Controversial development item to be heard at 1 p.m. today

The Coral Gables Commission will give final consideration today to zoning and land use variances needed for the $160-million Gables Station mixed-use development to rise on the 200 block of South Dixie Highway, just across from the swanky Village of Merrick Park.

Developers want to build two condo towers with 460 luxury units, 60,000 square feet of retail, almost 1,000 parking spaces and a 147-room hotel where a car dealership sits now. But they need variances on height and density. In total, it is more than 600,000 square feet — or six times the size of the Aloft Hotel.

The zoning in that area is overlaid. That means there are two standards. The one passed in 1999 that limits buildings to four stories along the U.S. 1 corridor (and for good reason) and the one from before that which, as of right, allows 10 stories. But the developer wants to go further — to 14 and 16 stories for the two towers.

There is growing concern about the many large developments going up in the City Beautiful. There have been a number of town hall meetings and hundreds of residents have attended to voice their worries about the impact these developments will have on traffic, quality of life and the already short police department (more on that later). It’s bizarre how much the Gables continues to grow and develop even as Miami-Dade’s condo market shows signs of slowing, due in part to a stronger dollar. By some counts, this is the 14th new project to come on the maps in the past few years.

Activists have called on residents to show up at City Hall, 405 Biltmore Way, at 1 p.m., when the item is being heard time-certain, and urge commissioners to stick to the city’s current master plan and — despite recommendations from staff and the planning and zoning board to approve the upzoning changes — deny the variances. There is an argument that any such upzoning should wait until after the city completes a study about the future use and development of U.S. 1.

Look for Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick to be the main voice of concern on the dais — if the developers are not able to silence her. There might be a move to get Slesnick to recuse herself after she wrote about this development in a monthly newsletter.

But she wrote the piece after she had voted no on all four variances in the first reading — so we pretty much already knew where she stands. Ladra would venture to say that even before she voted, we pretty much knew where the one commissioner concerned about development, who made it a cornerstone of her campaign, stands on what could be a perfect example of overdevelopment.

By the way, as usual, she was the only commissioner to vote no. And Commissioner Vince Lago is the only other commissioner who sometimes votes no on up zoning. The other three pretty much rubber stamp it.

Today’s vote will be on second reading and could give the developer final approval. The project has been on the fast track since May, when it got onto the agenda of two back-to-back planning and zoning meetings. Seems to many that they want to get this approved over the summer, while people aren’t paying too much attention.

Guess that depends on how many people show up at 1 p.m.

In yet another sign of the growing desperation Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and those around him have to keep that county gravy train going, the incumbent had a private event last week for only invited insiders to announce a group of insignificant endorsements from the low-hanging fruit.

It’s notable not because it was hastily planned and timed right after Camp Gimenez found out that Raquel Regalado was getting from clergy members, the Pets’ Trust and practically every single union — despite a 4% raise many got due to rising property values.

It’s notable because in almost each one of his endorsements there is, um, let’s say specific motivation at play. Or strings attached.

We will call them transactional endorsements — because you get something in return. Ladra may have not figured everybody out, but the public should know about the very possible quid pro quo for some of these nods. They are transactions.

In the case of Palmetto Bay Mayor Eugene Flinn and any Village council members, the endorsement comes just two days after their little government got a $7.5 million grant from the county to redevelop their “downtown.” Yeah, they actually call it that. This is one of the richest municipalities in our county, and they get 10 percent(!) of a half-penny sales tax slush fund of $75 million to encourage economic development countywide. You think there’s no fix in?

For Florida City Mayor For Life Otis Wallace, it’s all about family. His sister, Sandy Walker, has been paid $16,950 so far by one of Gimenez’s PACs for “outreach” and “consulting” (read: to gather black voter absentee ballots).  Wallace cannot bite the hand that feeds his sister. Even if she is a former county lobbyist arrested in 2007 for fraud who pleaded guilty to bilking the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust by submitting false tax returns under a $200,000 loan agreement with the nonprofit anti-poverty agency. It’s his sister. Wallace is just being a good brother. By the way, Commissioner Barbara Jordan is their other sister. That’s why she endorsed Gimenez, too.

