The Miami-Dade School Board approved the release of a lease hold on about half of a state property that is now in a co
nvoluted land deal between the the county and the developers of a proposed mega mall and tourist attraction where I-75 meets the Florida Turnpike.
But not before Superintendent Alberto Carvalho revealed the county first approached him about the coveted land 15 months ago — more than a year before it landed coincidentally on the state property surplus list.
While they did not vote for the development, as some local media headlined, the School Board’s nod was the last puzzle piece in the land assembly needed to make the mega mall possible. It gives the county the green light to purchase the state land at $12.5 million, as instructed by the commission Tuesday, in order to turn it over to International Atlantic, LLC, a company opened in Florida last summer by Eskandar Ghermezian and his family, who built the Mall of America in Minnesota. The deal also calls for the county to pay the school board $7.25 million to buy out their lease option on the land.
International Atlantic has already put nearly $20 million in an escrow account to cover the county’s cost for what Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Mr. Giveaway” Gimenez described as a 3-minute ownership of the land.
Read related story: Mega mall gets its public land on rushed timeline
Folks are surprised that it was unanimous. Some expected School Board Member Raquel Regalado to balk, since she has already come out with concerns about the mega mall and the secretive process by which this land deal was developed. 
They thought she would turn it into yet another political punching bag with Gimenez’s mug on it.
But Regalado had already told people that she was going to vote in favor of the release, in which Triple Five — the company owned by the Ghermezian family, which also built Mall of America in Minnesota — pays the $7.25 million for the 44 acres they had a lease option on. It’s way above the assessed value, Carvalho said.
The Ghermezians apparently decided to sweeten the pot, anyway, even though they didn’t have to, with $1 million over the next five years for programs in Miami-Dade County public schools.
Regalado said she wasn’t surprised. “Our people are amazing negotiators. They can squeeze blood out of a rock,” she said. “But again, it speaks of what the county could do if they had a different mentality.”
“I’m 100% for the schools,” Ghermezian said at the meeting in his uber candid way and his thick French Canadian accent. “I’ve been to many schools. I have schools and I funded the schools myself.”
He said he had raised $1.4 million to run a school in L.A. and had schools in Canada. “We don’t charge the parents to bring the children over there. Anybody who wants to come… I have given jobs to the parents so they can bring the children to the school. I give them jobs. And I give them food and other things.
“I give to the schools. To the hospitals, to the poor people. I have 400 poor families that I support,” he said, making his pat on his own back a little too obvious already.
“This morning, the superintendent asked us to give another million dollars,” Ghermezian said, even though Ladra was told the offer came unsolicited from the family (yeah, right).
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