Aventura was dreamed up by Donald Soffer. He built it and they came. By the thousands. Now his children are fighting to protect it.
When Donald Soffer first visited a patch of swampy wetlands just south of the border between Dade and Broward counties, his original intent was simply to build a shopping mall.
But after seeing the land, the idea came to him for an upscale community created around an expansive golf course and country club, a vision he sketched on a cocktail napkin.
It is no exaggeration to say that Soffer’s sketch gave birth to Aventura, one of the most affluent municipalities in Florida. “Without him, there would not be a City of Aventura,” former mayor Jeff Perlow declares.
Soffer didn’t develop everything in today’s Aventura, but his master plan, which included building the Aventura Mall and the 241-acre Turnberry Isle Resort and Country Club, attracted other developers.
After Soffer came Coscan Development Corp., which built the Waterways; Joyce Bronson, who developed Mystic Pointe; Julius “Jules” Trump, who shaped Williams Island; and various other builders.
Turnberry Associates, a collection of business entities and partnerships, is another Soffer creation. Its projects reach from South Florida to Orlando, Las Vegas, Nashville, Arlington, Destin in the Florida panhandle, and Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
The Turnberry Associates’ website states its $7 billion real estate empire consists of 20 million square feet of retail, 7000 apartment and condo units, almost 2 million square feet of office space, and 2000-plus hotel and resort rooms. Among Turnberry’s properties are the newly chic Fontainebleau resort in Miami Beach and an aviation service for private and corporate jets at Opa-locka Executive Airport.
Today Turnberry Associates is a family business run by Donald Soffer’s two middle-age children, Jeffrey Soffer and Jacquelyn Soffer (pronounced sō-fur). Donald, 79 years old, retains a strong voice in the company.
“They work together and they argue and fight, but they settle things themselves,” he told the online Aventura Business Monthly