RTZ overlay is for a student housing project: The Mark
The latest chapter in the Coral Gables zoning soap opera will play out in Miami-Dade Commission Chambers this week. It started last Tuesday when County Commissioner Raquel Regalado took her Rapid Transit Zoning show on the road — to City Hall.
Regalado showed up to the Aug. 26 Coral Gables Commission meeting to advocate for her pet project: expanding the county’s Rapid Transit Zone (RTZ) to create a new University Station Subzone around the UM Metrorail stop That overlay would pave the way for The Mark, a hulking student housing project that has some neighbors concerned.
The Miami-Dade County Commission will vote Wednesday on the a proposed RTZ expansion and University Station subzone that extends to properties within a quarter mile of the University Metrorail Station. Translation: The county will have zoning jurisdiction, not the city. And that clears the path for high-density, mixed-use projects.
Read related: Critics say Miami’s new transit zoning ordinance = loophole for developers
Developers who purchased the University Shopping Center in 2023, where the Bagel Emporium and TGI Fridays is, want to build a $70-million, sprawling mixed-use apartment complex, called The Mark, which will have 146 one-bedroom units, 99 two-bedroom units, and 151 three-bedroom units in two eight-story towers, connected by a bridge on the fifth floor. The ground floor will have restaurant and retail spaces.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, for her part, is cheerleading the move. Her memo in support of the ordinance talks about “equitable development,” “shorter trips,” and “visual compatibility with Coral Gables” — complete with “generous height allowances” and “enhanced landscaping.” Translation: Taller buildings with more trees in front of them.
“The Subzone aims to promote high-density, mixed-use development within a quarter-mile radius of the University Station, while integrating land use and transportation planning. The ordinance addresses the CDMP’s objective of integrating land use with transportation to attract transit ridership, produce shorter trips, and minimize transfers,” Levine Cava wrote. “This code amendment will facilitate the development of additional residential density and commercial development adjacent to the mass transit system.”
La Alcaldesa also says that there will be a city representative on the Rapid Transit Developmental Impact Committee (RTDIC) and that the county will coordinate with the city “on a potential interlocal agreement to address future concerns and align regulatory processes.”
Good luck with that.
To the folks who actually live near University Station and the Bagel Emporium plaza that will be replaced with two residential towers, it sounds less like equitable development and more like a takeover. They say they’ve been blindsided by the scale of the proposal and worry that the neighborhood will be flooded with traffic and end up looking more like Brickell than the City Beautiful.
This is the same fight that’s already spilled over into Coral Gables’ Planning and Zoning Board, where longtime neighborhood activist and P&Z member Sue Kawalerski grilled Regalado so hard about the RTZ zoning superseding the city’s own code that the commissioner snapped back. Weeks after that public meeting, Kawalerski was unceremoniously bounced — another casualty of Mayor Vince Lago’s revenge tour. She has been blamed for forcing the developer to go to the county and apply RTZ criteria, which is more generous than the city’s code.
Read related: Coral Gables moves to ‘fire’ longtime activist from planning zoning board
Regalado, who doesn’t need anybody to defend her, has been one of the prime proponents of RTZ. And she says the Gables needs housing and the area around the university is perfect for it.
“I don’t agree with demonizing student housing,” she told the Gables commissioners last week, and cited the Vox 1, 2, 3 and 4 projects in South Miami as an example of a student housing project done right. It also resolved a problem with students “cutting up” rented housing, living 10 or more at a time.
“Students need a place to live,” Regalado said. “UM is a partner. They are doing their part on campus… [But] the transit corridor is the place to house students.” She noted that the location for The Mark is right where the university has their pedestrian bridge over U.S. 1.
“The concept that this is not a place for student housing, to me, is mind blowing,” she said. “I’m not saying it’s appropriate everywhere, but you might want to decide where it’s appropriate.”
Kawalerski has said it is not about student housing, per se, but the gradual changing of the neighborhood’s character.
Regalado told the Gables Commission that she would amend the item going before the county commission this week to include the lighting and open space requirements “to give everyone a little more comfort.” But both she and Lago waved the ugly specter of Live Local — the Florida law that allows even more density to promote affordable or workforce housing (which is really not that affordable for the workforce).
It’s convenient for Lago to throw the blame somewhere else for the runaway development he has ushered into the Gables.
“The city has no control,” he said, referring to RTZ and Live Local. “That train has left the station.”
But if you think that The Mark is the only stop on this route, think again. City Manager Peter Iglesias said this overlay is specific for that particular student housing project, it includes that property alone, but not another proposed development for the nearby Gables Waterway.
“We need to expand that overlay and work on something new,” Iglesias said.
The post Miami-Dade Commission takes over Coral Gables zoning near UM Metrorail appeared first on Political Cortadito.
