Affiliated Development advanced plans to redevelop an overlooked area of Sunrise by building two city-subsidized multifamily projects with 764 apartments, including 186 units with below-market rents.
The Sunrise City Commission voted 3-1 to authorize city officials to negotiate a development agreement with Affiliated under which the city would donate land for a mixed-use development called The Set, with 364 apartments, including 54 affordable housing units, and 6,350 square feet for restaurant operations.
Vice Mayor Jacqueline Guzman cast the sole vote against the deal, after questioning the cost of city incentives.
The incentives include the city’s plan to acquire the 6-acre development site of The Set on West Sunrise Boulevard, then give the property to Affiliated. The city also would pay Affiliated $800,000 to defray the cost of parking and other infrastructure.
Jeff Burns, co-founder and CEO of Affiliated, told The Real Deal the cost of acquiring the development site is $5.2 million, bringing the total amount of the potential municipal subsidy behind The Set to $6 million.
The development site encompasses a drive-through seafood restaurant, vacant land, and a strip shopping center with no tenants. “There are homeless people that are, like, camped there right now,” Burns said. The addresses include 6201, 6203 and 6145-6185 Sunrise Boulevard.
The site is on the east side of Sunrise, near the intersection of West Sunrise Boulevard and Sunset Strip, an area that city leaders have been trying to revive since Walgreen’s moved out of a still-vacant store on the intersection’s northwest corner in 2017.
In 2024, the Sunrise City Commission approved $20 million of municipal financial incentives for Affiliated to replace the former Walgreens store with The Ray, a development with 400 apartments, including 132 affordable housing units, and 4,820 square feet of commercial space.
The biggest municipal incentive to build The Ray is a rebate of 80 percent of the development’s annual property tax for 25 years. The city also has agreed to give Affiliated $8.1 million to defray the cost of infrastructure investments.
Burns said Affiliated plans to build The Ray first and then build The Set as the second phase of a mixed-use master plan that could catalyze other development activity in the area. The affordable housing units in each development would be reserved for people who earn up to 120 percent of area median income. The median income for a family of four in Broward County is $101,400 a year, according to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“We have a history of being able to go in and revitalize areas,” Burns said. In Fort Lauderdale, for example, “we were the first ones to go west of the [train] tracks on Sistrunk Boulevard.” And in West Palm Beach, “we were the first ones to go north of Banyan Boulevard into the historic northwest area.”
