But it’s only one battle. The war may not be over.

One year, a dozen hearings and more than $1 million later, the Bal Harbour Shops have dropped their “conflict of interest” lawsuit against Village Councilwoman Patricia Cohen, who was targeted because she voiced opposition to the mall’s expansion plans, particularly any takeover of the old village City Hall. They said she had nefarious motives because of a relationship with the owners of the competing Aventura Mall.

Oh, and they dropped their insistance to buy the old, historic City Hall structure for the expansion.

Oh, and they’ve downsized about 30 percent and changed the footprint so there’s less of an impact.

This is a win, win, win for la abuelita councilwoman and the Village.

Or is it?

Read related story: Bal Harbour Shops pays for a referendum on City Hall sale

Because this looks like a sneaky subterfuge attack. It is no coincidence that the Shops dropped the suit and changed their stance after growing opposition (and about a month after the original post in Political Cortadito) which include two citizen petitions that are now in court. They want to build a new Village Hall? That means they must have future plans for the current one. Why else would the development agreement include the construction of a new City Hall where on a different Collins Avenue property? They don’t need Village Hall but they’re going to build a new one anyway?

Sounds sketchy.

“We have a Village Hall,” said Brian Mulheren, an activist who believes it indicates that they will come back to buy the city’s historic City Hall at a later date, after the shiny new Village Hall is completed and the old structure is standing next to a Barney’s or a Sak’s or something. It will be much easier then to get the required 50 percent of the voters to approve the sale of Village Hall to the mall.

That’s why the Bal Habour Citizens Coalition is challenging the denial of two petitions, one of which would have asked voters to bump up that voter referendum requirement to 60 percent of the vote. The other petition ask voters to make any expansion of the mall by more than 30 percent dependent on voter approval, also by 60 percent.

In other words, the residents want to have more control in a city where, recent Miami Herald stories show, some residents already control the Village Council. While there was no mention made of the mall in the Herald story about longtime resident Doug Rudolph‘s influence over city electeds and staff, there is reason to believe that he is involved in what is likely the biggest development project in town, if he’s involved in anything.

While two resident petitions to try to stop the expansion have been deeemed insufficient, that decision by the city clerk is being challenged in court. There’s a hearing to expedite that ruling Monday, not just because the Bal Harbour Shops’ plans could go to a vote next month, but also because two of the plaintiffs are over 65.

“The town is basically trying to stifle the voters,” said attorney JC Planas, who represents the coalition of residents. He told Ladra that the village charter does not speak of the requirement the clerk “arbitrarily” decided that the petitions needed. And, really, we’re talking about 200-some signatures here (they only need 10% of the 1,900 registered voters). You don’t think they would be easy to verify? Why wasn’t the coalition told that they needed to have an affidavit or whatever. Seems easy enough. 

From an outsider’s view, it looks like the town would rather face a lawsuit from the residents than another lawsuit from the mall, whose owners don’t want another lawsuit either — at least until after they get their expansion approved. The new plans to add 352,000 square feet of mostly retail do not include any public land. New stores would be built where the parking garage is now and a new parking garage would be built at the site of the Church by the Sea, 9700 Collins Ave., which was bought by the mall last year for $30 million.

This is a far cry from what was presented back then, when the mall’s objective was to incorporate the Village Hall into its footprint. The shops filed a lawsuit against Cohen saying she had nefarious motives to oppose it vis a vis a relationship with the family that owns Aventura Mall. They requested all emails relating to anything or anyone remotely connected to Aventura Mall, which turns out to be a lot. It was a really wide net, but after all the emails were reviewed, it was decided by an independent magistrate that only 19 emails met the public record criteria.

So the lawsuit was frivolous? A way to apply pressure perhaps?

Cohen is not exactly thrilled with the settlement. She is glad that the town isn’t paying for more attorneys. But she would have liked her day in court. “I have not been vindicated,” she said. 

 Thank goodness that the town is not liable for the attorneys fees, after the shops waived that. It’s already cost them nearly $800,000 in legal fees to defend mostly Cohen, who was targeted from the get go because of her vocal questioning of the need for the mall’s expansion and her adamant protection of Village Hall, which is the municipality’s only real historic building.

Read related story: Miami Beach’s loss is Bal Harbour’s gain — Jorge Gonzalez

In fact, the shops should pay that million to the city. And Ladra bets they will — somewhere in the development agreement for the downsized expansion there will be an open space dog park or a trolley loop or turning lanes or $1 million in programming for active seniors or something. Or maybe the new Village Hall is the sum of the bells and whistles for the council to give its go ahead yes.

