Avenue West, West Melbourne, Florida

At a glance

Homes approved

144 townhomes

Ownership

Fee simple, for sale

Site size

About sixteen and a half acres

City and county

West Melbourne, Brevard County

Zoning

City multiple-family dwelling district

Future land use

Urban density residential

Homebuilder

Lennar

Street

Makoa Drive

Access

West side of S John Rodes Boulevard

Gated

Yes, one vehicle gate and two pedestrian gates

On-site amenity

Pool and cabana, plus a central park

Public park

A three-acre city park called Makoa Park

Water and sewer

City of West Melbourne

City operating millage, 2026 to 2027

1.7724 mills

Community development district

Planned, not yet levying

Minimum lease term

Twelve months

School district

Brevard Public Schools

Pricing

Not yet released Get notified

Floor plans and sizes

Not yet released Get notified

District assessment amount

Not yet set Get notified

Homeowners association dues

Not yet released Get notified

Sales office

Not yet announced Get notified

Lot addresses

Not yet assigned Get notified

First deliveries

Not yet announced Get notified

Details on this page are compiled from public entitlement records and are targets rather than commitments. Pricing, plans, phasing and timing have not been released publicly and are subject to change. Market figures carry the year they were taken from.

What is approved here

The approved shape of this community is unusually well documented for a project with no sales material. One hundred and forty-four townhouse lots, held fee simple and built for sale rather than for rent, on about sixteen and a half acres. One interior street, Makoa Drive, approved by name alongside the subdivision name. A gated entry with one vehicle gate and two pedestrian gates. A small private amenity tract with a pool and cabana, a central park inside the community, and a separate public park of about three acres along John Rodes Boulevard dedicated to the city and named Makoa Park.

Fee simple matters here more than it would on a detached-home page. You own the lot your home sits on and the structure on it, rather than an interest in a building the way a condominium owner does, and that affects financing, insurance and what the association covers. It also settled the biggest open question about this project. The site was originally planned for apartments. The applicant's counsel stated on the record at a public hearing that the townhomes would be sold and that there was no intention of holding and renting them, the planning director described the product the same way, and the plat creates one hundred and forty-four individually saleable lots. This is a for-sale subdivision, zoned to the city's multiple-family dwelling district with an urban density residential land use designation, both adopted in early 2026 on annexation.

Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Lennar. Lennar and its community names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here for identification only. All community information is compiled from public records and is subject to change.

Where the project actually stands

This is a fully entitled project, and entitled is a specific word. The land was voluntarily annexed into the City of West Melbourne, its future land use amended and the property rezoned, all on the same evening in the winter of 2026 and all unanimously. A development agreement between the city, the builder and the landowner covering the whole site was approved and recorded. A state environmental resource permit for the site work was issued at the end of 2025, and it is an individual permit rather than a conceptual one: a conceptual approval blesses a drawing, an individual permit authorises the work. In the spring of 2026 the council approved the subdivision name, the street name and the gated layout, and the planning board recommended the preliminary plat with conditions.

What is still pending is the part a buyer feels. At the most recent dated city status report the construction drawings for the roads, drainage and utilities were still under review, so we are not going to tell you dirt is moving. Other approvals are still required before a final plat: the water control district has to sign off on relocating a drainage canal that crosses the property, and state environmental and county right-of-way permits are still to come.

No final plat has recorded, and that has two consequences. First, there are no lot addresses yet, and there will not be until the plat records, at which point the street and the house numbers appear on emergency, mapping and appraiser systems at once. Second, an approval condition says no lot may be transferred and no certificate of occupancy issued before the final plat records. The approval does allow a block of homes to be built ahead of the plat, with a performance bond posted first, so it is possible to be under contract on a home that is finished before the paperwork that lets you close on it exists. If you buy early here, final plat timing belongs in your contract rather than in a hope.

The cost stack, and the district nobody has priced yet

Start with the city rate, because a county-wide median would mislead you. The City of West Melbourne's operating millage for the 2026 to 2027 year is 1.7724 mills, adopted as the rolled-back rate, down from 1.8151 the year before. Millage is dollars of tax per thousand dollars of taxable value, so the city's own share on a three hundred thousand dollar taxable value is a little over five hundred dollars a year: a modest city rate by Florida standards, and only one slice. The rest comes from the county general fund, the school board levies, the library district, mosquito control, the environmentally endangered lands programme, the fire control and law enforcement taxing units, road and bridge, recreation, the inland navigation district and the regional water management district. We could not verify the exact combined rate for this parcel, so we are not publishing one. Take the city figure as of the 2026 to 2027 budget year, and get the combined rate from an actual tax notice for a comparable West Melbourne address.

