A developer has received approval from the Davie Town Council to construct a 164-bed assisted living facility, following a council meeting last week. The project, which faced opposition from Mayor Judy Paul, will serve elderly residents who require assisted living or memory care.
Manuel Synalovski, the architect for the development, told the council that Broward County currently offers about 9,600 beds in assisted living facilities. He noted that approximately 18 percent of the county’s population—about 360,000 people—are in need of such services. “The market is immense,” Synalovski said.
The proposed facility will be built on a 3.8-acre site at 4980-5000 South Davie Road and will feature 164 private rooms arranged in an L-shaped, three-story building with a central courtyard and an aqua therapy pool. The developer is Eco Contracting LLC, led by Gennady Kiselman. Kiselman is also one of three managers of 5000 Davie LLC, which purchased the property for $1.8 million in 2020.
Synalovski explained that the location was chosen because it is situated near several key institutions: it lies just south of HCA Florida University Hospital and close to Nova Southeastern University’s Davie campus, as well as north of Memorial Hospital Pembroke in Pembroke Pines.
The town council approved both the site plan and rezoning request for the facility by a vote of 4-1. Additionally, seven other proposals related to the project were approved by similar margins. These included four variances from existing zoning rules and an allocation of 82 “flex units,” allowing for greater density than would typically be permitted under local regulations.
Mayor Judy Paul cast the lone dissenting vote on all nine proposals related to the development. She expressed concerns about its scale: “When you first came in with this, I had asked you to do something smaller,” she told Kiselman and Synalovski during the meeting. “You wouldn’t have needed so many variances. You should have done something smaller. Instead, you came in asking for flex units to make it bigger.”
Paul also questioned why the property has been listed for sale since its acquisition: “That was very concerning to me,” she said. “We’ve seen this happen before, where we approved something, and they put it up for sale and it never gets built.”
In response, Kiselman stated that lenders evaluating financing options requested that he list the site for sale as a way to determine its value: “It’s been on the market for four years just to establish the value,” he said. He added that his intention is to build and then sell the completed facility to a major operator specializing in assisted living properties.
