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churning out brown water, I hear — now, all of a sudden, 
nobody is saying that can’t happen and, indeed, new Water and Sewer Department Director Lester Sola says the county can handle it.
Say what? Can’t you just see the mice scrambling?
Gimenez said again, and seemingly without an inkling as to how bad it smells, that little more than a year ago, the “private company approached me and senior members of my administration. They had an interest in vacant land” at the intersection of I-75 and the Florida Turnpike, which Ghermezian admitted was key to the development.
Read related story: Miami-Dade mega mall: A new, and shinier, insider deal
The whole thing stinks of an inside deal that has been put on the fast track. I mean, this is the very definition of fast track, isn’t it? Why is Gimenez acting as a self-described facilitator or pass-through to get a rich developer — who, by the way, says he doesn’t need anything from the county — a dream price on land available only to government?
Actually, Ladra found Eskandar Ghermezian‘s visit to commission chambers rather refreshing. Everybody should talk to Commissioner Barbara Jordan and the rest of ’em the way that he did. Those two locked horns over how many people 
would be hired to monitor the hiring of local residents and minority vendors. The agreement with the county says three. Jordan wanted six. Ghermezian nearly flipped out. He doesn’t even want one. He laughed at the notion.
“I am also at an age where I know I can’t do any more after this. I don’t have to do it. I don’t need to it. I d onot have to build here. Really, I don’t need it,” he said over and over, because they are so rich already he doesn’t really need the headache of dealing with Miami-Dade to build a mega mall the way he sees fit.
“I get it, I get it. I don’t get it, I don’t get it,” he said in super candid, broken English that had the audience in stitches.
“Don’t make it hard for me, please, so I have to report to anybody,” Ghermezian said, asking also not tio be subjected to “20 conditions.” Does he know the county or what? His son stood next to him, head down most of the time, maybe trying to hide that smile and his obvious bulging pride from commissioners.
The only thing I didn’t like much was the threatening manner in which he pulled that same old hat trick every sports team owner has pulled: There are four, count ’em, four cities knocking down his door for Ghermezian to build a mega mall there.
Please. We are Miami. You’re kinda cute and bold, Mr. Ghermezian, but go to Albuquerque if you want and build your theme park there.
Still, he sounded a whole lot more genuine than the speaker after speaker — mostly architects and builders who Ladra can’t help but think want a piece of the pie — who spoke in favor of this “major family attraction” because of the jobs or because they could take their kids.
Manuel Diner even suggested that we need a mega mall to put Miami on the international map. “We don’t have that which makes us an international city. We need something more,” Diner said. “When I saw it in the paper, I thought ‘This is what we needed.'”
Really? Really? This is what Miami needs to be more international? A mall like the one in Minnesota? Yeah, because Minnesota is such an international city. Much more so than Miami.
The speakers and the mayor weren’t the only cheerleaders. Several commissioners talked about having stepping stone jobs and nearly tripped all over themselves to thank Ghermezian for meeting with them personally and then coming before them Tuesday.
Chairman Jean Monestime said he was moved by Ghermezian’s description of the project as his legacy. “And what a better place than South Florida for that? This statement is what turned me to consider your development positively,” Monestime said.
Commissioner Rebeca Sosa, the former chair, warned her colleagues about making too many demands.
“This is why people go to other counties — 
it’s because of how hard we make it,” Sosa said. “We should welcome whoever comes and invests without using taxpayer dollars. We are the vehicle to make it happen, so our people out there can have jobs, can bring bread to the table, and our students also can have jobs, and summer jobs.
“Who am I to set conditions when we are not investing dollars?”
Maybe they’re not our dollars. But the developer wouldn’t be getting that sweet price without the county.
Commissioner Esteban Bovo gets it. “The only reason we can make any conditions, is because we act as a pass through. Either we are going to welcome people to invest in our community or we’re just going to pile it on so they say, ‘Let me go somewhere else.’ If this is the welcome mat we are laying for folks, they are going to go to Broward, Palm Beach. They are going to go somewhere else,” Bovo said, adding that he would address traffic another day.
“The area most impacted is my district and I am concerned about quality of life issues. But that is not before us today. All we have is the purchase of the land,” Bovo said.
Gimenez called it a 3-minute transaction because the Ghermezian’s — who have already put $20 million in escrow for the land — will have it turned over to them immediately.
It had its share of detractors, too. But only Commissioners Xavier Suarez and Daniella Levine Cava voted against it.
Levine Cava said that the fast track (my words, not hers) had not given commissioners enough time to review and press for better wages “as we have done with other developers when we are essential to its approval.
“We also can press for clear transportation conditions. We need some economic analysis to ensure ourselves that we are not hurting existing malls,” Levine Cava said.
“This was negotiated in secrecy beyond public scrutiny and its insufficient time for the public to express their concern. The public deserves a more meaningful opportunity to be heard,” she said, adding that neighbors need to have more input and that she would have been willing to call a special meeting later in the county’s 40-day window.
“I am concerned about the speed with which this is moving forward,” she said, admonishing the mayor. “This is not the first time you negotiate things and they come to us at the zero hour. I’m sure there is a reason… but it does put us in a difficult situation.”
Said X: “We are kind of put under a deadline here that doesn’t seem 100 percent fair and transparent.”
Even Jordan, who wasn’t entirely comfortable with the details said she was concerned that the mayor asked this to sidestep the committee process because of the timeline.
“We really had an opportunity to ask a lot of questions if it went to committee. That would have been the time to really dig deep and ask a lot of the questions that the community would have liked to have asked. We have been in situation before where evetything has been promised but not delivered to the full extent,” Jordan said.
Then she went ahead and voted for the land deal anyway.
Commissioner Sally Heyman said she liked the jobs angle and the fact that it gives us another thing to do inside the urban development boundary. But even she felt hesitant about what she was voting on and brought up the Miami Marlins deal.
“Mr. Mayor… you are giving us an amendment and substitutes with exhibits. I have a concern that this is just the land agreement today,” Heyman said, adding that she had real concern about the language on the water source approval.
But she went ahead and voted for the land deal anyway. Maybe she didn’t see the mayor roll his eyes at her.
Commissioner Juan Zapata said this was just the kind of inside deal that withers away at the public trust.
“We need to be welcoming. But I think in the past what’s happened is we’ve given away to much. With that in mind, we need to be careful,” Zapata said. “We are being facilitators. We are somehow using our public trust to make this happen.
“Developers always want you to focus on a little piece of land. but for you to do the job right, you have to stand back and look at the regional picture,” Zapata said, citing traffic, water usage and the county’s own master plan as issues to resolve.
“We should have a discussion about what water we are going to use, not just now but 20, 30 years from now,” Zap said. “The whole thing just makes me a little bit uneasy.”
“It’s incredibly uncomfortable for us to stand here and make these decisions that have a significant regional impact,” Zapata said, adding that much of that impact has not been assessed. “These last minute items, with last minute substitutes, are really in poor form. I don’t think it respects this community, respects this commission the way it should be respected.
“Because, again, we’ve been burned in the past,” Zap said.
Then he went ahead and voted for it.
Nobody asked what would happen if the project doesn’t see the light of day for one reason or another. As the mayor said, the project is not yet approved and has to go through multiple steps before it is. But what if it’s not? Do the Ghermezians get to sell the land at what is likely a huge profit?
And does Gimenez get a commission on that?
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