If you ask Palmetto Bayers — including Mayor Karyn Cunningham — the controversial 87th Avenue bridge that Miami-Dade wants to build across the C-100 canal at 164th Street is not a done deal. Not by a mile.
There are still a lot of questions and concerns, Cunningham said. Not to mention a looming lawsuit.
But the county — which has been railroading this bridge down everyone’s throats like it’s a do-or-die emergency — presented some very elaborate designs on Wednesday in a virtual meeting where Miami-Dade employees with the Department of Transit and Public Works talked about it like it had already happened.
Read related: Palmetto Bay council gets an earful, changes course on 87th Avenue bridge
“The project consists of the Design and Construction of a new bridge that will provide vehicle travel lanes, dedicated bike lanes with physical raised separation from vehicle traffic, curb & gutter and sidewalk in both directions, northbound and southbound,” reads the notice for the meeting, which nobody was expecting.
Miami-Dade Department of Transit and Public Works Highway Bridge Engineering Manager Ryan Fisher talked about how it will be designed for bike and pedestrian use as well as vehicular travel and how it will have crosswalks and retaining walls and how the bridge is going to rise when it needs to and how it will have a 75 year life.
The drawings show a flat slab type bridge with rubble banks and “decorative brickwork” on the abutments and “decorative detailing” on the exterior barrier walls.
The construction is expected to start next year and end in 2024, Fisher said.
“The project scope includes a new roadway, storm water drainage system, signing and pavement markings, bridge lighting, fencing and landscaping along the project,” the notice says.
We’re at the point where we are talking about lighting and landscaping?
Wait one U.S. 1 minute, said Cunningham and other Palmetto Bay residents who have been fighting this bridge for more than three decades. The village council voted last month to take the county to court over the way the decision was made. Sure, they have issues with the concept. But their only legal recourse might be on the process — and a lawsuit will slow things down at the very least.
Read related: Controversial 87th Avenue bridge comes back to county at TPO meeting
Cunningham questioned the county’s timing.
“This meeting is taking place while we are still in a legal process,” she wrote in an email to residents Wednesday. She also said that Village Attorney John Dellagloria and outside Counsel Gerry Greenberg have been trying for weeks to schedule a Joint Meeting of the Commission and Council to no avail. “Yet there was no problem finding a date, during a busy holiday month, when many will not be paying attention to important Village matters, to schedule a meeting to discuss bridge design and garner input.”
It’s obviously by design, madam mayor. This is how appointed commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins, who has yet to appear at any of these virtual community meetings, operates. This is the same way she brought the bridge up in February as part of a countywide item to connect many broken streets, but it was whittled down to just 87th Avenue. She put the ordinance on a county agenda using the COVID-19 emergency executive order to fast track it and sidestep public notice requirements.
Shady move.
Village leaders and residents argue that it was not a COVID emergency and that Cohen Higgins used the provision inappropriately, at best, or abusively, at worst. It does show the lengths to which she will go to get this done.
Basically, the commissioner used the pandemic as an excuse to bring this up without having to let people know. There’s a feeling she is kowtowing to the voters in Cutler Bay, who overwhelmingly want the bridge. But why so hard? Who’s going to get that construction contract?
Because it’s going to be even juicier than we were told.
Read related: Danielle Cohen Higgins earn distrust with surprise revisit to 87th Avenue bridge
Among the revelations on Wednesday: The 87th Avenue bridge won’t cost $3.1 million, like the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization was told. And it won’t cost $3.4 million as Fisher first re-estimated it would cost.
Recalculating.
Fisher said on Wednesday that construction alone — because of higher prices for materials and labor — was projected to be $2.8 million. He didn’t give the new price tag for the bridge, but Ladra, who can do basic math, asked how much of the $3.4 million in his earlier estimate was for design, engineering and project management, landscaping, etcetera — in other words, not for construction. He said about $1.8 or $1.9 million.
That means the new price tag is around $5.2 million. ¡Pero, por supuesto!
Actually, it probably will be even more expensive by the time the lawsuit winds its way through court.
David Winker, the attorney who represents several residents who oppose the bridge, said he’s confident Palmetto Bay would win the legal battle. “You can’t just say it’s a COVID emergency when it’s not,” he told Ladra.
But Winker agrees with the village attorneys, who said last month that it might just be a temporary stoppage. The Board of County Commissioners could just put it back on the agenda and vote on it again. So can the Transportation Planning Organization.
Critics are not thinking that far. A delay is good enough for now. There could be another commissioner in District 8 by then. Someone elected. Or Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who represented this area as commissioner before she became la alcaldesa, might change her mind about not weighing in. So many things could happen.
Meanwhile, let’s discuss the lighting. Where will it be? How much? Because some residents don’t want it too bright.
And some don’t want it too dark.
County airs 87th Avenue bridge design, details, despite Palmetto Bay dispute added by Ladra on
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