Sunrise city commissioners have given GL Homes the green light to build a 294-unit apartment highrise on a 5.5-acre parcel within its sprawling Radius at Sawgrass development near Sawgrass Mills. The eight-story building will rise next to an existing lake on a property that sits southwest of the intersection of West Sunrise Boulevard and Northwest 136th Avenue, marking a notable shift for a homebuilder long associated with sprawling single-family communities rather than rental highrises.
The Sunrise City Commission approved the project's site plan on Tuesday, along with minor amendments to the broader Radius at Sawgrass master plan, according to The Real Deal. GL Homes, led by president Misha Ezratti, did not respond to requests for comment on the approval, the outlet reported. The apartment complex will include one-, two- and three-bedroom units alongside amenities such as a fitness center, swimming pool, yoga lawn, dog wash and pickleball court.
A 32-Acre Master Plan Taking Shape
The apartment tower is just one piece of the 32-acre Radius at Sawgrass master plan, a site formerly known as Westerra Phase 1. The plan divides the property into five sections along the south side of West Sunrise Boulevard and allows for as many as 750 high-rise residential units in total, according to the same report. GL Homes acquired the bulk of the property from Stiles Corporation in 2019 for $34 million, a jump from the $15.6 million Stiles paid for it back in 2005.
The location sits at a heavily trafficked node in western Broward County. Marketing materials from GL Commercial show the site anchored at the SR 869 Sawgrass Expressway interchange, where that highway carries more than 105,000 vehicles daily and West Sunrise Boulevard carries another 47,000. It's also adjacent to the 612-acre Sawgrass International Corporate Park, which The Real Deal has described as Broward County's largest industrial and office park, bounded by I-595, I-75 and Sunrise Boulevard.
Atlas Air's Possible Flight Training Center
Beyond the apartments, the master plan calls for up to 750,000 square feet of office space, 50,000 square feet of commercial space, and up to 300 hotel rooms — with 250,000 square feet of that office space and the hotel earmarked for corporate housing potentially tied to Atlas Air Worldwide, a New York-based air cargo carrier. Per the South Florida Business Journal's 2024 reporting, Atlas Air may lease space at the development and could use a 300-room hotel for corporate housing while developing a flight training and simulator facility on-site. A city staff report cited by the outlet notes the office space is planned to include a flight training center.
City of Sunrise Development Review Committee records from January 2024 confirm the flight training center and corporate housing hotel components of the master plan were formally submitted under a proposal tied to Atlas Air, according to municipal filings. Atlas Air did not respond to requests for comment, per the same account. It remains unclear whether those commercial leases and permits will ultimately be finalized, since the flight-training and hotel components appear to still be in earlier stages than the now-approved residential site plan.
An 18-Month Clock and a Homebuilder's Pivot
GL Homes now has 18 months to obtain a building permit for the multifamily development, and the site-plan approval will expire if that deadline isn't met, the report states. The approval represents a meaningful pivot for GL Homes, a company that has built its reputation on master-planned, single-family communities across Florida rather than rental apartment towers.
Founded in 1976 by Itzhak Ezratti, GL Homes is approaching its 50th anniversary this year, having grown into one of Florida's largest private homebuilders, with communities housing more than 100,000 residents statewide, according to reporting from Global News Lines. Misha Ezratti, the company's current president, represents the second generation of family leadership at the firm as it now moves into high-rise multifamily construction.
Rental Demand Building in Western Broward
The Sunrise project lands amid tight multifamily conditions across Broward County. Cushman & Wakefield's fourth-quarter 2025 market data showed the county's overall multifamily vacancy rate at just 3.2%, with average monthly rents of $2,423 — while the Plantation/Sunrise submarket specifically averaged $2,308 a month. Southeast Florida overall ranks No. 1 in the nation for total multifamily housing construction volume, according to research from MIAMI REALTORS, which points to state measures like the Live Local Act as accelerants for high-density housing proposals across South Florida.
The Radius at Sawgrass site isn't the only major mixed-use project reshaping western Sunrise. Nearby, Metropica Development LLC has been building the $1.5 billion Metropica master-planned community, envisioned to eventually include 2,250 residential units, 485,000 square feet of retail and 650,000 square feet of office space. And just down the road sits Sawgrass Mills, the Simon Property Group-owned mall reported as one of the nation's most valuable REIT-owned shopping centers, generating $1,149 per square foot with an estimated valuation of $4.1 billion.
GL Homes' move into rental highrises follows a string of other South Florida projects for the developer, including a nearly 1,000-home West Boca push and a stalled Kendall proposal that ran into neighborhood pushback earlier this year. For now, the Sunrise apartment tower has cleared its biggest municipal hurdle, but the fate of the flight training center, corporate hotel and remaining office space within the larger Radius at Sawgrass plan remains to be seen.
