Community Background Report

Kendale Lakes

County

Miami-Dade

Boundaries

North: S.W. 42nd Street (Bird Road)
South: S.W. 88th Street (North Kendall Drive)
West: S.W. 157th Avenue
East: S.W. 127th Avenue

Community Type

Neighborhood

History

Little is known of the Kendale Lakes area in the nineteenth century. The ramifications of the Swamp Act of 1850 began to manifest themselves in the late nineteenth century, setting the stage for vast developmental activity in the region encompassed in the grant in the following century. Under the Swamp Act, a state could exercise several options with the land it received from the federal government. All of the land west of 57th Avenue (Red Road) and north of NW 7th Street was awarded to the State of Florida in 1880 and in 1903. In April of 1896, Henry M. Flagler, a wealthy industrialist, brought his Florida East Coast Railway to the north bank of the Miami River from West Palm Beach. By 1903, the rail had entered the area now referred to as Kendale Lakes (Jensen & Wiggins, 2001). Kendale Lakes and other parts of vast, sprawling Dade County suffered greatly from the killer unnamed hurricane of 1926. By then, this community and the rest of the region had fallen into a severe economic depression, but help was on its way with the onset of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, a program designed to lift the nation and its forgotten neighborhoods out of economic crisis, through government-funded programs. Under the New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was created, giving jobless men work on a host of environmental projects in the nation’s forested and park areas (Jensen & Wiggins, 2001).

Eventually, the federal government transferred CCC workers to labor in south Dade County. The Post-World War II era brought great changes to the area. Nonetheless, Kendale Lakes remained largely rural (Jensen & Wiggins, 2001).

Community Dynamics

Kendale Lakes (and all of West Kendall) once had a large Miami Jewish population. Many prominent attorneys lived there throughout the mid and late 70s. It was truly a bedroom community up until the mid to late 80s. Kendale Lakes is the most affluent of the neighborhoods in the area, with higher property assessments within its boundaries.

As of 2000, Kendale Lakes had the thirteenth highest percentage of Cuban residents in the US, with 38.58% of the populace. It had the thirteenth highest percentage of Colombian residents in the US, at 6.36% of the population, and the sixth highest percentage of Nicaraguan residents in the US, at 4.59% of its population. It also had the twenty-fourth most Peruvians in the US, at 2.03%, while it had the ninth highest percentage of Venezuelans, at 1.54% of all residents. It's also home to the 107th highest percentage of Dominicans in the US, at 1.51% of all residents (tied with Babylon, New York.)

Kendall Lakes has a population of 59,217, with a median age of 42 and a median household income of $50,947. Between 2015 and 2016, the population of Kendale Lakes declined from 59,354 to 59,217, a 0.23% decrease, and its median household income grew from $48,818 to $50,947, a 4.36% increase. The population of Kendale Lakes is 89.9% Hispanic, 7.72% White, and 1.3% Asian. A non-English language is spoken by 90.1% of the population, and 78.6% are US citizens. The median property value in Kendale Lakes is $193,600, and the homeownership rate is 71.9%. The economy of Kendale Lakes employs 29,768 people.

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Business Landscape

El Dorado Blvd. was once a walk-through outdoor mall with many mom and pop stores, called the Kendale Lakes Mall. It was a destination for locals and had many specialty shops like Second Skin, Smatt Bootery, Sentry Drugs and Mightiest Mortals, and restaurants like Fiesta Tacos, the Carvery, Cozzoli's Pizza, Tiger Tea House and Burns Bakery, to name but a few. The southeast corner of 137th Ave. was where Don Carter's Bowling Alley was located, now called Carter Plaza. Mike's Pizza and Marino's Pizza are two longtime, local favorites, which remain open for business in Kendale Lakes. K-Mart is the only store that remains open from the original Kendale Lakes Mall, and was one of the former mall's anchor stores. The other anchor store was Luria's. The Kendale Lakes Country Club was bought by the Miccosukee tribe. It originally was an amenity offered to local homeowners.

Kendale Lakes Elementary is located on SW 80th Street and SW 142nd Avenue in the Kendale Lakes Park, just south of the Kendale Lakes Golf Course.

Transportation

Miami Dade Transit buses # 72, 137, 88, 288, 56, and 40 serve Kendale Lakes. Major streets include 42nd, 56th, 72nd and 88th Streets, and 127th and 147th Avenues, as well as Lindgren Road. The Florida Turnpike borders its eastern boundary.