Long-delayed developments on Watson Island are back on the drawing board and two new projects could go before voters on the November ballot. Miami city commissioners will consider on Thursday two new plans for the small isle on the MacArthur Causeway, which connects Miami to Miami Beach.

One of them would change the proposal for an eco-adventure hotel next to Jungle Island, which was approved by voters in 2018 and could be closed for months during the redevelopment. ESJ Capital Partners, which bought the 18-acre theme park for $60 million in 2017, has partnered with developer Terra to build a luxury condominium tower instead.

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And, in Miami, the old Sears could become 1,000 homes

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A downsized version of the Ponce Park Residences, an Allen Morris project that’s been pitched to the city of Coral Gables at least four times in the last three years, will be considered Tuesday by the city commission. This time, the proposal is for a 9-story building — down from an original 16 — with 60 residential units and 20,000 square feet of commercial or retail space on the first floor.

The scaled down design by Zyscovich architecture is reportedly the result of several meetings with nearby residents concerned about the density and the traffic it would bring to an already busy area, next to the Agave Plaza project. Development, or overdevelopment, is a key issue in the Gables.

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Did anybody really think that the South Dade Logistics & Technology District was going to be the last attempt to cross the Urban Development Boundary, an invisible line meant to keep urban sprawl from penetrating the Everglades? ¡Claro que no!

Instead, the Miami-Dade County Commission’s fervent dedication to and intentional push to up zone farmland late last year — they went of their way to approve it on the fifth try — opened the proverbial floodgates to these protected lands crucial to our water supply. The value of the properties that were upzoned skyrocketed. And speculators and developers can see the cash cow, um, cash manatee. That’s why three separate applications have been filed with the county in a year’s time, as first reported in The Real Deal by Lidia Dinkova and researcher Adam Farence.

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After he won his fake “agritourism” item — which is really a free-for-all at the Redland for food trucks and wedding parties — Miami-Dade Commissioner Kionne McGhee had an impromptu rally at County Hall with his supporters and called other constituents liars and interlopers for opposing his measure.

“Some of the things you heard on the record here, they were not true,” he tells a press room full of people wearing red t-shirts to support his measure, riling them up for a photo op. “They were making up stuff. And I’m sitting there like, ‘Wow, like, you can really make up stuff.’”

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Rishi Kapoor offered to buy a city-owned property for $9 million

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