Now the part that is genuinely unusual. The preliminary plat for this community dedicates fifteen common tracts, by name, to an Avenue West community development district, with perpetual easements over the utilities, roadway, irrigation, lighting and master stormwater system. A community development district is a Florida creature: a local special-purpose government that borrows to build a community's infrastructure and repays the bonds through an annual assessment on every home inside it, collected on your property tax bill. It is not a homeowners association and does not replace one, and in Florida it routinely runs well over a thousand dollars a year per home for decades.

Here is the honest state of it. The district is planned and written into the plat, so this is not a guess from a tax code, which cannot detect a district anyway. But it is not yet levying: it does not appear on the county tax collector's list of the authorities that charge non-ad-valorem assessments, and that list is where a district shows up the moment it starts billing. No assessment has been set, no amount published, and nobody can tell you what it will be. For budgeting that is uncomfortable: there is a line in your future monthly cost with no number in it, and it will not be a small one. Make it the first question you ask when a sales office opens, in writing, and ask for the term as well as the annual amount.

More charges stack on top: city fire service and stormwater assessments, the regional water district that controls the canal system here, and solid waste, all on the same bill. Then homeowners association dues, separate from and additional to any district assessment, also unpublished.

Flood and insurance on the Space Coast

This one needs stating exactly, because the simple version is wrong in both directions. Part of the site is mapped inside the special flood hazard area and part of it is mapped outside it. A reading across the whole property returns a mix of classes: some land carries the higher-hazard designation that triggers a lender's flood insurance requirement, some a lower-probability designation, and some is mapped as minimal hazard. The mapped base flood elevation is not populated here, so there is no elevation figure to quote.

So flood here is a lot-level question, not a community-level one, and nobody can answer it for your home yet because your home does not have a lot. Two units a hundred feet apart can land on opposite sides of the line. The city's own file points the same way: staff note that finished-floor elevation requirements have become steadily more conservative, which is why newer subdivisions here end up with varying floor heights across one site. When you choose a homesite, ask for the flood determination and the elevation certificate for that lot in writing, before you are past the point of walking away.

On insurance generally, this is coastal Florida and you should budget like it. The site sits roughly eight miles inland of the beachfront, which helps with windstorm pricing but does not exempt you from it. Two things work in your favour. New construction is built to the current wind code, with the straps, fastening schedule and usually the glazing that earn wind mitigation credits, the biggest single lever on a Florida premium. And in a townhome the association's master policy typically carries the roof and exterior, which shifts the most expensive risk off your own policy and puts an owner's premium below what the same person would pay on a detached house. Get a bound quote on the specific plan and lot before your inspection period closes.

Townhome living, party walls and the twelve-month rule

A townhome is a different product from a detached house and the differences are mostly in the paperwork. Expect the association here to carry what is shared: the gates, the pool and cabana, the central park, the private street, common-area landscaping and almost certainly the front yards, exterior and roof maintenance, and a master policy over the structures. That is why dues on this product run higher than on a detached-home community with the same amenities, and why your own maintenance list is short. None of it is published yet, so read the declaration and the budget when they exist, and look at what the reserve schedule says about roofs and paint, the two items that drive special assessments.

Party walls are the other adjustment. Ask whether the demising walls are built to a rated assembly and whether there is a sound rating, because builders vary and the answer rarely appears in a brochure, and ask what the declaration says about repairs to a shared wall. Ask about parking too: the plan is dense, and the development agreement required air conditioning condensers to sit in rear yards only, which tells you how tight the side yards are.

Then the clause that makes this community different. During the approval hearings the council pressed hard on whether these homes would end up as rentals, and the developer agreed to a restriction prohibiting any lease shorter than twelve months, written into the association documents. For an owner-occupier that is a real protection and a rarer one than you might think: it rules out weekly and monthly rentals and keeps the community from drifting into short-stay use. If you were planning on short-term rental income, this is not the community for it.

Jobs, the commute and what is nearby

The location is the strongest argument for this site, and the argument is about work. The Melbourne employment core sits a few miles east along Ellis Road: the defence and aerospace electronics campus that anchors the local engineering job market, the aircraft manufacturing cluster at the airport, and Melbourne Orlando International Airport itself, all within roughly three to five miles in a straight line. Florida Tech and downtown Melbourne are about five to six miles east. Palm Bay, the other half of this metro's job base, is around eight miles southeast. These are straight-line distances rather than measured drive times.