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Well, vecinos, it looks like the Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago has finally found a way to get rid of Planning & Zoning Board member Sue Kawalerski — the only member who regularly sides with residents over developers. All it takes is three votes of the commission on Tuesday in what could be an unprecedented move.
They’re going to use the excuse of a dustup last month between Kawalerski and Miami-Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado on the rapid transit zone overlay that gives the county final say on height and density on projects near the MetroRail stations. But make no mistake, that July 2 meeting is just the golden ticket. As if Regalado needs someone to defend her. ¡Por favor!
The Gables commission has always respected a commissioner’s appointee. When Lago needed to punish former commissioner candidate Claudia Miro — who has since kissed the ring to make up — for her vote on the board in a particular item, he got Anderson to remove her appointee for some bogus attendance reason. But when Commissioner Melissa Castro refused the “recommendation” by City Manager Peter Iglesias, he put it on the agenda as a favor to Lago, who doesn’t want his name on it. Be sure that Iglesias wouldn’t have done this on his own.
“I understand that the commission has the votes to remove my appointee, Sue, but I want to be clear bout why I appointed her in the first place,” Castro told Political Cortadito. “She is resident-focused, she asks the questions that need to be asked, and she represents the concerns of the residents who often feel unheard in these processes.
“Every board is made up of individuals with different personalities and different points of view, that is the very essence of democracy,” she said. “We don’t have to agree on style to recognize the value of substance. Sue’s perspective is rooted in advocating for residents, not developers or special interests, and that perspective is exactly what our boards and our city need.”
As president of the Coral Gables Neighbors Association, Kawalerski has been a thorn in L’Ego’s side for years. She and her group supported the election of the two 2023 underdogs who won against the mayor’s puppet candidates and the three candidates who lost this year’s election. She sends out regular emails that inform residents about what is happening at City Hall (shame!).
Read related: Felix Pardo nabs anti-development base from Rhonda Anderson in Coral Gables
Kawalerski, a one-woman defense line against the Brickellization of The City Beautiful, was initially appointed to serve as a member of the zoning board for a two-year term by Castro in 2023 and was reappointed to a second term this past June.
But on Tuesday, Iglesias (read: Lago) will try to paint Sue as “rude” and “abrasive” so they can boot her from the board. Ladra translation: She asked too many questions about a controversial rapid transit zoning overlay at the Bagel Emporium plaza on U.S. 1, where developers plan to build a large student housing complex — like why did some resident say they weren’t notified and why were they approving this over the summer — questions the city manager and commission should have been asking months ago.
Sure, she was a little smarmy about it. She kept interrupting and challenging Regalado’s answers. Some other planning board members said she was “interrogating” the county commissioner and was inappropriate. But Regalado was giving her the runaround with political speak and development buzzwords. “We weren’t getting answers,” Kawalerski said.
Regalado was at the meeting at the invitation of Iglesias to help the city develop its own RTZ overlay. But Kawalerski brought up the student housing project that developer plans to build on the site of the University Shopping Center, which it purchased in 2023, across from the University Metrorail Station. The proposed $70-million, sprawling mixed-use apartment complex, called The Mark, will have 146 one-bedroom units, 99 two-bedroom units, and 151 three-bedroom units in two eight-story towers, which are connected by a bridge on the fifth floor. The ground floor will have restaurant and retail spaces.
Landmark Properties, along with the architects Behar Font and Partners, presented the project to the Coral Gables Development Review Committee in June 2023. The P&Z board heard the developers, which were asking for more height and density, months ago. Residents at that meeting were concerned about the parking and traffic that would be created. The board suggested some changes and asked the developers to come back and try again. But they went to the county instead, under the RTZ.
They completely pre-empted the city because the county would give them what they want.
The project was not on the July 2 agenda. Regalado was there to help explain a different item: a University Transit District overlay as a way to work with the county and still have some control. Several residents spoke about their concerns and urged the board and the city to maintain control over the zoning and hold the line. Kawlerski says the “compromise” was just window dressing, so it looked like they were still in the driver’s seat. She used the Mark project as an example — she had earlier said the Georgia-based developer was a “carpetbagger” — as an example of what the RTZ zoning could do, pre-empting the Gables zoning code.
The county commissioner has been to several if not all the cities along the U.S. 1 corridor in District 7 to explain RTZ and how it’s better than Live Local Act, a Florida law passed in 2023 that is designed to increase the supply of workforce and affordable housing by giving developers incentives like height and density exemptions and tax breaks. It totally obliterates local zoning laws.
“I really have done everything to have Coral Gables’ participation, just as I did with South Miami and just like I did with all my cities,” Regalado said.