“Nothing is off the table,” said Village Manager Jorge Gonzalez, who seems to look positively at the new proposal. He says the lawsuit was likely withdrawn to gain favor with the town. “It makes for a cleaner, less hostile environment for the review of this application,” Gonzalez told Ladra.

But a public vote on the matter has been eliminated, now that the mall isn’t using the Village Hall property. All it needs is two votes by the council. Hmmm… ya think maybe that is why they rethought the public town hall?

A community workshop has been set for April 4th to look at the new plans and get community input on what they would like to see. But it’s hard to believe any community input would be meaningful seeing as how the Village Council could vote on this new development plan as early as April 25th. Seems a little too quick after the workshop and while the legal challenge to the petitions is still being heard. It could get its final approval in May.

Which looks like the poine: Beat the residents with the petition.

“They’re trying to do a hit and run,” Mulheren said, noting that both Passover and Easter come between the workshop and the first hearing. “Two hearings and they’ll ram it through. This is a huge expansion of the shops and it means eight to 10 years of construction. The traffic will be worse.

“This will greatly affect our community and our way of life,” Mulheren said.

Ladra’s advice to Mulheren is to simutaenousely gather new signatures with whatever the required criteria was. It shouldn’t be so difficult if you just get signatures from one or two buildings. 

The Village of Bal Harbour is set Tuesday to retake a vote taken last Spring on the proposed sale of its City Hall property — now that there are two new council members who were put on the dais by the people who want to buy it.

Councilmen David Albaum and Jeffrey Freimark, both elected in November, were practically funded by the Bal Harbour Shops and the Whitman family that owns it through their respective campaigns ($37,000 for Albaum and $54,500 for Freimark) and two political action committees that collected close to $350,000 between them.

Now, the Shops have the votes they need Tuesday to get the sale of City Hall on a referendum, preferably on a special election day when nobody will show up. Next, they will fund a slick PR campaign to urge voters to sell the building to them for $15 million and they will drum up absentee ballots from their friends and family.

There’s only one thing in their way: A fiesty Colombian abuelita named Patricia Cohen who is a councilwoman in the Village of Bal Harbour and who is adamantly against the sale, which she voted against in April in a tie vote. She may lose on the dais Tuesday. But she will campaign hard for a no vote on any referendum to sell the city’s oldest building. And she is a person with some influence in the tiny, posh town.

“It’s 62 years old and it’s our history. It’s all we have,” Cohen told Ladra.“We don’t have 500 year old buildings.”

Cohen is also concerned about the mall’s proposed $400 million expansion. She says the trend is against more brick and mortar and doesn’t believe more retail is in the best interest of the village residents.

Her opposition, claim the mall owners and their attorney, is based in her friendship with the families that own competing retail centers — Aventura Mall and the Design District, specifically. Or that’s what they want us to think anyway. That’s why they slapped Cohen with not one but two lawsuits in an effort to get her to recuse herself.

The first came a couple of weeks after the February 2016 public records request for all of Cohen’s emails and text messages about the Bal Harbour Shops and the Church by the Sea and the Suntrust building — dating back to 2010. Also requested were any emails that were related to or associated with Aventura Mall and the Design District and some specific people, like Beth Berkowitz and Craig Robins and members of the Soffer family (who own and operate Aventura Mall). Guess they thought that 23,000 or so emails that were caught in the search terms could be collected and reviewed and redacted in two weeks.

An early rendition of the proposed Bal Harbour Shops expansion

The second came in the summer, and accuses Cohen of violating ethics ordinances and the Sunshine law because of something she whispered in the mayor’s ear at the time of the vote. He ended up voting against the sale also.

The idea is to claim Cohen has a conflict of interest because, as a landscape artist, she has worked for the Soffer family and because she sold her house 15 years ago to the younger sister of Jackie Soffer, who is married to Craig Robins, who is credited with developing the Design District.

One email was provided to another website by Whitman attorney John Shubin (Ladra could not reach him over the MLK weekend), who told the Real Deal that it indicates she was happy about the competition’s impact on the Shops. “Can u imagine a world class  public green space with  possibly gorgeous works of art right smack in the middle of  Collins instead of that hideous suntrust bank,” Cohen asked with three question marks in a letter to a real estate broker hired by Bal Harbour to inquire about the SunTrust building site. “WE need to

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