Miami-Dade Commissioner Dennis Moss is being a good husband. He is standing with Gimenez to support his wife, Margaret Hawkins Moss, who has a six-figure county job in Water and Sewer (where we already know the mayor likes to hook up his pals). Hawkins started as a single girl working on the first term commissioner’s staff in 1993. Three years fast forward and she was a senior procurement contract officer, monitoring compliance on million dollar aviation department contracts that her fiancee was awarding on the commission. Until 2014, when the new airport director took charge. Las malas lenguas say they either didn’t get along or she simply didn’t cut it, so she was moved to WASA as a — with a generous $8,000 raise to $108,000-a-year. In other words, Moss is just being a good husband. He can’t bite the hand that feeds his wife. And probably him, too. Not unless he wants to sleep on the sofa.

And speaking of where people sleep… Everybody knows that Miami-Dade School Board Member Larry Feldman lives in fear that someone will run against him because it is also common knowledge that he doesn’t live in the district. Feldman uses some rinky dink Pinecrest apartment behind the Mitsubishi dealership and Dairy Queen on U.S. 1. The Monterrey Gardens apartment on Southwest 68th Court is on his voter’s registration. But come on! Nobody believes that. Not when he and his wife, Avis, have a nice four-bedroom house with a pool in the 13900 block of 107th Terrace. Not when he claims his Homestead exemption there. So he’s either committing tax fraud or election fraud. And it is possible that Gimenez — whose sister-in-law is running for School Board and whose son tried to bully or buy others off the ballot — hinted that he would run someone against Feldman. I mean there is really no other reason for Feldman to go out of his way to betray a fellow school board member. Why wouldn’t he just stay out of it?

Cutler Bay Mayor Peggy Bell is basically a newby whose endorsement has questionable value anyway. But she owes her political career to her campaign manager, Jose Luis Castillo, who also ran campaigns for former county commissioner Lynda Bell and helped with Gimenez’s 2011 and 2012 campaigns. Castillo is also a lobbyist for the owners of a nine-acre property located on the corner of Southwest 184th Street and Old Cutler Road who, at the time, had an application to change the zoning from residential to mixed use. That means they could build a three-story strip mall on the historic and scenic two-lane road next to an ecological restoration coastal area. It’s quite possible that the application needs some kind of county approval. Or that they want some kind of county incentive money. He also lobbies the county for a number of other development clients.

See? Each of these people have his or her own reasons to stand with Gimenez — but you can bet it ain’t his leadership or his track record.

Because most of them have had beef with the mayor at one point or another. The most curious of the endorsements was State Rep. Kionne McGhee, who has recently led a bevy of these same South Dade leaders in taking the mayor to task for broken promises on the metro rail extension south.

“Unless you’re talking about light rail, don’t bother coming to South Dade talking about bigger buses,” McGhee said in March. “There’s not a single pastor, a single mayor, a single city council member who is asking for bus. They’re all asking for rail… people were promised a rail.”

What did it take for him to change his mind? Ladra suspects it’s the $31 million study that Gimenez now proposes to do on light rail options along five main corridors, as if a study is going to tell us anything new. But I can’t help but wonder if McGhee knows this is a five year study and that only $7.5 million is being allocated for this year. Hey, at least you can look for this photo to pop up in mailers or palm cards for black voters.

It’s too bad. Because this was an opportunity for McGhee to stand with the rest of this community that feels betrayed by Gimenez. I mean, how much does this Democrat really agree with the Republican mayor’s policies and decidions? Probably not much.

Instead, he and the others join Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez, an admitted loan shark and proven liar, in supporting the mayor. Because those are the kind of people who stand with Gimenez: Liars and loansharks.

And sell-outs.

Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez, Coral Gables Commissioner Vince Lago, North Miami Beach Councilman Anthony DeFillipo and Coral Springs Commissioner Dan Daley will headline a fundraiser Wednesday for Miami Lakes Councilman Manny Cid, who is running for mayor.

The event is titled “Young Professionals for Manny Cid,” and it includes the president of the Miami Young Republicans Jessica Fernandez, just back from a whirlwind tour as a media darling at the GOP convention in Cleveland. Fernandez, a political consultant, was campaign manager in 2008 for former Miami Lakes Councilman Nick Perdomo.

Also on the long list of hosts is:

• Armando Ibarra, Jessica’s husband and local political consultant and strategist and numbers crunchers who has worked for Suarez, Newt Gingrich in 2012, Karen Harrington for Congress and the Greater Miami and the Beaches Hotel Association.
• Jose Mallea, who has worked for Sen. Marco Rubio, Gingrich and, most recently, former Gov. Jeb Bush in his Right to Rise PAC.
• Kathy San Pedro, an AT&T lobbyist who worked on the campaigns of State Reps. Jeannette Nunez and Bryan Avila.
• Damon Roberson, a political consultant who worked for the Miami-Dade GOP as well as the campaigns of Florida CFO Jeff Attwater and Mitt Romney for president.
• TJ Villamil, former student body president at Univeristy of Florida and son of Tony Villamil, a former undersecretary of commerce under President George H.W. Bush.
• Eric Diaz-Padron, the son of former West Miami Mayor Carlos Diaz-Padron, and a Belen boy with political aspirations of his own.

