Rick Ross has signed on as a partner in EnSima, a 670 unit residential development going up in Miami Gardens, the city where he grew up. The Rick Ross Miami Gardens deal went out by press release on July 28, and it puts him on a project that has been in motion since March, when the development was first announced without his name on it.
Here is what is actually being built. EnSima is planned as an eight story building with 670 residential units and 165,000 square feet of retail space attached to it, which is a lot of storefront for a single project. The site has not been publicly disclosed, but the developers say it sits about five minutes from Hard Rock Stadium and the Miami International Autodrome, the Formula One circuit that wraps around the stadium campus.
According to the announcement, he came on as a partner in EnSima Technologies and EnSima Holdings, the two entities behind the project. Holdings is the side doing the actual development. The group is led by founder Lior Suchard, an Israeli mentalist who has spent recent years building an investment portfolio and moving from advisor into ownership, along with serial entrepreneur Shalom Arik Maimon and co-founders David Shapiro and Ali Yesil. The size of Ross’ stake has not been disclosed, which is normal for a deal announced this way.
The design assignment is the flashiest part. Pininfarina, the Italian house responsible for some of Ferrari’s most recognizable cars, is designing the building. TerraForm Development was brought in to lead construction. The team is pitching the whole thing as a way to deliver luxury construction faster and cheaper than the standard South Florida approach.
Now the prices, because that is what most people are going to want to know about a Rick Ross Miami Gardens development. Units are starting at roughly $593 per square foot. In practical terms, a 650 square foot one bedroom is listed at $450,000 and a 900 square foot two bedroom runs $580,000, according to figures on EnSima’s own website. The sales gallery, which is the showroom where buyers tour finishes and floor plans before anything is built, is scheduled to open in September.
For Ross, the hometown piece is not marketing. He was raised in the Carol City neighborhood of Miami Gardens and went to Miami Carol City Senior High School, and Carol City has been in his music since “Hustlin'” put him on the map twenty years ago. Born William Leonard Roberts II, he founded Maybach Music Group in 2009 and has spent the years since turning the rap career into a business portfolio that stretches well past music. He has held close to thirty Wingstop franchises, owns equity in Luc Belaire sparkling wine and Bumbu rum, and has a partnership with the car detailing brand Slippery Soap. His reported net worth sits somewhere between $150 million and $180 million.
He has also been buying property for years across Georgia, Texas and Florida, including the waterfront Star Island estate he closed on in 2023 for roughly $35 million. But buying finished real estate and developing it from the ground up are two different businesses. Owning a house means you hold an asset. Joining a development team means you are on the hook for entitlements, financing, construction timelines and whether the units actually sell. This is the first move of that second kind for him at this scale, and he is making it in the city he is from.
The timing is not random. Miami Gardens is in the middle of the heaviest development stretch in its history, and EnSima is one piece of it. Separately, Juan Carlos Mas‘ firm MAS AJP is seeking to rezone 162 acres at 20000 Northwest 47th Avenue for a mixed use development, which would be a substantially larger footprint than what EnSima is proposing. Developers have spent the last several years moving inland and north as coastal Miami land got scarce and expensive, and the corridor around Hard Rock Stadium has become one of the places that money is landing.
A few things are still unknown. The exact address has not been released. There is no announced groundbreaking date or delivery timeline. The financing structure has not been detailed publicly, and neither has how much of the project Ross owns. Announcements like this one typically come well ahead of the shovels, and the September sales gallery opening is the next thing on the calendar that anyone can actually mark down.
What is clear is that a 670 unit building with a Ferrari design firm attached and prices starting at $450,000 is a different kind of proposition for Miami Gardens than what has historically been built there, and the guy from Carol City is now one of the people bringing it.
