Hialeah – Commuters get off the carpool passing through the Tri-Rail Station parking lot on a recent weekday morning, and they are greeted by a construction symphony while waiting for the train.
The buzz saw and percussion drills go up just 10 feet from the train platform where workers in green vests and yellow safety helmets are building new residential developments.
The eight-storey residential building, named Metro Station 1, broke the ground in May with target completion by January 2026. The building offers 55 apartments conveniently located next to the metrorail transfer station on the Trirail in Hialea. The building’s balcony is under construction directly above the tracks, and the building shares a parking lot with the station.
Metro Station 1 is the closest new home, not minutes or seconds, not a few minutes from the train platform, but far from the only residential project near the transit hub. It connects to Metrol and the railway route to Downtown Miami Bright Line Station. Within three blocks of the station, three new rental apartments smashed the ground in May and June.
These are the latest additions to what developers called Hialea’s “Metro District.” This is a high density residential area of buildings within Trirail and Metrol blocks. Seven buildings are planned, under construction or newly opened in the neighborhood, each with over 3,000 new homes totaling 8-10-storey buildings.
The intersection of the Metrorail and Trirail lines is central to ambitious plans to transform the region. After the completion of the Metropark on East 26th Avenue, tenants began moving to the first building earlier this year.
“The apartment is very nice and incredibly convenient,” said John Martin, 64, one of the first to move to Metropark. “Look at the location. If you walk across the street to the station, you can either be in Orlando in an hour and a half or in West Palm Beach in 30 minutes. You can get to Brickel in 25 minutes.
According to the developers, rents for Metro Parc range from around $1,800 to $3,000 a month. According to estimates from the National Real Estate Broker Redfin, the average rent for Hialeah is around $2,100.
The developer says it aims to rent about 75% of its apartments below the market and is aiming to take advantage of Florida’s live local laws.
“It’s the origins of the transport district in Hialea,” said Ivo Fernandez Jr., co-founder of Modis Architects, who is co-founder of Modis Architects, the Miami company involved in the design of Metro Parc, and six other buildings that form the Metro District.
Floridians need reading
Subscribe to our free Florida with our Focus Newsletter (coming soon)
Get the biggest story happening across the state every Wednesday.
You’re all signed up!
Want more free weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.
Check out all options
Fernandez said the new housing project will create a vibrant pedestrian community that is difficult to find outside of downtown Miami.
Modis Architects hopes that high-density residential developments around the transit hub will convince young people to stay in Hialea rather than leaving to pursue a career.
“Hialea is what I consider to be the backbone of Miami-Dade County. It’s a workforce community,” Fernandez said. He said that multi-generational family housing in the area has supported working-class families, but often ended up leaving ambitious children.
“In the past, all I got at Hialea was just an apartment and a car park,” Fernandez said. “What Metropark has to offer is beyond that. It’s a high-level living with a lovely lobby, lounge area, multi-purpose rooms, fitness centre, pool deck and outdoor amenities.”
MG Developers, a Florida property developer behind Metro Park and Metro Stations, hopes the new building and its amenities will appeal to not only young professionals in the area, but downtown Miami residents trying to escape the rise in rents.
“Miami isn’t cheap,” said Diego Trealba, executive vice president of MG developers. “People are squeezed out of markets like Downtown, Brickel and Coconut Grove and are looking for transport-oriented developments that will allow them to quickly get to where they work.”
The changes planned and planned for Hialeah are rooted in proposals led by Debora Storch, director of planning and zoning for the city. Storch has rezoned areas where metro rails and tri rails intersect, creating a transit district that will allow developers to build high-density homes. The block, filled with single family homes, is rapidly acquired and cleaned up to make a way for a new apartment.
What’s rising near the station?
Following the rezoning, Metro Parc was the first construction to rise in the district. It is a 10-storey building with a pool in the courtyard and 559 studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments.
A similar building is planned to incite from all aspects of the Metro Parc. Crossing East 26th Avenue, the entire block between 9th and 10th Avenue was once a site for over 12 Single Family Homes and was cleared earlier this year for “Metro Parc North,” a 661 apartment development. Construction began last month.
The 420 apartments Metropark West Project is in the preliminary design phase, with the Metropark South Project broken in early June, adding 347 rental units. Finally, one block east along East 11th Avenue, the Metro Station 1 project, next to Trirail Station, will also bring the adjacent larger sister buildings. The Metro Station 2 is in the permit process, with construction of an additional 110 apartments expected to begin next year.
Homeowners are away from the transport area
The neighborhood is experiencing rapid changes, with potentially thousands of new residents moving over the next few years. However, many of the area’s longtime residents are in the process of moving.
“They’re surrounded by me on all sides. I’m in a box,” said Vivencio Bello, a retired construction worker, 84, who lived nearby for 42 years. “No one here buys a house to live in and sells them. ‘But,’ Bello said.
Bello said he and his neighbors were all offered more than the market price by developers keen on buying detached homes, clearing the path to block-sized residential development in yet another city.
“Everyone is moving,” Bello, who is set to move to North Carolina, said of his neighbor. “But hey, they’re paying a good price for our home.”
The diners at Cuatro Esquinas Restaurant, packed in the middle of everything, surrounded in their own directions by planned or already grown buildings, expressed some horrors about the changes in the neighborhood.
“I don’t know where I’ll find people who live in these buildings,” said Moreno Suarez, 62, a mechanic who stops by regularly during shifts at street car stores. “Who borrows them? They’re too expensive,” he added.
Suarez and his colleagues said they expected economic uncertainty and anxiety over immigration issues to prevent many of their neighborhood residents from signing a one-year lease and moving to new apartments rising around them. The mechanics were also concerned that car shops, which primarily serve commercial trucks, would not be able to benefit from incoming calls in the neighborhood.
“There is no benefit to us or the business here from these big buildings,” Suarez said.
Matthew Baron, president of Baron Property Group, who partnered with Metro Parc’s MG developers, said about 10% of the building has been leased so far.
“We are in the early innings of this stage of growth in areas around transport-oriented districts,” Baron said. “We put a lot of density in, and retailers will follow that density, and it will be a self-realization cycle where the region will become its own neighborhood.”
Baron said his aim was to repeat in Hialea what his company accomplished in New York 20 years ago, where he used the low land costs in Long Island City to develop high density housing. The rent that was left across the river in Manhattan has led residents to gather in Long Island City. There, rent was more affordable and transportation options made residents easy to commute to work for work.
“What attracted us to Long Island City 20 years ago was when I came to Higher, I was the same thing, all of those traits, it was perfect,” Baron said. “This allows us to deliver products that could be 35% less than rented in areas like Brickell and Wynwood.”
Redfin estimates that the average rent in Miami in May was around $2,962. For both Brickell and Wynwood, the average rental cost was well above $3,700 a month.
Most of the new residential developments in the Hialea area have street-level space for retail and services. The developers hope that dry cleaners, nail salons and grocery stores will be moved to the building.
While no external companies have yet been established at the bottom of Metro Parc, Baron said, “We have a lot of interest, so we’re pretty close to some deals.”
Over the next decade, Baron said he expects the Metro district to look completely different.
“I think it’s going to increase density. It’s just that retail increases and that area continues to grow.”
