I've kept the marketing mailer by my desk for the past three or four years: a photo of a model dressed in silver lame standing in an Everglades wetland, advertising "Everglades by the Bay": a glamorous downtown condo. It was clearly, at that time, a defining moment: a market top. The condo industry in Miami had done everything conceivable to fuel the raging speculative bonfire. More than 70 percent of condos were purchased by flippers and speculators in downtown Miami. The city and county commissions were handing out zoning changes and building permits as fast as realtor calling cards and invitations to condo openings. Most of the elected officials are still in place. The carpetbaggers are long gone: sailing in yachts in the Bahamas or running amusement park rides. The housing boom consumed Florida wetlands like candy korn. The only image left: to use those wetlands to advertise a "new" condominium project. That was Everglades By The Bay: now kaput.
8 comments:
Was that ad a Seth Gordon production?
This blog made me giggle. Supporters sailing in the islands or running amusement parks; what a great discription of banker Losner and sidekick Shiver. These crooks will never own up to the damage they have caused. I guess their plans to develop the Everglades and farmland are on hold while they hide in far flung places. Let's hope they stay.
post the ad!
The excess inventory of housing that has been permitted by our Mayor and several Commissioners and its effect to devalue all of our properties through short sales, bulk sales and foreclosures is truly Manny Diaz’s Legacy.
I have been told that the next hearing on Miami 21 will take place at City Hall Sept 21 starting at 10AM.
Any bets on how it will turn out!
Harry Emilio Gottlieb
While a good amount of new housing starts were the product of zoning hearings, remember that most of the new construction going on was allowed by the underlying zoning the property owners had in place already.
Not every development needs permission from elected officials to get underway and no government stands in the way of new construction just because it isn't needed. The only time they would is if there was a development that exceeds the capacity of the water supply or sewer system. Which does happen from time to time, but not too often.
You are most right to point to the abuses, but this is not a command economy - the market went haywire when the financial regulations were scrapped.
Last thought along that line is this; did the old Everglades Hotel go through a zoning hearing? and; this project represents infill development - right next to a huge park and on a metro-mover stop. So sprawl is bad, infill is bad, what passes as acceptable development?
Obviously the City of Miami pushed every developer to build as much as possible. Now it is 2009 and Miami has 30,000+ condos for sale. Prices are down 25% to 80%.
Developers are filing bankruptcy. It will take years to recover. Some people will never recover.
I know that the development lobby reads this blog, because we press on the policy buttons that are their bread and butter. Not sure about the condo owners who have been burned to a crisp. They probably don't want to be reminded what happened to them. I'm not against infill. It has been happening for years, all over my neighborhood, and I haven't waved a flag in objection. But what happened in the condo morass of downtown Miami is reprehensible: elected officials simply rolled over at every opportunity to zone a new skyscraper, refusing to pay attention to historic trends and believing the builder lobby bullshit about how there is "no bubble", and if it is, it is made of "stainless steel".
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