Sad report in The Miami Herald about the national convention of the American Institute of Architects meeting on Miami Beach to turn brain power to better utilizing the Miami River. This topic-- revitalizing the Miami River-- is high on my list of irritations about Miami and The Miami Herald. I moved to Miami in 1992. As I became involved as civic activist and in conversations with Art Teele who was chairman of the county commission at the time, I asked about the future of the Miami River: why wasn't this living history, core of Miami, planned to focus and drive investment and growth; along the lines of Providence, RI-- where I was born and raised-- and whose river revitalization (including major reworking of highway infrastructure) vastly improved the city's livability and real estate values.
Miami River, recent photo
What I quickly learned in the early 1990's was that private property owners along the river were speculators. They were waiting for housing demand to eventually make the river, run down with a seedy, tropical charm and hang-over from the 1980's, valuable for the same condominium development as had occurred along Brickell Avenue. Moreover, these land owners were one and the same with downtown land use lawyers tied to the Non Group and Herald executives. They were wealthy and they were right. They would have nothing of plans and proposals to covert riverfront into the public commons. One has to search hard for a region of the nation with less respect for the public commons than Miami-Dade. The housing asset bubble gathered steam after Jeb Bush was elected as governor in 1998. What I mean is that Jeb! was all about lowering barriers to construction and development. It was what his campaign contributors wanted and what he was predisposed to deliver. "We only build what the market wants."
From a pragmatic, taxpayer point of view, the condo boom was the worst thing to happen to Miami in 100 years. The Miami River reflects that truth. We are only in the early stages of coming to grips with the misallocation of public resources (ie. budget deficits) to satisfy the greed of land speculators. An arts district then, in the 1990's, would have become a magnet for surrounding areas that are still badly lacking in investment. Instead, city fathers gave developers the key to the city without any question by the Herald or the mainstream media. Jorge Perez and Related is an example. Through land use law firm Greenberg Traurig, Perez argued for sharply limiting public access to the waterfront in order to maximize his developable footprint at ICON, now a billion dollar financial crater. Jorge Perez has company: there are plenty of NEO wannabe's selling at 50 percent discounts and more. "We only make product that the market wants." I don't think we should let go of this idiocy any more than let go of what BP is doing in the Gulf of Mexico.
What the "new city" did that Perez and others championed, drowning out civic activists, was this: Miami turned its back on the Miami River. (Look, if you can bear it, at The Miami Circle-- not for what it was, but what it represented: huge public interest in our heritage and the river.) The final product of the "new" Miami was billions of dollars in defaults, foreclosures, and the shameful emergence of vulture investors as heroes cleaning up the mess. (And elected officials-- at least in the county--who helped cause this mess are still mumbling incoherently from the dais. VNS comes to mind.)
The concrete footprints along the Miami River, the failed condos and blocked access, can't be undone. The bad land use decisions, urged on by lobbyists at City and County Hall, impose their own costs. These are severe to Miami as the Gulf oil spill: our lives have been changed through no fault of our own. The complaint has one caveat; that we elected the public officials whose inattention and own self-serving interests guided permitting and zoning decisions. That's the hard part for me: as much as we want to fix the river and to be optimistic, what we did-- in order for a few people to profit-- is done.
That's why reading today's, "Planners see great potential in a revitalized Miami River" is dispiriting. The writer, Andres Viglucci, surely knows how little opportunity is left for the river after the scavenging of the past decade. Pointing that out is left to the blogs. The Miami River was a stolen car dismantled in a chop shop and sold for parts. It is not a point of view favored by the Herald that had its own real estate speculation as a bottom line rather than reporting out asset bubbles. Click here for the Herald report.
7 comments:
Just last week, while on lunch break from jury duty, i sat at the bank of the river under the 12 st bridge just a block from the courthouse and wondered how is it possible that such a precious public resource has become so trashed. The water was disgusting, every inch of easement was privatized cemented and crumbling.
I closed my eyes to imagine what the river's edge could have been, but the smell brought me back to the rotten reality.
Sadly you are right, Damage Done, can't be undone.
Speaking of water quality... Another body was found floating under the Flagler bridge on Tuesday. I say another because it is the fourth one I have heard about in the last few years. I've been living on the river for a little over 6 years.
"Planners see great potential in a revitalized Miami River"
talk about shifting baselines
It is land rape, pure and simple. There is little, if any, development done in Miami with regard to the public or enviroment. It is and seemingly will always be motivated by greed. If only the majority of county commissioners ( and you know how you are) would follow Art Teele's example....and commit Hari-Kari "american style" in the lobby of the Miami Herald.
We would never be so lucky!
Funny you should mention the Miami Circle. Several months ago I attended a shindig at the Circle property meant to kickoff the site's long-awaited development as a passive archaeological / historical park.There were several VIPs from Tallahassee and FIND (the Florida Inland Navigation District that help fund the replacement of the site's seawall) in attendance. Ironically, the City of Miami mayor and a couple of city commissioners were there too, there under the shadow of the nearly empty ICON monstrosity, perhaps forgetting how hard the City fought (albeit under Crazy Joe) for the Circle site to be developed with not one, but two, highrise condominium buildings. They may have also been unaware how the City had squandered an opportunity not so many years before the Circle's discovery to acquire the property for a song. But they had to remember how the City essentially gave away a chunk of the nearby Brickell Park to accommodate the ICON development.
Standing at the Circle site makes you feel as though you're at the bottom of the Grand Canyon but with none of the grandeur. Nevertheless, although I still have a hard time with how much the County and State paid to acquire the site, I'm glad they did. Otherwise we'd have two more empty buildings to look at on the Miami River. And I bet the wouldbe developer of the site is pretty happy too.
Thanks for the comment. I have been many times by boat along that foresaken stretch of the river and agree with your assessment completely.
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