Shoma, Terra Test New Infill Law on Fontainebleau Golf Course

• Shoma Group and Terra are testing Florida's new Infill Redevelopment Act on a golf course along Fontainebleau Boulevard in Miami-Dade's Fontainebleau neighborhood, one of the first developers to try the law.
• The law, signed May 21, 2026, covers Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties and lets qualifying environmentally impacted parcels skip the usual local zoning fight.
• Qualifying sites need at least 5 acres, must sit next to residentially zoned land, and must meet the law's environmental criteria, such as brownfield status.

What The New Law Changes

Florida's Infill Redevelopment Act gives developers a new tool for pursuing residential projects on parcels that have been difficult to redevelop under local rules. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the law on May 21, 2026, and it applies across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, the state's three most populous, giving it reach well beyond any single county.

The law responds to Florida's housing shortage and the long-running difficulty of redeveloping urban parcels with environmental baggage. Its biggest lever: qualifying projects get administrative approval. Local governments cannot block them through the usual public hearings or commission votes that have killed or dragged out similar proposals in the past.

What Qualifies Under The Act

The law is not a blanket green light. Qualifying parcels generally must run at least 5 acres, sit adjacent to land already zoned for residential use, and meet specific environmental criteria, including certain contaminated or brownfield conditions.

That distinction matters for the golf course opportunity involving Shoma Group and Terra along Fontainebleau Boulevard, in the Fontainebleau neighborhood west of Miami International Airport. The developers still have to establish that the property meets the statutory definition before they can rely on the new pathway, and satisfy whatever other requirements the law imposes.

What This Could Mean For The Golf Course Site

If the property qualifies, the law changes the math on the deal. Instead of running the site through a traditional rezoning process, county by county and hearing by hearing, a qualifying project could bypass that entirely under the state's preemption of local land-use review.

That shift could make previously hard-to-move land more valuable. Golf courses and other large, underutilized sites are some of the few remaining big parcels left in built-out parts of Miami-Dade, which makes them a natural target as South Florida keeps running short on developable land. Fontainebleau itself was built out in the 1970s around a handful of small golf courses woven through its residential villages, the kind of aging recreational land the new law was written to unlock.

Shoma and Terra aren't strangers to the neighborhood. The two firms partnered on a 375-unit garden-style rental project a few blocks away on Fontainebleau Boulevard back in 2022, giving them an existing foothold and track record in the area heading into this new proposal.

What This Means For South Florida Developers

The Shoma Group and Terra proposal could become an early read on how aggressively developers lean on the new law, and how far the administrative-approval path actually stretches in practice. The law hands developers another route to add housing while shifting the balance of power toward state rules and away from case-by-case local zoning votes.

For landlords and investors, the bigger story is the potential supply of developable residential land. If the law holds up against other large parcels across the three counties, it could expand South Florida's multifamily pipeline and add new competition in markets where supply has stayed tight for years.

What Comes Next

The immediate question is whether the Fontainebleau Boulevard property satisfies the statutory definition of a qualifying parcel, and whether the proposed residential development clears the act's other requirements.

Because this is an early test of a brand-new state law, the project could offer one of the first real signals of how the Infill Redevelopment Act will move land values, zoning leverage and residential development across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.