The road network is why it works. John Rodes Boulevard runs north to Ellis Road within half a mile, and the site sits beside the St. Johns Heritage Parkway corridor, the north-south bypass built to feed Interstate 95 without putting you through town. Ellis Road itself is being widened as an active city capital project: short-term disruption, long-term capacity.

Going the other way, the Indialantic beachfront is about eight miles east, a short run rather than an outing. Patrick Space Force Base is around eleven miles northeast and Port Canaveral around twenty-two miles north. Be realistic about the far end: Kennedy Space Center is more than thirty miles north in a straight line and a forty-five to sixty minute drive in practice. This is a Melbourne and Palm Bay commute play with weekend access to the beaches and the port, not a north-Brevard launch-industry address.

Schools

Brevard Public Schools serves the entire county, so the district is not in question. The specific schools are, and we would rather say so than guess. Attendance is assigned by address, this community has no lot addresses yet, and the street does not physically exist. The approval record does confirm that school concurrency has been met and that the builder must obtain a final capacity determination from the school board before the final plat is approved, so capacity is being handled rather than deferred. Once your lot has a real address, run it through the district's own locator, and if you are buying for a particular school, make that a written condition of the contract.

The honest tradeoffs

The neighbours here are industrial, and that is the first thing to understand. The city's own staff review places this site south of an existing industrial use and west of an industrial park, and the parcels are still coded as vacant commercial and vacant industrial land on the tax roll. Other active projects in this corridor are warehousing, light industrial and motor-freight parking. This is an infill residential island inside a working light-industrial corridor. For some buyers that is fine, and it is a large part of why the location sits this close to the job centres. For others it is a deal breaker, better learned now than on a second visit.

John Rodes Boulevard is an arterial that serves that industry, and Ellis Road is being widened half a mile north. Expect truck traffic and road noise along the frontage. A gate stops cut-through traffic inside the community; it does nothing about an arterial outside it. If you are sensitive to road noise, where a specific building sits within the site will matter, so ask before you pick a homesite.

Be clear-eyed about the public park too. Makoa Park is a three-acre tract along the boulevard that the developer dedicated to the city in place of paying recreation fees, and it is a walking loop around the stormwater pond. Council members said plainly during the hearings that it is not programmed park space. It is a pleasant public amenity, not a playground and a ball field. The real on-site amenities are the pool and cabana inside the gate and the central park.

Buying new construction before a sales office opens

Nothing has been released for sale at this community: no pricing, no floor plans, no sales office, no release schedule. So be precise about what an interest list is and is not. It is not a reservation, it does not hold a homesite, it does not set a price and it gives you no contractual priority. What it does is make sure you are told the day something is published rather than six weeks later, which in a first release decides whether you choose from the whole site plan or from what is left.

The person at the desk in a builder's sales office works for the builder. They are usually helpful and usually pleasant, and they are also paid to represent the party on the other side of your contract. You are entitled to your own representation, and on new construction it generally costs you nothing extra, because builders budget for a buyer's agent whether or not you bring one. The part that catches people is timing. Most builders will only recognise your agent if that agent is named at your first visit or registration. Hand over your details with nobody on your side and in many cases you have given away the right to be represented for the rest of the transaction. With no sales office here yet, your first contact is more likely to be an online registration than a walk-in, which makes the sequencing even easier to get wrong.

A pre-construction contract is also not a resale contract. The deposit structure and when deposits go hard, the specification allowances, what happens when the schedule slips, whether the price is locked against cost escalation, the warranty and its term, and whether you can bring your own inspector at frame stage and again before closing: those are the terms that decide how it goes. On this project add two. Ask what the district assessment will be and for how long, and ask how final plat recording is handled in the contract, because here it is the event that permits your closing at all.

Other names this goes by

You will find this community under more than one name, because it acquired its real one partway through the approval process. Avenue West is the subdivision name the city council adopted unanimously in the spring of 2026 and the name the city has used since. Before that, and still today in the state permitting record and on the preliminary plat title block, the project runs as Lennar West Melbourne Townhomes, and current city documents style it as Avenue West, formerly known as Lennar West Melbourne Townhomes. Some records call it Avenue West Townhomes. All the same one hundred and forty-four homes on Makoa Drive.

The confusion worth guarding against is the city one. This is West Melbourne, not Melbourne, and records for this site carry a Melbourne postal city that does not match the jurisdiction. Makoa Drive is the only interior street name approved so far, so it is the one to watch on a mapping app: when it appears, the plat has recorded.

Questions