How much do you wanna bet that 100 people go and speak against the American Dream Miami mega mall nightmare complex
that is being pushed for the Northwest corner of Miami-Dade?
How much do you wanna bet that commissioners will ignore them and approve the development agreement that basically has the developer, Triple Five, give us a few shiny new buses in exchange for allowing them to build a $4 billion retail center and theme park with a 16-story indoor ski slope, a 20-slide water park, an indoor lake with submarines and a beach, a 14-screen 3-D movie theater and a 2,000-room hotel?
Not only that, but the developer clearly intends to use public taxpayer dollars to make his American Dream come true.  How much you wanna bet?
Read related: American Dream mega mall developer would give us buses for our troubles
Opposing malls who don’t want the competition might be the ones demanding that the American Dream developers vow not to take any public subsidies, but they’re not alone in thinking that. And they are right in demanding that it be a deal breaker. Sure, they hope it’s a poison pill that prevents the Triple Five people from building the mega mall. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t.
It shouldn’t. Not if it’s going to be the huge economic engine success that proponents say it is. It should just make the developers more responsible with how they build it. But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is that there shouldn’t be any more corporate welfare gifts worked into our strapped county budget. We don’t have enough for transit solutions or to keep all our libraries open every day and these developers come and get subsidies — whether in the form of incentives or bonuses or even just discounts on their impact fees — when they should be paying more not less to get the variances they get on everything from density to required number of parking spaces.
And that’s not what the developer said or intended two years ago. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who negotiated this deal and even convinced the state to sell the land surplus at discounted rates to the developer, has said that Triple Five planned on requesting county subsidies for the project.
But even if they don’t request county funds, they could request state subsidies — which are still our public dollars. In 2016, there was a late amendment to a state bill that would have allowed counties to form special tax districts for funding infrastructure work around economic-development projects. It was sponsored by none other than Miguel DLP and would have benefited the mega mall tremendously.
Read related: Miami-Dade mega mall: A new, and shinier, insider deal
It is also interesting to note that in New Jersey, the American Dream Meadowlands mega mall developer got $1.2 billion of tax-exempt municipal bonds for that project plus another $390 million in state grant over several years if they reach sales-tax targets. You think they’re going to skip trying to get that here? Sometimes, Ladra thinks the whole point of these projects is to get the public funding.
Either Commission Chairman Esteban Bovo is ignorant to all that or he was being somewhat disingenuous Wednesday when he tweeted “A misinformation campaign is in full swing regarding #megamall I received this text message that gives the impression that the @MiamiDadeBCC is contemplating giving tax dollars to the developer. I said on more than one occasion that NO tax subside is or will be considered.”
He posted a photo of the text message, which urged him to call Commissioner Bovo and “tell him to prohibit our tax dollars from going to billionaire developers” and linked to the South Florida Taxpayers Alliance page, which seems like an opposition page funded by the other malls.
But misinformation comes in all forms, Commissioner.
The developer has time and time again refused to make a promise that they will not take public funding. It should be easy enough to agree to — but only if you don’t already intend on taking state subsidies. If you do, then it’s hard to say good bye to millions of dollars that aren’t yours and that you can get for free for your project.
Also, if the developers really believe that this American Dream Miami mega mall will be so successful, then it should be easy for them to not only agree to forfeit any public tax dollars but also to pay real impact fees and contribute heavily to the transit solutions that will help offset the damage such a project will have on the area and help get people to the mega mall.
Of course, that would be acting in the best interest of the community, not in the best interest of their pockets. That’s not the developer’s job. It is, however, the commission’s job to act in the best interest of the community.
They have this one opportunity Thursday to make such criteria — no public funds used in the project and real impact dollars towards transit solutions — a requirement of the development agreement.
Let’s pray they listen to the people.

