Miami approves TSND zones to bring ‘affordable’ housing to transit hubs

In what smells an awful lot like another scripted rubber-stamp moment, the City of Miami Commission last week passed the controversial Transit Station Neighborhood Development (TSND) ordinance, which gives developers the green light to drop a 12-story tower next to single family home within a one-mile radius of any Metrorail, Brightline or Tri-Rail, too. Existing or future.
So, basically, this new zoning category opens up nearly half the city — critics say up to 48% — to high-density, high-rise construction.
And it’s all under the guise of “affordable housing” and “transit-oriented planning.” But that’s the PR campaign. This has about as much to do with affordable housing or real transit policy as Commissioner Joe Carollo has to do with yoga and inner peace.
This new law is being sold as sustainable, equitable, and progressive. But critics see it as a Trojan condo (no, that is not a typo), filled with profits for developers, cloaked in buzzwords like “workforce housing” and “smart growth.” As Ladra has said before, it is an insult to everyone who worked for months and had many public meetings to establish the Miami 21 code.
Residents last Thursday asked — politely, persistently, and repeatedly — for the vote to be deferred. They didn’t ask the commission to kill it. Just to give them until the next meeting in September to digest and comprehend a law that rewrites the future of half the city. And maybe find improvements? Could that even be possible?
But the Commission said no. Too busy. Too urgent.
Read related: Critics say Miami’s new transit zoning ordinance = loophole for developers
However, an email from Commissioner Damian Pardo‘s office the afternoon before the meeting suggests that the change is being driven by a particular development. Pardo’s community liaison, Alejandra Alexieva, wrote that Pardo wanted to defer the item, and another on transit oriented districts, but that he was under the nail gun. Get it? Nail gun?
“He would have preferred to defer both items. However, there is a significant project requiring the creation of a rail station relying on some of these changes.  The commissioner’s concerns have been appropriately addressed by staff and, as such, he will be supportive of these items and seek to explain them further from the dais at the meeting,” Alexieva said.
There was not any further explanation at the meeting. Not once did Pardo address how this anticipated TriRail station on 79th Street and Northeast Second Ave is “relying” on this ordinance.
So now we know what’s really important — not the long-term impact on Miami’s neighborhoods or residents, but keeping one anonymous developer’s train dreams right on schedule.
In fact, this is custom made ordinance may also be tied to the development dreams of another prospector.
At least 37 independent parcels near St. Mary’s Cathedral, the seat of the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami at 7525 NW 2nd Ave have been snatched up since August of 2021 for a total of more than $82 million — way above the market rate — by the same entity, Chicago-based LRMF Owner LLC. They include vacant lots, industrial warehouses, multifamily buildings and at least one single family home which, together, totals more than 24 acres.
LRMF is an affiliate of Nashville, Tennessee-based Adventurous Journeys (AJ) Capital Partners, and most of the properties were paid for in two deeds — one for $19.1 million and one for $56.3 million. The seller was Miami-based commercial real estate firm MVW Partners, through dozens of LLCs managed by co-founder Matthew Vander Werff.
Las malas lenguas say that developers are going to present at least one, but possibly two affordable housing projects on those aggregated properties. The AJ Capital website calls the Miami project“Little River.”

A common thread in the concern of residents is that the city’s own previous guidelines — including from another item on the same agenda — define a quarter-mile or half-mile radius from transit corridors as the appropriate area for density bonuses. These distances are standard in urban planning. Logical. Walkable. Scaled to people, not cranes.
But now? Suddenly, a full one-mile radius is the new benchmark for building big and building fast. That’s not walkability. That’s blanket overdevelopment. And nobody gets a blanket like that unless they’re screwing someone under them.
Read related: Miami-Dade and city of Miami to meet re zoning density along transit routes
Case in point: An internal memo obtained and published by the Coconut Grove Spotlight, a must read for fans of Miami government cosplay, shows that there were secret changes made to the legislation just two days before the vote. City Manager Art Noriega approved several amendments that expand the number of eligible properties, ignore minimum lot-size standards and allow developers to make modifications to large-scale projects without public notice or input, which was required under the city’s old rules.
This might give opponents of the change the opportunity to challenge the TSND ordinance in court. But that would mean hiring an attorney and residents are already fighting so many things at City Hall. The sale of the Olympia Theater should get legal attention, too.
Commission Chairwoman Christine King actually tried to shield historic districts from the fallout. She proposed an amendment to preserve neighborhoods with cultural and architectural value from the coming storm of 12-story shadows. At first, it didn’t look like the amendment was finished. But she was assured Thursday that it was there.
But who knows if it made it into the final draft. That’s how fluid this ordinance has been.
When nearly half the city gets rezoned in 36 days, without proper input, in the dead of summer — that’s not good urban planning. That’s a power move. And the people of Miami just got Brightlined.
The post Miami approves TSND zones to bring ‘affordable’ housing to transit hubs appeared first on Political Cortadito.

Read Full Story