(Continued from previous page)
multiple developers building thousands of new homes west of I-75, as well as the Graham Companies, which also has planned a huge project in the same area.
Lennar Homes, for example, paid $41 million last summer for 130 acres next to another 143 acres it purchased six months earlier for $71 million. Then, in December, it picked up another 100 or so acres for $51 million.
Surely, that bridge would be a welcome bonus to Lennar as well.
The people of Palm Springs North don’t think it will be a bonus for them, said Scavuzzo, who represents about 6,000 
residents. And they hired attorney and former Miami Lakes Mayor Michael Pizzi to fight it.
“Carlos Hernandez and Hialeah are building massive development west of this bridge. The Graham Companies have a proposal to build thousands of homes west of this bridge. The mega mall is going to be west of this bridge,” Pizzi told Ladra, seemingly happy and comfortable back in his rabble-rousing, advocacy attorney role. “And until we know what the impact of these developments will be, opening the bridge is irresponsible. You may flood Palm Springs North with traffic. Right now, it already takes 40 minutes to drive two miles.
“We don’t want the traffic from Hialeah and the Graham Companies and the mega mall, all 100,000 trips, in Miami Lakes and Palm Springs North where we already have gridlock,” Pizzi said.
Longtime political observers might recognize this as the latest battle in a years-long war by Miami Lakes and PSN residents to distance and separate themselves from Hialeah, which included the town getting its own zip code so 
Hialeah — the closest postal city — didn’t have to be on their address.
But Scavuzzo said it’s also part of the problem they have with Bovo, who represents all three areas but seems to favor his hometown, where the commissioner started as a Hialeah council member. PSN and Miami Lakes residents and leaders have told Ladra over the years that they feel like Bovo’s red-headed step-children, like he sells them out for his Hialeah constituents, who are his real blood children.
“He told me he’d do anything within his power to keep it closed,” Scavuzzo said. He said he spoke to Bovo after the community council forwarded the mega mall’s application to the county commission because he was concerned about the traffic. “He said he didn’t want to see either the 154th Street bridge or the 170th Street bridge opened. He knows there’s already gridlock in this area.”
Scavuzzo called Bovo Saturday after he learned the bridge resolution would be on Wednesday’s agenda, he told Ladra. “I told him, ‘You gave us your word. You’re willing to suffer the consequences?’ and he said ‘I’m willing.’ He’s been lying to us.”
“The problem we keep getting from Commissioner Bovo is that he makes us promises and he never keeps them,” Scavuzzo said.
Cid told Ladra he never heard such assurances and Bovo, who acknowledge the phone call Saturday, said he never made any. “I’ve never said those bridges would not be opened. On the contrary, I’ve always said both of these bridges are going to be o
pened eventually.
“What I told Robert a year ago was that nobody had asked me about opening the bridge,” Bovo said, adding that it wasn’t an issue until the recent development.
“While a group of residents may not want it, the reality is our historically poor planning has led to this situation,” Bovo told Ladra. “We’re looking at how many more people are coming in [west of I-75] between 186th and 154th street…This has nothing to do with the mall. There is still enough significant activity going up apart from that.
“With all this development, definitely opening up 170th and 154th is going to open a pressure valve for people to get out,” Bovo said.
A pressure valve. That’s an interesting analogy. Because what happens when you open a pressure valve? You spread whatever was building the pressure wider, that’s what.
Which is exactly what Scavuzzo and Cid and Pizzi worry about: the pressure eases on the west side but increases on the east, in their neighborhoods. And they ask why should they suffer the result of Hialeah’s more liberal zoning code and development process? What good is it to have stricter development codes if someone across the street can build much higher density and then open a bridge to get to the main road through your neighborhood?
The flip side argument is what do you do with those bridges?
“The alternative is to turn them into landmarks. Or demolish the bridges, and I don’t know who’s going to do that,” Bovo said. “We have an issue with traffic and we have two bridges that have been built with taxpayer money and they are just sitting there. Just sitting there! Is this what we do now? We just build stuff that will never be open?”
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez, er, Stevie Bovo wins commission chair
Which is a good point. But are these two-lane roads adjacent to mostly residential streets the best pressure valve in the area? How do we know without a traffic study?
Cid says there is an interlocal agreement with Hialeah in which the two cities plan to turn
the 154th Street bridge into an “overline park” like the 606 in Chicago, built on the abandoned Bloomingdale elevated train tracks. Couldn’t we do that with the 170th Street bridge, which is already used by pedestrians and joggers and hikers and people fishing the adjacent canal?
Bovo said the FDOT would never allow that. “You can’t have non-vehicular traffic,” he said.
But certainly there is a mechanism for the county to begin whatever process it takes for that to happen, isn’t there? All that is needed is the political will.
Perhaps that means that Scavuzzo and Cid and Pizzi will be speaking to the wrong people Wednesday at County Hall.
Maybe what they have to do is sell that overline park idea to the people who are really pulling the strings here: Lennar Homes and the Graham Companies and the other developers building west of I-75.
Pages: 1 2
Esteban Bovo to FDOT: ‘Open up NW 170th Street bridge’ added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
