The most interesting story in Sunday’s Miami Herald is buried in the Neighbor’s section, consistent with our view that Neighbor’s is where good stories go to die.
Often these stories aren’t pursued because the underlying material could be deemed offensive to Herald advertisers or the generally cheery atmosphere that should attach to Miami's boom-town character.
Such is the case with today’s story that attracts our interest from South Miami, “Building moratorium gets initial approval”.
Last Tuesday, the South Miami city commission in a 4-0 vote imposed a three-month moratorium on McMansion neighborhood-killers: homes whose footprint occupies the maximum space of a lot.
The McMansion issue isn’t a local issue: it is Miami-wide and occurs at a time of rapidly declining single-family home sales and rapidly escalating need for affordable housing and reclaiming public space.
Last summer, the City of Coral Gables also addressed the problem of developers knocking down house and rebuilding massive new homes that occupy the entire lot footprint, destroying neighborhood character.
In Miami Springs, the McMansion issue has provoked neighborhood controversy. One letter writer to the local paper bemoaned the fact that the city wasn’t more friendly to high end custom home builders.
McMansions opponents are attacked as esthetes or anti-growth extremists, or, on the basis that government regulations should not legislate individual tastes, or, that McMansions are simply “what the market wants”. The blog Critical Miami noted Miami-artist Luis Pons “Fabulous Floating Inflatable Villa” created during Art Basel as a reaction against the Miami McMansion culture.
Drive through South Miami or Pinecrest: the results are evident.
McMansions represent their own ideological hegemony on neighborhoods whose character of homes surrounded by greenery point to the original landscape of Miami, lined with avocado grove or fruit trees and before that, Dade county pine or Everglades.
McMansions are only the residential manifestation of the most unattractive feature of Miami: how developers of commercial real estate demand the right to build to the edge of their property line.
It is not a matter of good or bad design: the underlying issue is a matter of local government assisting developers to turn their back on communities ensuring that future neighborhoods will be places without cohesion or character.
How this happens would make a good Herald story, but we doubt you’ll ever read it. If you did, it might be along the following lines:
How in 1994, for instance, South Miami undertook a community charette called “The Hometown Plan”. The issue that provoked community concern was the plan by a big developer to tear down the Bakery Center and replace it with the monster called Sunset Place.
The community came up with a good design plan, to preserve the character of South Miami, but the plan failed in its essential goal when subsequent changes to the development ran straight over what the community, including representatives of the builder, had previously agreed upon.
Lobbyists for the Sunset Place developers managed to get their way: in other words, to maximize the footprint of their development to the property edges.
Today Sunset Place is a retail killer. Any residual community character that remains in South Miami does so in spite of The Shops at Sunset, as it is now optimistically called. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.
Or at Bayside, either, whose effect was to permanently close Biscayne Bay to the public in downtown Miami.
A more recent example under construction downtown: how the Related Group succeeded in chipping back the public space/walkway/promendade along the Miami River in its new mega-development, turning the common sense idea of an esplanade into a compromised version that essentially precludes public life from occurring on the River.
It is the same story on Miami Beach, where condo developers who had committed to providing a walkway/public space on the bay side succeeded in marginalizing the commitment to public space in favor of concrete to the lot line.
It is a common theme—but it is not a theme you have read in the Miami Herald and one example why the Miami Herald is less relevant to readers and subscribers.
We’re interested in communities whose elected representatives actually have the temerity to impose building moratoria, even when they are temporary. These stories belong on the front page, not the Neighbors section.
9 comments:
you ain't kidding: Sunset Place is indeed a retail killer. Why would people pay to park to shop or go to the movies? This was a poorly designed complex, does anyone know who the architect was? City Place in West Palm is also dying...except the eating places -- pay to park, to shop and eat again. The interesting retail they once had is dead there.
River walk shops on the Ft. Lauderdale waterfront are closed up in the mall part but on the historical streets business seems to be thriving.
The original developer of Sunset Place, an American megadeveloper, offloaded the property to foreign buyers soon as he saw it was a disaster. The foreign buyer was probably persuaded to buy, on the basis of a strong Euro that makes America cheap and demographics showing how much disposable income residents have in a ten mile radius of the development, with no local knowledge. Right now, the best thing for Sunset Place would be the wrecking ball. Start over, and listen to the public this time.
