Resia has stepped away from its role as developer of the Palmetto Station apartment complex in Medley, transferring the project to a new team. The group taking over includes Jose Gonzalez of GLC Real Estate, Ivan Herrera of Unicapital Asset Management Group, and Alex Lastra of Desarrollo. According to Gonzalez, they assumed control during the second quarter of this year.
The development site is located at 7701 Northwest 79th Avenue and is being leased from Miami-Dade County under a 90-year agreement.
In a statement, Resia confirmed it’s “no longer involved with this project” and it “transferred the development rights to another developer.”
Resia is a Miami-based multifamily developer that operates nationwide as a subsidiary of Brazilian homebuilder MRV.
Gonzalez established GLC Real Estate in Miami after nearly three decades at Florida East Coast Industries, which owns Brightline and develops properties around its stations. Herrera co-founded UniVista Insurance with his wife in 2009 and started Unicapital earlier this year following a partial sale of UniVista for $700 million. Lastra launched Desarrollo in 2018 after working at Atlantic Pacific Companies for 15 years.
The new plan for Palmetto Station calls for one eight-story building and two 12-story buildings. It will also include 7,000 square feet of office and retail space along with a total of 1,742 parking spaces in both garage and surface lots, according to documents filed with Miami-Dade County earlier this month. Renovations are also planned for the adjacent Palmetto Metrorail stop.
The original design by Resia and MagicWaste Youth Foundation called for four 12-story buildings totaling 948 units, about 7,500 square feet of retail space, and a parking garage with capacity for 1,596 vehicles. That plan received approval from county planning officials last year.
Resia had intended the project as part of the Live Local Act program but the new developers will not pursue that designation. All 1,152 units will still be set aside as workforce rentals for households earning up to 120 percent of the area median income (AMI), Gonzalez said. County rules already allow higher-density housing near major transit stations such as Palmetto Metrorail.
Miami-Dade’s current AMI stands at $87,200 per year according to data from the Florida Housing Finance Corporation (https://www.floridahousing.org/programs/area-median-income).
According to Gonzalez, one reason for redesigning was that Resia’s proposal relied on prefabricated kitchens and bathrooms manufactured at its Georgia facility—a model recently used at Resia Golden Glades in unincorporated Miami-Dade. “We redesigned it into U-shaped buildings with a garage in the middle,” he said. He noted that Resia’s layout featured linear structures.
Construction on Palmetto Station is expected to begin next summer.
Development activity has been increasing in Medley as residential projects expand outward from Hialeah into areas traditionally dominated by industrial uses.
GLC Real Estate, Unicapital and Desarrollo also have plans for an affordable housing project on land currently occupied by Miami-Dade’s overflow animal shelter at 7401 Northwest 74th Street. They are working with the county on constructing a new animal shelter facility elsewhere; once completed, ownership of the existing Medley site will transfer to the developers.