Read related: Miami approves TSND zones to bring ‘affordable’ housing to transit hubs
But she also sounded like a cheerleader for the project, saying that it solved myriad problems and would prevent students from invading residential neighborhoods and dividing single family homes up into dormitories.
Kawalerski — who did support former Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner against Regalado in the D7 race — kept pressing Regalado at the July 2 meeting, telling her that people didn’t know about it and that it was the middle of summer, when everyone is on vacation. She asked her to slow the project down. “Now that you are hearing from the people who will be affected.”
“Respectfully, Sue, I hear from people all the time… but if we were to stop a governmental process just because someone says that they did not know about it government would not function, and you should know this as a county employee,” Regalado said, and that sounded a bit like a threat, bringing up her day job. Kawalerski, a former journalist, is now works as a county manager.
“So, you are going to take these comments and say ‘Tough luck,”” Kawalerski shot back.
“No, we have a public hearing,” Regalado answered, staying cool as a cucumber. She is unfazeable. “There’s plenty of opportunities to speak to all the stakeholders. The only time they will not be allowed to speak to stakeholders is if this developer decides to go Live Local, and then we’re all out of the conversation.”‘
“So, the answer to my question is ‘No.’ You’re not going to slow down the process,” Sue said.
“Your characterization is incorrect and I disagree with you, respectfully,” Raquelita shot back.
See? Regalado — who eventually did defer the item from the July 16 county commission meeting to September — doesn’t need Lago or Iglesias to come to her defense. She’s a big girl who can handle herself and give as good as she gets.
But it’s not for her. She’s just the handy excuse. Lago has decided to seize the moment and do a solid for his developer-friendly campaign contributors.
So now, Iglesias has prepared a highlight reel of Sue’s greatest hits — her sharp critiques of bad projects and even some humorous comments — to try to make her look “disrespectful.” The manager did not call Ladra back but instead referred questions to city spokeswoman and Lago ally Martha Pantin, who said the video was produced by Coral Gables Television from existing public meeting footage. “No outside vendor, work order, or additional cost was involved.”
But that doesn’t tell us who asked for Gables TV to produce the short video.
There’s going to be a clip of Kawalerski allegedly calling students “locusts,” but it might be taken out of context as she was talking about the shelves at Publix before a hurricane — or a Hurricane game.
Why don’t we make a highlight reel of Lago’s greatest hits? You know, the insults and obnoxious comments launched against the firefighter union leaders David Perez and William “Billy” McAllister, the disdain dripping from his chin and the daggers flying from his eyes when he talks to activist Maria Cruz, the misogynistic side comments to Commissioner Castro, the digs against Commissioner Ariel Fernandez, and the lies about Billy Corben and yours truly. Basically anyone he disagrees with. There has to be plenty of raw material to work with.
Is L’Ego’s the example of civility that we all need to follow?
Sue calls it what it is — scapegoating. She said they will blame her now for the size of the new project. “Their justification for firing me will be framed like this: ‘We were trying to get Commissioner Regalado to soften her stance on taking over our US 1 corridor but Sue blew it for us,’” Kawalerski wrote in an email to the 16,500 or so residents that the CGNA represents. “You see, they will use me as their scapegoat for their neglect of duty and obligation to protect the city and the residents.”
Read related: Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago caves on election change; wants public vote
This is about more than one board member. It’s about silencing dissent, again, so the commission can keep approving density projects under the radar, and keeping residents in the dark.
The timing is no accident. Developers want those parcels freed up, the county wants to flex RTZ, and city leaders don’t want any more uncomfortable questions about who’s really steering an unprecedented growth in the Gables. This is not about removing Kawalerski because of her behavior. This is about a plan to get massive projects rubber-stamped by the P&Z board — with new members like former Miami-Dade Transit Director Alice Bravo (more on that later) — and keep residents in the dark until it’s too late.
It’s also a warning to everyone else who sits on a city board: Don’t get cute. Don’t get curious. Don’t get independent.
“Removing her does not just remove a board member, it removes a resident’s voice at the table,” Castro told Political Cortadito. “That is a step backward for transparency, accountability and the democratic process that should guide every decision in Coral Gables.”
But it’s a step forward for Lago and his developer friends.
The post Coral Gables moves to ‘fire’ longtime activist from planning zoning board appeared first on Political Cortadito.
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There will be a status hearing Tuesday morning about the lawsuit against the controversial WaWa gas station and convenience store that is planned on Grand Avenue across from G.W. Carver Elementary School.
More than 120 people attended the last status hearing in April via zoom and Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Michael Hanzman acknowledge that there was a lot of engagement in the “interesting” and “important” case. Since then, the city’s attorneys, joined by WaWa and the developer, have tried unsuccessfully to throw out the lawsuit on technical grounds and attack the complaint as frivolous and intentionally misleading.
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