Brian Bandell
Oct 11, 2024
Lennar Corp. (NYSE: LEN) could redevelop the Everglades Outpost wildlife center in southwest Miami-Dade County.
Everglades Fruitstand LLC, owned by Robert W. Freer Jr., along with Martha Frassica Rivera and Jeffry Rivera, filed a zoning application and a pre-application with Miami-Dade County for the 6.54-acre site at 35601 S.W. 192nd Ave. It’s located just east of the county’s Urban Development Boundary and the Navy Wells Pineland Preserve, a forested nature reserve.
According to its website, Freer founded the Everglades Outpost with his wife in 1991 and they live there together with animals that they help rehabilitate. It has alligators, panthers and foxes, and it previously was home to Rocky the Tiger. It has group tours and sells agricultural products on site.
A statute of the skunk ape, a mythical creature said to roam the Everglades, greets visitors to the outpost.
Miami-based Lennar has the property under contract and wants to rezone it from “agricultural district” to “limited apartment house district.” The site plan calls for 78 townhouses in seven buildings.
The two-story townhomes would range from 1,334 square feet to 1,545 square feet, each with three bedrooms. There would be no garages, but it would have 176 surface parking spaces and a dog park.
Miami-based attorney Amanda Naldjieff, who represents Lennar in the application, couldn’t be reached for comment. Doral-based Pascual, Perez, Kiliddjian, Starr Architects & Planners designed the project.
The rezoning would eventually need County Commission approval.
In a preliminary review by the county’s Department of Environmental Resource Management (DERM), officials recommended the developer avoid adverse environmental impacts to the “natural forest community” at the preserve across the street. DERM also noted that the county sometimes need to conduct a “controlled burn” to maintain the forest across the street, so the new community may be impacted by that smoke.
DERM also raised concerns about how lights from the development would impact protected wildlife in the neighboring nature preserve.
Meanwhile, Lennar has the neighboring 9.9-acre site to the north under contract, with a pending comprehensive development master plan (CDMP) amendment that would permit 100 homes. That would also require County Commission approval, and the application raised similar concerns from DERM about its close proximity to the Navy Wells PIneland Preserve.
While this site west of Florida City is far from the urban center of Miami-Dade, it’s one of the few places with large tracts of vacant lands that can fit dozens of townhouses. The cheaper land prices also make it easy to build less expensive homes. Lennar has been extremely active building in south Miami-Dade in recent years, and it’s pushing further south and west in search of development sites.