Miami-Dade mega mall: A new, and shinier, insider deal?

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Why is everyone freaking out about a future mega mall that sounds like fun out in the middle of nowhere that is probably never going to happen anyway?

This American Dream Miami mall that was unveiled this week — after what? A year of planning? —  should perhaps be called the American In Your Dreams Mall.

Before we get all crazy about this retail mall with ski slope and Legoland and whistles and bells and fairy godmothers, let’s remember that developer Triple Five, the same company that built the famous Mall of America, has yet to complete the American Dream Meadowlands mall the Canadian company is building in New Jersey. This Miami project is still a long shot.

Besides, it’s not like this is another Miami Skyrise or Portside soccer stadium giveaway. Let’s look at the specifics that put this on a much different playing field than those things or the successive Dolphin stadium best-deals-ever.

One, the developer and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez — who is championing it already, of course — want to put this mall out in the middle of nowhere: On 200 acres in a Northwest corner of the county that is bordered by woods and the Turnpike and State Road 826, so it will impact local roads minimally. Not at the Port of Miami. Not on waterfront property. Not in Coconut Grove or Wynwood or on environmentally sensitive pine lands in South Dade. The land is zoned agricultural, but come on! Even Ladra has to be realistic, and there is no other future for that property except retail or maybe cookie cutter town homes when, not if, civilization stretches out that far west. Nobody is going to suddenly build farms just outside Miami Lakes.

Two, there doesn’t seem to be any county grabs here for money or land or anything — so far, anyway. In a county where every developer seems to come with a hand stretched out, this would be a welcome change. The mall would be built on 80 acres of state land and 120 acres of private land owned by the Graham Companies, the family firm of former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham. The Miami-Dade School Board has a lease on about seven acres of the state property for a future school. But for all that School Board Member Raquel Regalado — a likely mayoral challenger who has positioned herself as the anti-Gimenez with her rebuttal videos, the last of which blasts the mega mall — may not like it, Ladra thinks the public school system can be paid off with an amount that would allow them to relocate their plans there to an equal or better site. And I think it will be more than the $7 million offered.

Read related story: Raquel Regalado issues rebuttal to Carlos Gimenez SOTC

Three, while the state’s biggest revenue generator is tourism, that is fueled mostly by Orlando’s maze of theme parks, not the sandy beaches in Miami-Dade and the nightclubs of South Beach. So it may be beneficial to have the largest mall in the country — along with an indoor ski slope, miniature golf, Ferris wheel, skating rink, performing sea lions, a water park and even submarine rides — to draw those people from Orlando and Tampa down to Miami for a day trip.

And while Ladra can’t believe she’s saying this, I have to sorta agree with Not So Golden Boy when he says that 20,000 jobs are 20,000 jobs. Sure, they are low-paying jobs. And while I cringed when Gimenez was quoted as saying that not everybody was qualified for high-paying jobs, he’s kinda right. How often do I get to say that?

Yes, as Regalado says in her video, we need high-paying jobs and mid-paying jobs. But we need low paying jobs, too. Not everybody can be the film director

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  Carlos Gimenez, Miami-Dade Mayor 2016, Raquel Regalado