A developer has received approval from the Davie Town Council to construct a 164-bed assisted living facility, despite concerns raised by the town’s mayor regarding the project’s size.
The facility will serve elderly residents who require assisted living or memory care and cannot live independently. Architect Manuel Synalovski addressed the council, stating, “The market is immense,” and cited studies indicating that Broward County has about 9,600 assisted living beds for approximately 360,000 residents—about 18 percent of the county’s population—who need such services.
Plans for the development include a three-story, L-shaped building with 164 private rooms arranged around a central courtyard featuring an aqua therapy pool. The project will be built on a 3.8-acre site at 4980-5000 South Davie Road. Eco Contracting LLC, led by Gennady Kiselman, is developing the property. Kiselman is also one of three managers of 5000 Davie LLC, which purchased the land for $1.8 million in 2020.
Synalovski explained that the location was chosen due to its proximity to healthcare facilities: it is situated about 2.5 miles south of HCA Florida University Hospital and an equal distance north of Memorial Hospital Pembroke in Pembroke Pines. The site is also adjacent to Nova Southeastern University’s Davie campus.
The council approved both a site plan and rezoning for the facility by a vote of 4-1. It also granted seven additional requests from the developer, including four zoning variances and permission to allocate 82 “flex units” to allow higher density on the property. Under local planning rules, a facility with 164 beds is considered equivalent to 82 dwelling units.
Mayor Judy Paul cast the sole dissenting vote on all nine proposals related to the project. She expressed concern over 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 development site had been listed for sale: “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.”
Kiselman responded that lenders interested in financing the project wanted it listed so they could assess 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 in assisted living.
