An Allapattah auto shop could soon swap dented fenders for pool floats. A Doral-based developer is looking to demolish an auto shop on NW 35th Street and replace it with a nine-story apartment complex that would deliver 383 units, with roughly 40 percent of the homes reserved for households earning up to 120 percent of the area median income. The plan calls for studios through two-bedroom apartments spread across just over 280,000 square feet, plus a communal pool and several hundred parking spaces, and the proposal is already in pre-application with Miami-Dade County planners. If the county signs off, the project would inject a sizable block of workforce and affordable housing into the Allapattah corridor west of Wynwood.
Site and neighborhood
The project site is currently home to Exotic Motors of Florida, an auto-body shop that lists its address as 2825 N.W. 35th St. in ZIP code 33142, which places it squarely in Allapattah. Business directories show the shop operating at that address, and the surrounding blocks have drawn a flurry of multifamily proposals in recent years. Local listings back up both the business location and the fact that the immediate area is in active development mode, according to Chamber of Commerce.
Project details
Developer Interlik LLC is behind the proposal, which would bring 383 apartments across just over 280,000 square feet, with units ranging from about 352 to 715 square feet, as reported by Florida YIMBY. Plans credited to CMA Architects show a nine-story structure wrapped around shared amenities, including a communal pool, along with 527 parking spaces. The filing lays out that about 40 percent of the units, roughly 153 apartments, would be reserved for households earning at or below 120 percent of the area median income.
Who qualifies
Miami-Dade County income and mortgage limits place the county median around $87,500 and set a 120 percent AMI cap at approximately $123,900 for a four-person household. That 120 percent AMI figure is the benchmark this proposal would use for its affordable set-aside. Those income limits are published by the county and are the standard for determining eligibility in projects that reserve units based on AMI tiers, according to Miami-Dade County.
Where the project stands
Interlik bought the roughly 0.95-acre parcel last September for about $7 million and currently has the development in Miami-Dade County's pre-application system, according to initial reporting. A formal application, followed by permitting and public review, would come next if the developer decides to pursue full approvals. Those purchase and filing details were outlined in coverage by Florida YIMBY.
Why it matters
The timing is not accidental. The proposal lands amid an aggressive push to use state incentives and county programs to expand affordable rentals in Miami-Dade, as officials and developers look to flip underused commercial parcels into housing. Recent reporting on Live Local Act projects and county-backed affordable housing efforts places this Allapattah plan within a broader strategy to build more workforce and income-restricted units, according to WLRN.
County review and neighborhood feedback will ultimately decide whether the building rises. If it clears those hurdles, it would rank among the larger additions of income-restricted housing Allapattah has seen in recent years.
