Live in Downtown Hialeah

Glenn Curtiss and James Bright drew Hialeah's first plat in 1921 and named the town. In the early 1920s D. W. Griffith made The White Rose at the Miami Movie Studios here; the 1926 hurricane ended much of that. The town incorporated in 1925 with about 1,500 people and had nearly 67,000 by 1960. Most residents here now live in the plats recorded as Town of Hialeah (9,075 in 2020) and Hialeah (6,783). Two smaller plats are named Hialeah Studio and Hialeah 2nd Studio, with 949 residents between them; nothing read for this guide says whether the studio stood on those blocks.

The line is the City's master plan, and the name is the City's zoning. The Hialeah 2050 plan numbers its districts and names none of them; this guide is its Downtown and Southeast Districts 1 and 3, from 21st Street south to Okeechobee Road and the Miami Canal, between W 4th and E 4th Avenues. The 2020 census counted 18,167 residents in 7,115 homes, and 15,626 of them live inside the City's Hialeah Downtown Urban Center zoning district, about nine in ten of everyone that district holds. City Hall is at 501 Palm Avenue. The Council voted in 2023 to rename Palm Avenue President Donald J. Trump Avenue; the City's web pages use the new name and its map layers the old, so search records under both. Of 515 acres of parcels, 221 are low-density residential and 165 central business district; 9 acres are industrial. What the downtown district lets an owner build was not read for this guide.

Little has been built since the count. The City's zoning layer records 11 parcels built in 2020 or later, with 189 homes, the largest a 90-unit building finished in 2024 at 2085 E 1st Avenue, a block from the Metrorail station.

Water here is rain, not surge, but both maps cover it. FEMA puts 9,249 residents, 51%, in zone AH, its designation for shallow ponding, and at the reference point, on Palm Avenue at W 11th Street, the base flood elevation is 8 feet on the older NGVD29 datum; the maps date from September 2009, and an elevation here cannot be compared with one in another Florida city. The City holds CRS class 7, worth 15% off flood insurance premiums in the zone, and applies the 50% rule: improvements worth half the building's value within five years bring the whole house up to new-construction standards. The City names Hurricane Irene in 1999 and the No-Name Storm of 2000 as floods that left many areas under water for extended periods; no record says how these streets fared. Separately, the County's 2019 surge layer puts every resident in planning zone D or E. A homeowners policy does not cover flood.

The practical position. Metrorail's Hialeah station is on 21st Street, the north line, with trains every 15 minutes at midday, and route 37 runs the length of Palm Avenue. ZIP code 33010, which holds every resident, had a Zillow value of $532,048 in August 2026, up 1.7% on the year, for the whole ZIP. Every City of Hialeah address pays 18.6468 mills for 2025, with no County fire or library levy because the City runs both, so a homestead at that value owes about $9,151 a year on the base exemptions and a landlord about $9,921. Save Our Homes caps a homestead's assessed value at 3% a year and ends with a sale, so the seller's bill understates yours. Garbage is $36.50 a month on the City's utility bill; whether any City assessment is also on the tax bill was not checked. The arithmetic is on the Hialeah page.