Hialeah, FL Zoning Overlays & Bonuses: Downtown Design Guide (2026)

Hialeah does not run a single citywide 'downtown' design code; instead its architectural design standards for the historic commercial corridors sit in the NBD Neighborhood Business District overlay (Chapter 98, Division 33), which covers eight mapped activity-node areas including Palm Avenue and East 9th Street near the traditional downtown core. 5 sets the building design concept requirements: each development plan must be an original, unique design that enhances the site, with the city's NBD design guidelines used as the reference for minimum design requirements. Infill projects must be harmonious with adjacent development and back that up with written analysis and urban graphic design.

Facades must be articulated with stepping and recessing walls rather than flat expanses, buildings must accentuate pedestrian entrances, and windows must be recessed to create shadow lines, with clear glass required on retail storefronts and reflective or smoked glass barred below the third story. 6 then makes the point explicit: development guidelines shall conform to the NBD design guidelines, which the city adopts by reference and which Sec. 98-1628 describes as a document 'prepared and updated from time to time by the planning and zoning division' that also sets the graphic presentation requirements a project needs to earn incentive points under Sec.

4. A three-member design review committee, a planner, a landscape architect, and a streets department engineer, reviews projects against these standards, with the city able to engage an outside professional advisor at the applicant's cost if there is a design dispute.