The Roads in Miami, Fla.
Use History to Market an Area

Highlighting an up-and-coming area in the context of its rich history can help you market an emerging market to clients and customers.

BY PATRICIA STAHL

Located just a mile west of downtown Miami, The Roads is an area of single-family masonry homes that is one of the city’s most stable communities. And, according to local historian Paul George, it’s the only inner-city neighborhood in Florida that did not decline in the 1970s and 1980s. He calls it “an inner-city oasis—scenic, lush, and pedestrian-friendly.”

The area has remained stable largely through the tireless efforts of the Miami Roads Neighborhood Civic Association, which has been taking a proactive role in neighborhood crime prevention, defending the area from commercial overdevelopment, and rigorously enforcing zoning laws, among other things. Nonetheless, aging residents have sparked a dramatic turnover in this community, says Sandra Goldstein, broker-owner of Sandra Goldstein and Associates Inc. Homeowners who have lived there since World War II are dying or leaving the area, and young, upscale professionals are coming in behind them. Home prices have escalated rapidly because the area is completely built out, with very few remaining lots.

“Prices have more than doubled in the last three years, with single-family homes now selling for $400,000 and more,” Goldstein says. “You need deep pockets to live here because in addition to their steep purchase prices, the homes need major updating. These are not patch-and-paint jobs; people are gutting the homes, reconfiguring the space, building additions.”

Settled by one of Miami’s pioneering families in the 1920s, The Roads is part of the city’s original core. It is primarily a residential community, but it does have a few office buildings, some retail, and an emerging restaurant scene. Goldstein and her partners, Ken RosenCCIM and Jim Pollack, recently purchased an eight-story office building on Coral Way for $3.5 million in a bankruptcy sale.

The building, which is located on the only commercial street in the area, is about 50 percent occupied by accountants, lawyers, land developers, and other businesses. This fall, Goldstein says she will move her realty office there. In marketing the building to prospective tenants, she plans to tap into the rich history of the surrounding community. When she hosts open house events, she will invite George, a historian with the Historical Association of Southern Florida, to talk about how The Roads was founded, and how the area has evolved over the last 70 years.