Miami-Dade Mayor, Commissioners consider real solutions
The superhero is not coming.
Just before Saturday’s deadline for the mayoral veto on the Calusa zoning change that allows developers to build hundreds of homes on 168 Kendall acres that are now an organic, overgrown slice of Florida wildlife, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava issued a statement full of excuses as to why she didn’t, and empty promises as to why it shouldn’t matter.
It seemed like an easy win for residents against a zoning change for 168 acres of naturally overgrown green space that used to be the Calusa Golf Course by those who would turn it into yet another West Kendall gated community of 550 big, square, identical homes.
There was evidence of endangered bonneted bat activity on the property. There was photographic documentation of nesting by the threatened tri-colored heron and other Florida wading birds, including the threatened little blue heron, hanging out. There were incomplete or inadequate environmental assessments because they were done off peak times — which nobody can tell Ladra wasn’t intentional.
This is the second time in less than a month that Political Cortadito writes about an upcoming zoning request before the Miami-Dade Commission to build 550 homes on the abandoned Calusa Golf Course, which has turned into an organic natural preserve that his home to endangered wildlife.
Because the commission deferred the request last month. Too many people wanted to talk about it, probably. They’re hoping that those people don’t stay engaged through all these delay tactics. They’re hoping people forget that it’s coming up again at Wednesday’s zoning meeting.
Miami-Dade Commissioners get blue in the face talking about green space. Blah, blah, blah. Now they have a real opportunity to put our money where their mouth is.
A unique and organic 168-acre little piece of nature, smack dab in the middle of Kendall, is home to some of the state’s signature and threatened wading birds as well as the federally endangered Florida bonneted bat. It is an amazing, magical, special, natural realm, where nearby residents have also spotted a mama fox and her babies, a Gopher tortoise and a bald eagle.
It looks like the mobilization of Key Biscayne residents against the redevelopment and privatization of Rickenbacker Causeway has found some success: Miami-Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado, who had defended the RFP as a way to fund long-needed bridge improvements, sent a memo to the mayor asking for some changes and more time.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who has been the chief cheerleader for Plan Z — named after architect Bernard Zyscovich, who has been designing this makeover for about a decade — reportedly indicated she was okay with some changes.