You're right, Neighbors is where the real news lies sometimes. At any rate, it usually holds more thorough reporting than the rest of the paper.
Commissioner Moss pulled off a building moritorium in unincorporated Richmond Heights; his voter-rich area. Seems the residents did not want a gas station on property already zoned for one. So Moss called for a "study" of the whole area to assess commercial zoning, no doubt resulting in changes to keep residents happy. Jeff Bercow represented the property owner and argued against the "temporary moritorium".Bottom line, everyone in unincorporated Miami-Dade should request a moritorium from their commissioner to assess incompatable zoning.Wouldn't you love that?
Bring back the bakery; it was the only thing in that spot that people liked. Everything else has failed and in the process quaint downtown South Miami is dead.
from a South Miami activist
McMansions are a fact of life already here in the neighborhood. They are everywhere south of 80th Street inhabited by good people. My opinion is to allow our long term neighbors who really do live in a knockdown on valuable earth (sorry if the truth hurts as I live in one to) to maximize the potential return on their real estate (should they choose) to sell to a developer.
This tiresome effort by numerous self righteous folks could invite lawsuits on the grounds that government is downzoing their properties and thus reducing the economic values. But history shows that South Miami government is good at inviting lawsuits.
I've seen it all here from on 83rd street and remember how many former homeowner neighbors were on the "stop mcMansion bandwagon" but quickly jumped off when they decided to cash out leave the area. The real issue is property taxes and the inability of local Florida government to control expenses and growth. Bloated budgets and redundant job functions and pension funding for needless jobs that over deliver basic services...heaven forbit if we were to explore a privitization solution for all city jobs.
You're right about the real issue being the inability of government to fund expenses and growth. But that's no excuse to ruin neighborhoods with McMansions. There is a public benefit to neighborhoods built to the human scale that outweigh the simple expansion of the building footprint to the property lot line.
Design IS the heart of the matter. Visualizing and then coding the desired urbanism and architecture has everything to do with making places we love.
Yes, despite the Hometown Plan, the South Miami city commission at the time (the early 90's) approved the mall. In my opinion the worst thing about the mall is that it turns its back on our main streets, Red Road and US1. The architecture could be better but there is nothing wrong with four story buildings along Sunset Drive, Red Road, or US1, and there is nothing wrong about storefronts built right up to the sidewalk. There IS something wrong with blank walls facing streets.
I applaud our community's debate on the McMansion issue. I see this as a rightful search for neighborhood propriety-- the way (new) houses should relate to their neighbors.
BUT: Just because a house is two stories tall does not make it a McMansion nor automatically bad. I have nothing against two story houses; we are building a two story addition to our cottage right now. The addition we are building respects the scale of our historic neighborhood. Building vertically is also gentler on the land, leaving more area for landscaping and water percolation to the aquifer. I think that two story houses on compact lots are in fact more eco-friendly than sprawling houses on big lots.
In my observation, the people creating the bigger houses are not "demanding the right to build to the edge of their property line." In virtually all single-family residential cases they're building behind the setback distances prescribed in the law.
I hope that we can move towards a civilized process for community consensus based on graphically presented design criteria. The future build-out of our neighborhoods deserves more thought than knee-jerk reactions.
Maricé Chael
I disagree with the writer's opinion that the issue of urbanism has nothing to do with design. In fact, the prescription/coding of desired urbanism and architecture has everything to do with making places we love.
Yes, despite the Hometown Plan, the South Miami city commission at the time (the early 90's) approved the mall. In my opinion the worst thing about the mall is that it turns its back on our mainstreets, Red Road and US-1. The
architecture could be better but there is nothing wrong with four story buildings along Sunset Drive, Red Road, or US-1.
I applaud our community's debate on the McMansion issue. I see this as a rightful search for neighborhood propriety-- the way (new) houses relate to their neighbors.
Personally, I have nothing against two story houses; we are building a two story addition to our cottage right now. The addition we are building
respects the scale of our historic neighborhood. Building vertically is also gentler on the land, leaving more area for landscaping and water
percolation to the aquifer. I think that two story houses on compact lots are in fact more eco-friendly than sprawling houses on big lots.
I hope that we can move towards a civilized process for community consensus
based on graphically presented design criteria. The future build-out of our neighborhoods deserves more thought than knee-jerk reactions.
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