Visuals
Downtown catalyst
A multi-year relationship in which BusinessFlare® effectively served as the City of Homestead's economic development department, acted as redevelopment advisor to the Homestead CRA, and delivered a portfolio of concrete projects — from a downtown food hall and affordable housing designs to market analysis, facade improvements, and a downtown parking study.
The City of Homestead and the Homestead CRA engaged BusinessFlare® in two complementary roles. For the City, the firm functioned as an outsourced economic development department — selected through RFP #202313 — building the strategy, the analysis, and the day-to-day business-facing work a municipal ED office would normally deliver. For the CRA, BusinessFlare® served as redevelopment advisor, shaping the plan update, evaluating deals, and designing catalytic projects along the downtown Krome Avenue corridor.
The work ranged from an 'Uniquely Homestead' economic development workplan and recurring economic overviews, to specific standalone projects: the Krome Marketplace food hall, affordable single-family housing designs, downtown facade improvements, a Krome Avenue parking study, business attraction, and site-by-site fiscal and economic impact analysis for prospective investors.
Rather than hiring a full in-house team, Homestead relied on BusinessFlare® as its economic development department and its CRA redevelopment advisor. The firm led strategy and existing-conditions analysis, produced the recurring economic overviews the City uses to tell its story, ran stakeholder meet-and-greets and business attraction, and — on the CRA side — advised on the redevelopment plan update, structured project participation, and designed the physical concepts that turn vacant downtown parcels into investable projects.
Two standing roles across the City and CRA, plus a portfolio of distinct downtown projects.
Selected through City RFP #202313, BusinessFlare® stood in as Homestead's economic development department. The firm authored the 2023 'Uniquely Homestead' Economic Development Workplan and Existing Conditions report, and maintained the recurring Economic Overviews and talking points the City uses to present itself to investors, employers, and residents.
For the Homestead CRA, BusinessFlare® served as redevelopment advisor — supporting the CRA Plan Update and interlocal process with Miami-Dade County, mapping CRA- and county-owned lots and zoning, benchmarking CRA project-participation structures, and turning CRA-controlled downtown parcels into investable, designed concepts.
BusinessFlare® developed the economic and fiscal case for Krome Marketplace, a 15,000-square-foot food hall to be operated by the team behind Fort Lauderdale's Sistrunk Marketplace on a CRA-acquired downtown property — pairing job and earnings projections with Placer.ai foot-traffic benchmarking, and producing the marketing boards used to advance the deal.
To help the CRA activate vacant residential parcels, BusinessFlare® produced a set of affordable single-family housing designs — floor plans, elevations, colored renderings, and streetscape and home-placement studies — giving the CRA buildable, attractive prototypes to bring infill housing to Homestead's neighborhoods.
Along and around Krome Avenue, BusinessFlare® produced design-forward concepts to activate downtown: SW 4th Street facade improvements with renderings, the 'Homestead Live' / food-park concept, and site studies for the Triangle, Shotgun, and 51 N. Krome Avenue parcels — turning underused, often publicly owned land into visual, investable propositions.
As downtown redevelopment accelerated, BusinessFlare® prepared a downtown Krome Avenue parking study — analyzing supply and demand to give the City and CRA the data needed to support new development, activation, and investor confidence in the corridor.