Atlantic Pacific files for 364 units on a working South Dade school
The developer is pursuing 364 apartments on 10.3 of 28.1 acres at a working Miami-Dade magnet school, land sourced through a district ground lease rather than the open market.
Atlantic Pacific Companies has filed a pre-application for 364 apartments on 10.3 of the 28.1 acres at the Arthur and Polly Mays Conservatory of the Arts, a working magnet school at 11370 SW 216th St. in South Dade. It is one of the clearest signs yet that public school land, not open lots, is where Miami-Dade’s next housing inventory is coming from.
Why it matters
School districts sit on some of the last large, centrally located parcels in a county that has almost none left to entitle. Miami-Dade County Public Schools is leasing the parcel to Atlantic Pacific through a public-private partnership rather than selling it, and the district says the units are meant for teachers, support staff and the surrounding community, not the open rental market. That is a workforce-housing structure, and it matters because it tells other developers the entry point here is not a land purchase, it is a procurement relationship with the district. For anyone scouting sites in South Florida, the takeaway is to treat school boards, hospital systems and other public landowners as a sourcing channel alongside brokers and auctions.
The numbers
The residential parcel covers 10.3 of the site’s 28.1 total acres, with 364 units across three stories and 530 parking spaces, a ratio of about 1.46 spaces per unit that reads as suburban rather than transit-oriented. The academic side of the campus is a separate $85 million construction scope, consolidating Mays Conservatory’s 6-12 program with Pine Villa Elementary into one K-12 center, with completion targeted for 2029. The housing timeline was not disclosed at pre-application.
What’s next
The filing is a pre-application, the earliest stage in Miami-Dade’s review process, so unit count, parking and building height can still move before a formal site plan is submitted. What is not yet public is the lease term, ground rent, or the income restrictions that would define who actually qualifies for a unit. Those terms, once filed, will show whether this workforce-housing model scales to the district’s other underused campuses.