PALM BAY — City Council voted 5-0 on Thursday, Sept. 3, to tack 11 more single-family lots onto Emerald Lakes West Phase II, the Lennar Homes project rising west of Interstate 95 along the St. Johns Heritage Parkway.
The change amends a 2020 development order on 829.27 acres. Single-family lots in that phase go from 233 to 244. The phase now totals 2,192 units: single-family homes, 75 townhomes, and 1,873 multifamily units.
Deputy Mayor Mike Jaffe made the motion. Councilman Kenny Johnson seconded it. The case is FD25-00002. The resolution is 2026-09. The applicant on paper is DRP Solaris FL 2, LLC, the Lennar entity on the project.
None of that is a new city. Emerald Lakes has been on the books for more than seven years. Phase II sits inside the much larger Emerald Lakes Regional Activity Center, about 1,561 acres that touch all four corners of the I-95 interchange and run, in broad terms, east of Babcock Street, south of Grant Road, west of U.S. 1 and north of Micco Road — the last of those a short hop from the Indian River County line.
The activity center is capped at 3,760 dwellings. City staff said the extra 11 lots stay well under that ceiling. Assistant Growth Management Director Debbie Flynn wrote the staff report recommending approval. The Planning and Zoning Board sent the same recommendation up on July 1.
The amendment also creates a 60-foot-wide single-family lot and rewrites design rules on setbacks, parking, landscaping and streetlighting.
Lennar has been selling the bigger picture on its own website: a town center with about 961,000 square feet of commercial and office space, 370 hotel rooms and 1,348 multifamily units wrapped around a 9-acre lagoon. Homes in the first collections are listed from roughly $307,000 to $501,000. The model park is at 4019 Barracuda Lane SE.
Pete Van Warner, Lennar’s vice president of real estate development, told the city the company is already putting in oversized utilities and talking with businesses that want to follow the rooftops.
“We like to think of ourselves as atypical developers; we’re not thinking about stabilizing this and flipping it,” Van Warner said. “We’re planning to hold this long-term and really invest in this community.”
Emerald Lakes sits in south Palm Bay, west of Interstate 95 and north of Micco Road, a few minutes from the Indian River County line. Thursday’s amendment does not raise the 3,760-home cap already approved for the regional activity center. It adds 11 single-family lots to a phase that now totals 2,192 units.