’re also luring empty-nesters and Millennials, who are willing to pay a premium to live in apartments or condos that allow them to stroll to shop, dine, exercise or see cultural events nearby. Retailers stand to gain, as more people nearby bring more customers night and day – without driving.
Jennifer and Kenneth Garcia embrace the live-work-play lifestyle. The couple moved to downtown Coral Gables from Michigan straight out of college a decade ago. As the area has become more urban and transit options have multiplied, they’ve given up their car. They now usually walk or bike to work, ride city trolleys or take ride-sharing services like Lyft for shorter trips, and occasionally, rent cars for longer excursions. The couple enjoys being car free and developing relationships with shopkeepers and restauranteurs in their neighborhood.
“Being small town-ish people – I’m from Kansas City and Kenneth is from Costa Rica – Coral Gables has that mid-size city character we like,”says Jennifer Garcia, on why the pair of urban planners opted against a more vertical, denser community.
While the projects don’t represent an explosion in development, they are significant for a city of some 51,000 residents. In new condos, for example, Coral Gables is “is punching above its population size,”says Peter Zalewski, founder of CraneSpotters, which focuses on pre-construction condos. In the 2011-2017 period, Cranespotters tallied 1,166 new condos proposed for the city. Still, that was just 2.5 percent of the total proposed in coastal South Florida and ranked the city No. 9 among 34 markets studied.
“It’s very balanced,”says Ron Shuffield, CEO of brokerage EWM International Realty, of the city’s development. Unlike parts of Miami-Dade County that have been overbuilt, Coral Gables has a manageable inventory of luxury condos and luxury homes, and its offices and retail space command premiums. One indicator of the city’s allure: The median price for a condo sold in the last quarter of 2017 was about $379,000, about 65 percent more than the $230,000 paid countywide, said Shuffield.
Perhaps the biggest change afoot is mixed-use development planned South Dixie Highway, aka U.S.1. Long-time Coral Gables architect Victor Dover, of Dover, Kohl & Partners Town Planning, is working on designs for the thoroughfare, where many parking lots and fences now face the street. He foresees new complexes that “are street-oriented and will bring an architectural positivity on that corridor.” That density is in line with the design of the city’s original planner George Merrick, says Dover.
“The city is allowing growth to take place in the areas where Merrick [and subsequent city planners] always envisioned denser growth, not allowing it to invade the single-family homes, to protect them from any dramatic impact, but allowing for growth where the transportation options are most plentiful,”explains Dover. “U.S.1 is congested at peak hours ...Therefore, we should get on with the business of creating better spaces that can use walking, bicycles and mass transit.
”Here’s a look at 10 major projects in Coral Gables, including the $500 million-plus Link at Douglas over the city’s edge by the Douglas Road Metrorail station. The largest project: The Plaza Coral Gables, rising on the same property where Gables planner Merrick kept his office nearly a century ago.
