CSX rail line, the Miami housing crash, and more Miami suburban sprawl by gimleteye

The news is filled with dismal tidings from the housing industry. You would think this would be a time for city and county government to take a breather from the boom of the past six years. In Miami-Dade County alone, the infrastructure deficit has piled up to more than $7 billion. But if you think government cares at all about the housing crash, or, the matter of taking a rest from listening only to the speculators, you would be wrong.

In the past six years, huge bets were made by land speculators, including some of the most politically connected developers in the county, outside the Urban Development Boundary. Land prices increased ten times, a hundred times, in anticipation of a development gold rush. Of course, there is no end in sight for the housing market crash-- it may only be just beginning--but changing the zoning and the Urban Development Boundary is absolutely critical to realizing some value from investments that have turned out, so far, to be bad bets indeed.

In the 2005 applications cycle for the county master development plan, every application by developers for land outside the UDB was rejected except for the Hialeah application.

It was a convoluted and highly manipulated process, stage-managed by then county commission chair Joe Martinez, who took apparent pride in trashing citizens, including thousands from his own district who took the time to write him and urge his opposition to moving the UDB.

Martinez was steaming mad--calling his opposition, liars and worse from the dais, and egged on by Natacha Seijas.

Although a majority of county commissioners voted to move the UDB, it was not by a majority capable of over-riding a promised veto by Mayor Carlos Alvarez. Moreover, Governor Jeb Bush put his foot down and informed Miami-Dade County that the applications would not receive state approval even if they were passed, on the basis of water availability and what we all know to be the killer of quality-of-life here: traffic.

Natacha Seijas was so contrite that she fired Bill Brandt, the director of Water and Sewer, for "not telling her the facts" about the water crisis. Of course, the last time Brandt had tried to tell her the 'facts' about water issues (asking for a rate hike to be applied to the rock mining industry, to build a new water treatment plant to account for cleaning up water polluted by its activities) Brandt was knee-capped by Seijas and the majority. (Anyone who paid attention knew that Brandt had done his level best communicating the dire condition of the county's water infrastructure. He took the fall and took a high paying job in private industry.)

Faced with limited water supplies, big developers suddenly got religion on the water re-use issue. Hialeah's application passed because the City of Hialeah and Armando Codina promised to put in its own water reuse infrastructure. Other developers are now singing the same tune: we will develop our own reuse capacity if you will only rezone our property outside the Urban Development Boundary.

What about traffic, the second Achilles heel of Miami Dade County?

Two years ago, Joe Martinez began touting the CSX rail line as the "solution" to Kendall's transit woes: it wasn't a true solution then, and it isn't true now because CSX take a very long and circuitous route to get anywhere close to where jobs are. But that is not going to stop the big developers, including Ed Easton, from claiming it to be so.

Engineers and consultants are busying and preparing plans for the next round of applications to move the UDB, due in only a few days. (The Easton project, in conjunction with Lennar, is moving along a separate permitting/planning path.)

You see, the game in solving the traffic problem is to claim that new capacity, like the CSX rail line or Krome Avenue, will absorb current needs (which are desperate) and future growth.

What is this all about, in the midst of a housing market collapse?

Politically connected land speculators are desperate to derive value from land purchased outside the UDB at the top of the housing boom: investments whose carrying costs are enormous.

Please help us, they will be saying to the county commission.

If we were to guess: the county commission will oblige, even though the county's own planning and zoning department, and the South Miami Dade Watershed Study, offer evidence that no expansion of the UDB is necessary--even to accomodate population growth--until 2050 at least. (Which is a main reason why Natacha Seijas is trying to kill the watershed study.)

The CSX will be held out as the "solution", and the developers will all claim to be 'green builders' now that the development patterns they crammed through local legislative zoning processes have throttled our quality of life, the environment, and even business investment.

We are now beginning to see that the building boom held as such a benefit by the South Florida business community during the past six years was based, to a very large extent, on fraudulent mortgages, liar loans, and outlandish land speculation.

But the big speculators who were frustrated by the decisions to reject the last round of UDB development applications in Miami-Dade County are readying their next assault on the process: we may be in the middle of the worst housing market collapse in modern history, but the land speculators are tied up in knots over their carrying costs.

Liberate us! will be their call, trotting out chamber's worth of citizens (paid, mostly) to attest that one more Lowe's is needed in far West Kendall, etc. etc. etc., fancy maps will show how the CSX rail line is the solution to the hundreds of thousands of commuters who spend hours a day locked in their cars in traffic.

Just wait a few weeks: you will see.