MMG Equity Partners is lining up a fresh retail play in West Kendall, moving ahead with plans for a new shopping and dining hub at the edge of Kendall Town Center. The group has roughly five acres under contract at North Kendall Drive and Southwest 158th Avenue, where it aims to build The Shops at Kendall Town Center, an open-air cluster of restaurants and stores positioned as the commercial core of the broader mixed-use site. Developers say they expect to close the land deal later this year and kick off construction in early 2027.
Project details
The Shops are planned on about 5.1 acres and are set to deliver roughly 36,000 square feet of retail space, plus about 4,321 square feet of outdoor terrace, according to Florida YIMBY. The layout calls for a mix of sit-down and quick-serve restaurants alongside smaller shop spaces, with an emphasis on an activated courtyard that links several retail pods and gives tenants shared outdoor space. At the time of the initial trade coverage, no national anchor tenants had been publicly revealed.
Site and approvals
MMG holds the site under contract from KTC SW 88th St, LLC and has filed plans with Miami-Dade County as it seeks administrative site-plan approval, REBusinessOnline reported. Recent pattern-book revisions associated with Kendall Town Center are reflected in county public notices on file with Miami-Dade County. MMG and the seller are targeting a closing by the end of 2026 and a groundbreaking in the first quarter of 2027, according to county filings and industry reports.
How it fits in the master plan
The Shops are one piece of a larger Kendall Town Center blueprint that spans about 70 acres and has been marketed for years as a mixed-use hub for West Kendall. Marketing materials and commercial listings outline plans for a combination of retail, medical, hospitality and residential uses across the 70-acre footprint, as shown on LoopNet. On the residential side, nearby components include a 576-unit Alexan Kendall by Trammell Crow Residential, reported by The Real Deal, along with land reserved by other builders for roughly 224 additional units within the wider master plan.
Leasing and market outlook
On the leasing front, NAI Miami/Fort Lauderdale brokers Ed Schmidt and Robert Eckstein have been tapped to lead the charge, with roughly half of the Shops’ space being marketed for restaurant users, according to REBusinessOnline. Asking rents are being floated in the mid-$60s to $70 per square foot range as ownership looks to pull in destination dining concepts and national retail names, CRE-sources reported. Around the Town Center, several outparcels have already been claimed by Raising Cane’s, an auto wash and a Chase Bank, signaling a quick-serve and services mix that can feed daytime traffic to the future Shops.
What comes next for West Kendall
“Kendall Town Center represents an exciting opportunity to introduce highly curated retail to this rapidly growing submarket,” Marcos Puente, a partner at MMG Equity Partners, told CRE-sources. For now, the to-do list is clear: close on the land and keep working through county approvals, steps that show up in filings with Miami-Dade County. Developers say The Shops at Kendall Town Center are intended to knit together new housing, a nearby hospital expansion and planned education and hotel elements into a walkable retail spine for the community.
