But a $2.2 million mortgage on the property could complicate things
A week after a Miami-Dade Circuit judge slammed Coral Gables for a secret settlement deal that paved the way for a WaWa gas station on Grand Avenue, the city — fighting a lawsuit from homeowners and parents at the elementary school across the site — is taking a much different direction.
“The City wishes to seek a stay of the litigation in order to allow for time to explore a resolution to this matter,” wrote City Attorney Miriam Ramos — who was unable to get the lawsuit to stop the project dismissed — in an email to Ladra.
This was direction she got from commissioners at the shade session they had secretly in the middle of the commission meeting Tuesday afternoon.
Read related: Miami-Dade judge slams Coral Gables on Wawa’s secret approval process
“We asked them to explore all options in the most amicable fashion possible,” Mayor Vince Lago told Ladra adding that he expects the interested parties to meet and work on something they can all agree on.
“The community center is my first priority because we need to get programming there,” Lago said.
David Winker, an attorney representing the Gables Accountability Project, was surprised by what he said was a total capitulation.
“We welcome discussions,” Winker told Ladra. ” We’ve been trying to have these discussions. We think if we get everyone to the table, we can get a resolution.”
Ladra isn’t too sure the WaWa people — who have already invested in design and the removal of some old trees — are going to join this kumbaya exercise. They could even sue the city for damages. Unless the city is able to get them interested in a land swap for property someplace else. May Ladra suggest the Greico Avenue parcel owned by Commissioner Mike Mesa‘s bosses?
Because the parents at George Washington Carver Elementary are adamant. It’s not that much about the access to cigarettes or sugary drinks. It’s the cancer-causing Benzyne toxin emitted from gas pumps that the Center for Disease Control has linked to childhood leukemia.
Moms at the school have started a hashtag: #NoGasByClass.
“It’s non negotiable,” Winker told Ladra. “Everyone is coming to the realization that this is an illegal gas station.”
A swap is something Lago said he is open to. It’s complicated, as evidenced by the trolley station swap, which backfired after residents in West Coconut Grove complained that the city didn’t follow zoning rules. But it could be a resolution here if it’s done right.
“Nothing is impossible,” Lago said, adding that the site plan already approved for the Bahamian Village property is for a restaurant — and that it could even revert to that.
“We need something that is going to work for all parties. Nobody is going to be 100% happy,” he said. “But at the end of the day, lawyers are the only ones benefiting from this now.”
Well, maybe someone else is, too.
County records show that the property has had at least eight mortgage modifications taken on it since 2008 for a total owed of $2.2 million. These monies have been lent to Bahamian Village LLC by Debra Sinkle Kolsky, the president and owner of Redevco, the development company that is one of the partners in the WaWa project.
Ladra has just started to investigate, but where did that money go? For upkeep of the property? All of it? Or to pay off the Lola B. Walker Homeowners in the historic district so they would go along?
And what happens if Bahamian Village LLC fails to pay the mortgage? Or if the WaWa deal goes south? Will Sinkle Kolsky — who has repeatedly declined to speak to Ladra — foreclose on the property that was once gifted to the city for $10 and get it for herself?
Has that been the plan all along?
Coral Gables attorneys back off WaWa lawsuit defense to seek other solutions added by Ladra on
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