A new residential development in Florida City is set to include 446 homes and will be partially funded through a Community Development District (CDD). Zamora Corporation, led by Rosa Zamora, has proposed the Old Town Floridian CDD for a 77.1-acre vacant site at the northeast corner of Southwest 336th Street and Southwest 192nd Avenue/Tower Road. The land currently holds an agricultural designation.
According to filings with Miami-Dade County and information on the project’s website, the master-planned community will feature 178 villas, 160 townhomes, and 108 single-family homes. Plans indicate that these residences will be built around two existing lakes on the property.
CDDs are special-purpose governmental units that help finance infrastructure such as roads, water and sewer systems, sidewalks, and other public improvements in large developments. Initially governed by developer representatives, CDDs issue bonds repaid through special assessments that are first paid by developers and later passed on to homeowners.
The Old Town Floridian CDD received approval from Florida City commissioners in 2020 and from Miami-Dade commissioners in 2021. Capital improvements for the district are projected to cost about $12 million. This includes $6.8 million allocated for roads, $2.6 million for sanitary collection systems, nearly $2 million for water connections, and $937,000 for stormwater management. To support these costs, the CDD plans to issue an $8.6 million bond.
Since the early 2000s, developers have increasingly used CDDs in Florida to fund large-scale suburban housing projects—particularly along the state’s west coast—with major homebuilders like Lennar and D.R. Horton utilizing this financing method.
In recent years, South Florida has seen greater adoption of CDDs amid a surge in large-scale developments across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. For example, Miami Worldcenter’s master developers created a CDD for their downtown Miami project spanning ten blocks; in 2017 this district sold $74.1 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance infrastructure needs.
Similarly, Sunrise city commissioners approved a CDD in 2023 for Metropica—a planned community with over 3,000 high-rise residential units—allowing its developer to issue up to $65 million in bonds for infrastructure work on part of the site. Another Sunrise project—the Solterra Community Development District—was also established recently to fund infrastructure for a planned 900-home development by Armando Codina and Jim Carr.
“Zamora is led by Rosa Zamora,” according to official filings.
