Edward W. Easton, Sr. was one of the first to truly recognize the potential in the Doral area—in fact, he bought his first building in Doral, an already existing structure, in 1981, nearly twenty years ago.

Edward W. Easton, Sr. of the Easton Group

The company that Easton chairs, The Easton Group, buys or builds income-producing properties. A full service property management and accounting company with a development and investment arm, The Easton Group currently has projects throughout the state of Florida, particularly in South Florida and Jacksonville, as well as in Ohio.

Included in those properties is Doral’s International Corporate Park, a 300-acre business park that stretches from NW 12th Street to NW 21st Street between NW 97th Avenue and NW 107th Avenue.

In and of itself, the International Corporate Park is comprised of over four million square feet of developmental space.

And at this moment, The Easton Group is building an additional 800,000 square feet of commercial and warehouse properties throughout those areas.

Given all of that, people tend to listen when Easton likes an area—and rest assured there is no area he is fonder of then Doral.

“All the fundamentals of the area are strong—the job base is more than 60,000, it has a very international feel, there are a lot of businesses here, Lennar, Ryder, Carnival Cruise Lines… It is the center of Dade County, and the roads here support development or can be made to, and it is in close proximity to the airport. It just makes sense that it’s where everyone would want to be,” Easton explained.

As a part of his ongoing commitment to the area, it is Easton who brought in the world-renowned land planner Kalvin Platt to the Doral area.

Platt designed Easton’s International Corporate Park, a wonder of corporate planning, which incorporates truck bays behind the buildings, out of plain-view, as well as distinctive monumentation, wide boulevards, with all of it tastefully and tropically landscaped.

Easton, who was introduced to Platt in 1994 while designing the Corporate Park, came to the realization that Platt, with his vision and understanding of communities in search of an identity like Doral, would be a perfect fit to help plan the growth of Doral.

“He is truly a world-class land planner, and that’s precisely what this community needs. He could help Doral realize its potential and truly become one of the finest communities in the world,” Easton said.

The community embraced Easton’s suggestion that Platt be brought in to consult on the future of Doral and he is grateful that they realized the potential of what Platt could offer.

“I’d like to complement our political forces for stepping up and taking the leadership role in bringing in Kalvin. It feels to me like it is a very cheap cost for the results that could be realized, and they recognized that,” he said.

Most importantly, Easton sees that Doral has the fundamentals, the elements of natural beauty, which give it an advantage right from the start.

“We have all the elements of aesthetic beauty right here, the trees, ocean, sun, etc. It’s important that we don’t mess that up, that we utilize them and instead emphasize them, make them nicer,” Easton said.

As for his own role in bringing Platt in to help, Easton is self-effacing and looks only to what Platt might do to help Doral.

“I’m glad to be a minor catalyst in this thing—I hope it works,” he said.