The event begins at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 27, at Biscayne Bay Brewing Company, 8000 NW 25th St., in Doral.

Qualifying for the race started this week, but Cid has already filed paperwork with his campaign account information. So has former Mayor Wayne Slaton and Councilman Ceasar Mestre.

Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi is expected to qualify before the deadline on Aug. 3.

The election is Nov. 8.

The exit of State Rep. Daphne Campbell into a Senate run has created an open seat and the largest clusterbunch of Democrats in any primary in the whole state of Florida.

There are seven candidates running to replace Campbell in House District 108. Count ’em. Seven! Sure, there are other races where there might be five or six wannabes. But all those include both parties and usually a write-in candidate. No other race has as many competing in the primary in the whole Sunshine State. The next biggest bout is the five-way Republican brawl in District 118, which we will get to later.

In District 108 — which encompasses North Miami, Biscayne Park, Miami Shores, El Portal and parts of the city of Miami from the 195 to the Golden Glades interchange — the seven hopefuls are: Roy Hardemon, uncle of Miami City Commissioner Keon Hardemon; former Campbell campaign staffer Fayola Delica, immigrant rights activist Francesca “Fran” Menes, former schoolteacher Moise Duge, former North Miami City Councilwoman Marie Erlande Steril, Indian-born businessman Henry Patel and Taj Collie-Echoles, who ran against Campbell in the 2014 primary and lost with only 17% of the vote.

Those kind of numbers could be a victory for Collie-Echoles this time around. With seven candidates vying for votes, the next state rep for district 108 might very well be elected by less than 20% of the voters.

Right now, it looks like the contest is a three-way between Steril, who must enjoy good name recognition, Menes — who has the Ruth’s List and the Florida Young Democrats’ endorsements — and Patel, who puts his money where his mouth is. Patel leads the pack with $48,000 in his campaign account, including $15,000 he loaned himself. Steril reported $29,000 in contributions and Menes lists $26,665 collected so far.

Despite his politically connected nephew, Hardemon hasn’t reported raising a dime and none of the other three candidates have raised more than $6,000, which makes it hard for them to get voters to notice.

This is a solidly Democrat district. Not a single Republican is running. So whoever wins next month without a majority is our new state rep. Like it or not.

Perennial candidate Ross Hancock is running against another Democrat for the opportunity to face State Rep. Michael Bileca in November.

But it might also look like he’s running against Donald Trump.

Hancock has a mailer going out this week to Hispanic Democrats that plays on their alleged distaste for the brash millionaire GOP presidential nominee. It’s also entirely in Spanish.

“Existe Trump porque no hay respeto hacia ustedes, porque él no los escucha,” it says, or “Trump exists because there is no respect for you, because he doesn’t listen to you.”

Read related story: Perennial candidates may face off in House 115 primary

“I respect you and understand you,” it says on the other side of the 6X11 postcard, explaining how he’s taken Spanish classes — “despite being 60 years old” — to better communicate with the Latino voting bloc.

“My Spanish is not perfect, but I continue to study, as my task will be to represent the members of my community, and language proficiency, without doubt, will be a great tool value for this purpose,” he writes.

“English speaking by birth. Spanish speaking by choice. Democrat by heart.”

The piece, timed for the week before absentee ballots are mailed to voters, shows how much local pols think the top of the ballot will affect voters here. Some observers say 305 Republican incumbents could be in trouble because, in a blue county where Hillary Clinton leads the polls, even many voters are still #NeverTrump. A recent Bendixen Amandi poll for Univision and the Miami Herald showed that one out of five Miami-Dade Republicans would vote Hillary.

But a Democrat using it in a primary is still interesting. Ross faces another perennial candidate, Jeffrey Solomon, on Aug. 30.

Mostly, Ross is using his new Spanish-speaking skills to woo Hispanic Democrats now, and Latino independents in the general, to show that he will be a better listener and representative because, well, he speaks their language.

Ladra wonders if Sr. Solomon habla español.