Downtown Doral - DPZ

Key Facts

1997

Designed
120 ac.

Project Size
CM Doral Development Company, Codina Partners

Client

Program

5,000

Units
280,000 sq.ft.

Retail Space
600,000 sq.ft.

Workplace

About Downtown Doral

Downtown Doral is one of DPZ’s most intensely mixed-use and walkable “sprawl repair” communities. In replacing two dozen low-rise office buildings of a 120-acre suburban office park, local developers, Codina Partners, envisioned a family-friendly town center for a diverse community in a rapidly evolving area.

Three types of housing (townhouses, low-rise, and high-rise apartments) ensured a generational mix and enabled aging-in-place. The residential offerings were complemented by Main Street shops, a large grocery store (with covered parking above), and new mid-rise office buildings. The Doral City Hall, a county branch library, two Charter schools (including an elementary school and middle school/high school, totaling 3,000 students), Urgent Care Center, and the parks (ranging 15,000 square feet to 3 acres) realized the goal of the city’s leadership to establish a civic identity for the recently incorporated municipality as it emerged from its prior dominance by airport-serving industrial uses. The schools have helped lure top employers and skilled workers.

An extension redeveloping the adjacent golf course with additional apartments and single-family houses was expected to bring the total number of Downtown Doral residents to nearly 20,000 on the combined 250 acres.

Development Approach

Partnerships: public-private collaborations kept project moving through recession.
Incremental vision: first structure, a 6-story mixed-use office building framing the street with a small plaza, told the walkable urban story to come.
Retail innovations: urban format supermarket embedded in neighborhood, not on major artery.
Economizing infrastructure: master plan preserved the office park’s public rights-of-way and underground utilities.
Successional urbanism: tall single-story retail detached from residential towers and midblock parking to facilitate future expansions.
Novel approach to parking: The public high school is distinguished by the unheard-of-in-South-Florida phenomenon of providing no student parking!

Defining Design Details

Walkable Scale: The large office blocks were made more permeable with a network of wide sidewalks, bicycle lanes, pedestrian passages, a broad linear park crossing the site, and a central park.
Civic synergies: City Hall & Community Cultural Arts Center preside over the 3-acre Central Park.
Lean Planning & Coding: simple documents clarify key moves—tower, parking & mandatory liner locations.
Public Art: a special collection of sculptures, murals and child-pleasing interactive installations has been carefully curated by the developer.