Related Urban adds 5 units, cuts 9 parking spaces in Little Havana

Related Urban has revised the Gallery at Little Havana, the 12-story affordable project it is building with Miami-Dade County at 1275 SW 1st Street, to 135 apartments from 130 while cutting parking to 109 spaces from 118. The Miami-Dade Property Appraiser lists that parcel under folio 01-4102-006-0790 in the name of Miami-Dade County and the Miami-Dade Housing Agency, which is the fact that makes the parking math work.

Why it matters

This is value engineering you can actually price. Five more units against nine fewer spaces moves the ratio from 0.91 per unit to 0.81, and it happens without a land fight, because the land is not being bought. Related Urban is working under a 2023 agreement with the county covering three Little Havana public housing sites on 75-year ground leases. A developer who does not own the dirt and carries no acquisition debt has a very different threshold for how much structured parking a deal can absorb.

The trade underneath it is simple. A structured space consumes roughly 300 to 350 square feet once drive aisles are counted, so nine spaces is on the order of 3,000 square feet of shell reclaimed, converted into five apartments that pay rent for the life of the lease. On an affordable deal where rents are capped, that is one of the few levers left.

The numbers

Appraiser records put the lot at 30,685 square feet, or 0.70 acres, making 135 units a density of roughly 192 units per acre. The building now on the site dates to 1985 and is carried at 21 units and 22,748 square feet, so the replacement is better than a sixfold increase in unit count. The county’s 2026 assessment values the parcel at $5.62 million, $3.99 million of it land, about $130 per square foot.

On parking, holding the old 0.91 ratio at 135 units would have required 123 spaces. At 109, the revision sheds 14 against a ratio-constant baseline, not nine. The building stays at 12 stories and 138 feet above grade, with Civica Architecture as architect and David O. Design on landscape.

What’s next

No groundbreaking date has been disclosed. Watch the unit count, which has moved from 115 at the 2025 filing to 130 and now 135, because a project that keeps adding density on a fixed footprint is a project still closing a financing gap. More Miami coverage.