Doral

Doral is one of thirty-four municipalities in Miami-Dade County and one of the most conveniently placed: just west of Miami International Airport across the Palmetto Expressway, thirteen miles from downtown. The Ronald Reagan Turnpike forms its western boundary, the Town of Medley the northern, the Palmetto Expressway the eastern and the Dolphin Expressway the southern, enclosing about fifteen square miles. The name is a blend of Doris and Alfred Kaskel, whose Doral Country Club opened in 1962 with the Blue Monster course; the resort has been Trump National Doral since 2012.

That position has made it a working city as much as a residential one: more than 100,000 people work in Doral, more than the city has residents. The city itself is new, incorporated in June 2003, and its population went from 45,704 at the 2010 census to 75,874 in 2020. Housing followed the offices and the golf course: the gated communities of Doral Isles were laid out around man-made lakes in the late 1990s, and the townhouse and villa communities along the numbered avenues came in waves through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

The newest chapter is vertical. The Paseo towers on NW 85th Court and 85th Avenue, both completed in 2016, brought twenty-story living to a city that had almost none of it, and Midtown Doral added a mid-rise district the year after. Buyers here are usually choosing between a lakefront single-family home, a gated townhouse and, more recently, a tower apartment with a golf-course view.