Read Full Story

Buses? Buses?!?!
The developer of the American Dream mega mall nightmare in Northwest Dade wants to give the county a few buses for all the trouble that the construction of the largest mall in the United States — a retail center-slash-theme park with a 16-story indoor ski slope, a 20-slide water park, an indoor lake with submarines, a 14-screen 3-D movie theater and a 2,000-room hotel — is going to cause us.
Buses!!!
They want to build a $4 billion, six million-square-foot project on 174 acres of land, for an estimated 14,000 employees and up to 30 million annual visitors via between 70,000 and 100,000 additional vehicle trips a day — and they want to give us a half a dozen new buses?
Buses?!?
Miami-Dade Commissioners have to tell developer Triple Five — the builder’s of Minnesota’s Mall of Americas — and their favorite local lobbyist Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, thanks but no thanks. Tell them to take their bus out of here — far, far away — and come back when they want to get serious. This first offer, which our county commissioners will review next week, is simply not good enough. Not by a long shot.
Buses?!?! That would be laughable if it weren’t so damn tragic.
Read related: Miami-Dade mega mall — a new, and shinier, insider deal
This community has had it up to here with talk about buses and more buses. That’s just more empty behemoths that we have to sit behind in gridlock. It’s almost a slap in the face. Why on Earth are Transit Director Alice Bravo and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez — who negotiated the agreement after helping the company get the land at state surplus prices — trying to ram buses down our throat? So they can later privatize th… wait a minute. Could that seriously be it?
Diaz de la Portilla told the planning advisory board that it was the transit department, not the developers, that came up with the idea to gift the buses in lieu of paying impact fees. That means instead of. He said the value is somewhere around $5.5 million.
Here we are a county that has no money for the SMART plan, with Chairman Esteban Bovo saying they can’t find the funds for any real rapid transit solutions, and someone in the department suggests that the developer of the largest mall in the U.S., a $4 billion project that will impact our community for decades, pay $5.5 million for some buses?!? Wouldn’t the same amount — and Ladra suggests that the impact fees should be higher — be better paid to the county so it can go toward real mass transit solutions, like a Northwest light rail connector?
Triple Five already got preliminary approval for the mall last year when the commission voted to change the comprehensive development plan to accommodate the entertainment district land use designation for the mega theme park mall. The development agreement that comes before county commissioners on May 17 irons out more of the details — or conditions and requirements — under which the massive complex can be built.
It calls for the developer to build a bus depot — which arguably would have been included in the plans anyway — and buy some new buses to extend existing routes within Miami-Dade’s ever changing transit map. Triple Five also agrees to mitigate storm water runoff, so nearby areas won’t be flooded (wouldn’t that be, again, something they would have to do anyway?) and pay for some roadway infrastructure to mitigate impacts up to 2040, Diaz de la Portilla said.
“You’re adding more lanes to roads and more right turn signals and left turn signals, etc.,” said Roberto Ruano, the sole dissenting vote on the 12-1 recommendation for approval. “I don’t see how we can justify this,” he said. Someone quickly elect him to office.
Read related: Mega mall gets its public land on rushed timeline
Diaz de la Portilla, who could sell you a lighter in hell, said that Triple Five (aka International Atlantic) should not have to pay for the poor planning that preceded the mega mall, or the traffic issues caused by nearby malls that have opposed the American Dream Nightmare. Those competing malls  have suggested the developer be required to forgo any and all public subsidies — which, obviously, they don’t want to do.
“They didn’t even pay impact fees,” Diaz de la Portilla said, looking around like he was ready to fight someone. “You know, in a way, we’re subsidizing them.”
Um, no, not really.
The mega mall seems also tied to the Graham Company development that keeps going through the pipeline, each step at the same time, and getting the same approval. The Graham development — a mixed use complex of 3 million square foot office park, one million square feet of retail space and and 2,000 residential units — is just south of the mega mall site, making for one future busy area.
In lieu of their impact fees, the Graham Company developers propose giving us 8.5 miles of additional paved roads and/or lanes, 6-10 new or improved intersections, an 8.6-acre park and half an acre — a whole half acre! — for a fire station.
What? No buses?!?

Read Full Story