The Boca Raton City Council unanimously approved plans by the city’s housing authority and Miami-based Atlantic Pacific Companies to add 105 apartments to a decades-old affordable housing complex.
The zoning changes will enable Atlantic Pacific and the Boca Raton Housing Authority to build two new three-story apartment buildings with 54 one-bedroom units, 42 two-bedroom units and nine three-bedroom units in the southern portion of the Residences at Martin Manor, a 10-acre affordable apartment community at 1350 North Dixie Highway.
Originally known as Dixie Manor, what was once a 95-unit complex will be redeveloped by Atlantic Pacific into a modern complex with a total of 200 apartments. As part of its transformation, most of the original buildings are being demolished.
“Dixie Manor was developed many moons ago, between the 1940s and 1980s, and [the buildings] were in disrepair,” Ele Zachariades, Atlantic Pacific’s lobbyist, told the council at its meeting on Tuesday.
But one 1940s-era, 4,650-square-foot building will be preserved with half the space transformed into a museum for Pearl City, a once segregated neighborhood for African Americans that was founded in 1915 and predated the existence of Boca Raton.
Atlantic Pacific, led by CEO Howard Cohen, and the Housing Authority opted to expand the number of units due to the large waiting list for affordable apartments in Boca Raton, Zachariades added.
The new apartments built on site will be reserved for households earning between 30 percent and 80 percent of area median income, said Ashley Whidby, executive director of the Boca Raton Housing Authority. As of 2025, for a one-person household, 30 percent of Palm Beach County’s AMI is $24,570, while 80 percent of AMI is $65,520, according to the Florida Housing Finance Corporation.
A real estate development and management company, Atlantic Pacific Communities won a bid to redevelop Dixie Manor in 2024.
Atlantic Pacific is also planning other affordable housing projects in South Florida, including a 600-unit affordable apartment complex near St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Leisure City; a 71-unit affordable housing building near the shuttered Carver Theater in Liberty City; and an eight-story affordable and workforce housing project with 375 apartments in Miami’s Overtown. Atlantic Pacific and Casa Familia will also collaborate to build 124 apartments for disabled adults in Kendall.Among other projects in Boca Raton planned to include affordable housing, 900 Broken Sound Acquisition, LLC and an affiliate of Atlanta-based Peachtree Group won approval in June to develop a 289-unit, mixed-unit apartment building at 900 Northwest Broken Sound Parkway that will include 44 workforce and affordable housing units. And investment firm Oak Lane Partners plans a 243-unit Live Local Act apartment project near its office building at 791 Park of Commerce Boulevard that will include 38 affordable and workforce apartments and townhouses.