GL Homes Wins Rental Highrise OK Inside Sunrise Mega-Project
A single-family builder just got a Broward city to sign off on high-rise rentals, and that is the density test other sponsors will point to next.
The Sunrise City Commission approved a 294-unit, eight-story rental building for GL Homes on Tuesday, the first rental highrise entitlement inside the builder’s own master-planned project near Sawgrass Mills.
Why it matters
GL Homes built its name on for-sale single-family communities across South Florida, and it sits on TREA’s developer watchlist for that track record. A rental highrise approval inside its own Miami master plan is a product-type pivot, not a one-off deal. The commission also approved minor amendments to the underlying master plan to fit the building in, which means Sunrise is telling every sponsor eyeing the Sawgrass Mills corridor how much density it will actually sign off on, not just what a comp plan allows on paper.
The numbers
The approved building holds 294 units, a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, rising eight stories on 5.5 acres carved out of a 32-acre site. That site sits along West Sunrise Boulevard, southwest of West Sunrise Boulevard and Northwest 136th Avenue, inside the project now branded Radius at Sawgrass and formerly known as Westerra Phase I. GL Homes paid $34 million to Stiles Corporation in 2019 for the bulk of the land. The broader master plan carries entitlements for up to 750 high-rise residential units, 300 hotel rooms, 750,000 square feet of office space and 50,000 square feet of commercial space. City filings list the applicant of record as Ruby Centre Associates LLC, a GL Homes and GL Commercial affiliate.
What’s next
GL Homes still has to pull permits and break ground on the 294-unit phase, and the rest of the 750-unit highrise entitlement, plus the hotel and office components, remains unbuilt. Watch whether GL Homes brings a construction lender and a rental operator into the deal next, and whether other Broward sponsors sitting on mixed-use master plans use this vote as the template for getting their own highrise phases through Sunrise.