32 Firms Chase St. Thomas University's 28-Acre Miami Gardens Site

St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens is running a competitive solicitation for a development partner on roughly 28 acres of its main campus, and the university’s own procurement page shows 32 firms and representatives, including Lennar Homes, 13th Floor Investments, Stiles, RUDG, Turner Construction and Gilbane, turned out for the mandatory pre-submittal conference on June 15.

Why it matters

Large, well-located NW Miami-Dade land rarely trades, and it almost never comes up for sale outright. St. Thomas is not selling: its solicitation page states the university “is not considering selling the vacant parcel” and is structuring the deal as a long-term ground lease with revenue sharing instead. That is one of the few ways a developer gets scale in this corridor, along the Palmetto Expressway between NW 32nd Avenue and NW 37th Avenue, without a land purchase, and the turnout at the pre-submittal meeting shows how hard South Florida’s biggest builders and developers are chasing that structure right now.

The numbers

The site under solicitation is approximately 28 acres, sitting inside a federally designated Opportunity Zone. St. Thomas advertised the request for qualifications on May 27, held its pre-submittal conference on June 15, and set a statement-of-qualifications deadline of September 11 at 5 p.m. Eastern. The university has told respondents to shortlist finalists in late September. Named attendees at the pre-submittal conference, per the university’s own participant list, include homebuilder Lennar Homes, Miami-based 13th Floor Investments, Fort Lauderdale-based Stiles, RUDG, and national contractors Turner Construction and Gilbane, alongside Sonnenblick Development and roughly two dozen other firms. Those names reflect conference attendance, not confirmed RFQ submissions, since the formal deadline has not yet passed.

What’s next

The university has set no predetermined program mix, leaving proposers to define their own combination of student housing, workforce housing, market-rate residential, hotel and retail space, alongside possible academic and athletic facilities elsewhere on campus. St. Thomas enforces a formal cone of silence during the solicitation, routing all questions through a single university contact, and plans to shortlist finalists in late September before moving qualified respondents into a detailed request-for-proposals round. For developers tracking South Florida land plays, the shortlist will be the first real signal of who is serious about the ground lease.