Buses? Buses?!?!
The developer of the American Dream mega mall nightmare in
Northwest Dade wants to give the county a few buses for all the trouble that the construction of the largest mall in the United States — a retail center-slash-theme park with a 16-story indoor ski slope, a 20-slide water park, an indoor lake with submarines, a 14-screen 3-D movie theater and a 2,000-room hotel — is going to cause us.
Buses!!!
They want to build a $4 billion, six million-square-foot project on 174 acres of land, for an estimated 14,000 employees and up to 30 million annual visitors via between 70,000 and 100,000 additional vehicle trips a day — and they want to give us a half a dozen new buses?
Buses?!?
Miami-Dade Commissioners have to tell developer Triple Five — the builder’s of Minnesota’s Mall of Americas — and their favorite local lobbyist Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, thanks but no thanks. Tell them to take their bus out of here — far, far away — and come back when they want to get serious. This first offer, which our county commissioners will review next week, is simply not good enough. Not by a long shot.
Buses?!?! That would be laughable if it weren’t so damn tragic.
Read related: Miami-Dade mega mall — a new, and shinier, insider deal
This community has had it up to here with talk about buses and more buses. That’s just more empty behemoths that we have to sit behind in gridlock. It’s almost a slap in the face. Why on Earth are Transit Director Alice Bravo and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez — who negotiated t
he agreement after helping the company get the land at state surplus prices — trying to ram buses down our throat? So they can later privatize th… wait a minute. Could that seriously be it?
Diaz de la Portilla told the planning advisory board that it was the transit department, not the developers, that came up with the idea to gift the buses in lieu of paying impact fees. That means instead of. He said the value is somewhere around $5.5 million.
Here we are a county that has no money for the SMART plan, with Chairman Esteban Bovo saying they can’t find the funds for any real rapid transit solutions, and someone in the department suggests that the developer of the largest mall in the U.S., a $4 billion project that will impact our community for decades, pay $5.5 million for some buses?!? Wouldn’t the same amount — and Ladra suggests that the impact fees should be higher — be better paid to the county so it can go toward real mass transit solutions, like a Northwest light rail connector?
Triple Five already got preliminary approval for the mall last year when the commission voted to change the comprehensive development plan to accommodate the entertainment district land use designation for the mega theme park mall. The development agreement that comes before county commissioners on May 17 irons out more of the details — or conditions and requirements — 
under which the massive complex can be built.
It calls for the developer to build a bus depot — which arguably would have been included in the plans anyway — and buy some new buses to extend existing routes within Miami-Dade’s ever changing transit map. Triple Five also agrees to mitigate storm water runoff, so nearby areas won’t be flooded (wouldn’t that be, again, something they would have to do anyway?) and pay for some roadway infrastructure to mitigate impacts up to 2040, Diaz de la Portilla said.
“You’re adding more lanes to roads and more right turn signals and left turn signals, etc.,” said Roberto Ruano, the sole dissenting vote on the 12-1 recommendation for approval. “I don’t see how we can justify this,” he said. Someone quickly elect him to office.
Read related: Mega mall gets its public land on rushed timeline
Diaz de la Portilla, who could sell you a lighter in hell, said that Triple Five (aka International Atlantic) should not have to pay for the poor planning that preceded the mega mall, or the traffic issues caused by nearby malls that have opposed the American Dream Nightmare. Those competing malls have suggested the developer be required to forgo any and all public subsidies — which, obviously, they don’t want to do.
“They didn’t even pay impact fees,” Diaz de la Portilla said, looking around like he was ready to fight someone. “You know, in a way, we’re subsidizing them.”
Um, no, not really.
The mega mall seems also tied to the Graham Company development that keeps going through the pipeline, each step at the same time, and getting the same approval. The Graham development — a mixed use complex of 3 million square foot office park, one million square feet of retail space and and 2,000 residential units — is just south of the mega mall site, making for one future busy area.
In lieu of their impact fees, the Graham Company developers propose giving us 8.5 miles of additional paved roads and/or lanes, 6-10 new or improved intersections, an 8.6-acre park and half an acre — a whole half acre! — for a fire station.
What? No buses?!?
American Dream mega mall developer would give us buses for our troubles added by Ladra on
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