Speculators who want to change the zoning on 800 acres of environmentally sensitive land outside the Urban Development Boundary will get another bite of the apple on Wednesday.
To call them developers would be wrong. They are real estate flippers who have no real plan to develop the land, no announced tenants, and no control of the land in question. About a quarter of the assembled farmland acreage is not even for sale and will not be part of any repurposing. It will continue to grow food, the owner insists.
So, let’s stay factual. Aligned Real Estate Holdings and Coral Rock Development are speculators who will sell whatever land they own or have rights to the minute it is upzoned and worth a few $100 million more.
Miami-Dade Commissioners deferred the decision May 19 after everyone realized they did not have the votes to pass it. Any application outside the UDB needs a super majority, which means 9 of the 13 votes. There were five who had already voted to deny the change: Commissioner Daniella Cohen Higgins, whose district the property is in, and commissioners Eileen Higgins, Rene Garcia, Jean Monestime and Raquel Regalado.
Read related: Met with wide opposition, developers win 11th hour reprieve on UDB vote
There’s no reason to think that any of them would change their mind, except maybe Monestime who was convinced by the dozens of speakers who made public comments in opposition. Authentic, genuine voices of the community, not paid puppets with t-shirts and scripted lines.
He won’t get that this time. Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz — one of several commissioners that went out of their way to defend the change of zoning — said that there would be no more public comment because the hearing was closed that afternoon. That, in and of itself, is a travesty. The speculators get another bite of the apple. Perhaps they’re coming back with some new bells and whistles to assuage the concerns that commissioners like Monestime may have vocalized. I mean, that’s what they said when they asked for a deferral. So they could come back with some things better explained.
Like the fact that the proposed development agreement is modified to provide for “agricultural mitigation payments” of $8,750 per acre.
So they’re trying to buy off the community like they’ve bought several commissioners with campaign contributions?
According to the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting, the proposed zoning change request is also coming back in a different form with more applicants: D.A.P. Land Holdings, Buxeda Holdings and Fritz Partnership has joined Aligned Real Estate. Their applications are for the proposed special district called the South Dade Logistics and Technology District.
Why doesn’t anybody else get a chance to weigh in a second time when this is being presented in a different way?
Then again, would it make a difference?
Read related: Commissioners go out of their way to defend, promote moving the UDB
Diaz and commissioners Rebeca Sosa, Kionne McGhee, Joe Martinez, Oliver Gilbert and Keon Hardemon already ignored the unanimous position of our very professional county staff, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, state and federal experts and an independent expert analysis — as well as the unpaid voices of their constituents — when they voted against the denial May 19. Some went above and beyond when advocating for a complete reversal of the recommendation: An approval of the change.
The Miami-Dade Democrats have directed hundreds of form letters against the change to the commission. Will they be read into the record? Will they be read at all?
“Approving this project will continue the same pattern of special treatment for developers based on unsubstantiated promises of job creation that have contributed to our crisis of economic inequality, housing affordability, and lack of transit options,” the letter says. “The applicants presented no contracts, named no employers, and mechanically repeated their original jobs estimate even after the landowner of a a large parcel, responsible for more than 30% of estimated job creation, insisted his family was not interested in selling their land.”
They are referring to Leonard Abess, who very dramatically spoke against the change at the May 19 meeting and whose testimony should weigh more than others, since he owns a big piece of the middle parcel in the 800 acres.
Everybody wants more jobs, especially in South Dade. But county staffers have pointed to hundred of properties inside the UDB that can be used for the same purposes the speculators are using to pitch this zoning change.
Nobody is saying we can never move past the UDB line. It would be ideal not to — we are protecting it for a reason (read: water supply) — but there are mechanisms to do so once certain criteria are met. We may find ourselves in a position 10 or 20 years from now where we need to go west to develop anything. We are not at that threshold today.
This is not the time, nor the project, to move the UDB for.
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