Building finally starts on affordable apartments for seniors near Ludlam Trail
After a yearlong delay, construction started Tuesday on a $25 million affordable apartment complex for senior citizens between Coral Way and Southwest 69th Avenue in southwest Miami-Dade.
Called Ludlam Trail Towers in suburban Coral Terrace, the project is part of the ambitious effort to redevelop along a six-mile stretch of abandoned Florida East Coast Railway track from Miami International Airport to the Dadeland Mall.
The housing community consisting of two low-rise buildings with 64 apartments is a public-private partnership between MV Real Estate Holdings and Miami-Dade County.
Alex Mantecon, partner in MV Real Estate and a Redlands native, thinks an affordable housing development with plenty of green space is what’s needed in the area.
“We made a promise with the county to see this through and we’re holding true to the promise,” Mantecon said. “... I was born and raised here. I feel this is an integral part of what can make this city great, like the Underline and Ludlam Trail.”
Ludlam Trail Towers will have four-story and five-story buildings, with apartments from 760-square-foot, one-bedroom units to 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom and two-bathroom homes. The monthly rents will be $731 to $1,700, and targeted for seniors at least 55 who earn up to 80% of the county’s median household income of $59,044.
The two towers will be connected by a pedestrian bridge that overlooks Coral Way and connects to the 6.2-mile Ludlam Trail. Mantecon said the development site along Ludlam will connect it to part of the Underline urban park and trail under development in downtown Miami, making it 16 continuous miles of trailway in Miami-Dade. And tenants of the apartments will be a short walk away from A.D. Barnes Park, a popular Miami public space.
Now that construction has begun the apartment leasing at the property, originally scheduled for April, was pushed back to April 2024. The apartments for seniors have been in the works a long time. MV Real Estate had acquired the 37,000-square-foot tract from the county in 2020 for $1.3 million.
Florida Atlantic University economics professor Ken H. Johnson said Ludlam Trail Towers meet a need in Miami-Dade for affordable housing, but only scratch the surface of helping to alleviate the housing affordability crunch.
“This one project is excellent and something that we need,” Johnson said. “We have six million people living here. Should we be doing this? Absolutely. Should we be doing more of this? Absolutely.”
He noted the Miami-Dade permit restrictions affordable housing developers face.
“Affordable housing is just going to be a persistent issue here, until we get more units in the ground,” Johnson said. “One way to attack this would be for city and county leaders, whomever is in charge of permitting, to allow developers to build more.”
To that end, Ludlam Trail Towers is one of many real estate projects in varying phases of planning and development along the trail. They include: a 312-unit apartment complex, also led by MV Real Estate in partnership with other developers; an 84-unit workforce housing project; and a development with 950 apartments, a dog park and retail space.
As climate change continues to sharply affect South Florida, Maria Nardi, Miami-Dade’s parks, recreation and open space department director, said green spaces like the Ludlam Trail are more important than ever. To her, the apartment communities that will come to life along the trail reaffirm that.
“The Ludlam Trail, like other parks in the system, is the frontline for climate change solutions, because we are the green spaces that can hold stormwater and the places to plant trees to address the heat index,” Nardi said. “Ludlam is also providing a corridor for wildlife and birds and other wildlife to live.”
