Jon Ulman, the local Sierra Club representative, is right, calling the FIU expansion plan into the Bird Drive Basin, "a step in the wrong direction like the MDX expansion plan for the Dolphin Expressway." How could Florida's universities be turning such a blind eye to the decades of struggle to protect lands, like the Bird Drive Basin, purchased after lengthy effort and litigation? It is a travesty, just like the MDX boondoggle.
FIU enthusiastically allowed its sports stadium to be named for zero-rated US Century Bank; the banksters who drove the boom and bust, converting wetlands and the Everglades in suburban sprawl until the whole mess cratered-- and the landscape scarred forever. In key respects, there has never been a true accounting of the role of speculators like the ones whose names get put on university buildings in the housing bubble and crash.
FIU wants to move the Dade County Fair Grounds in order to expand, but it is clear that the powers-that-be want every last inch of open space and ag land built to the edge of Everglades National Park. If we had strong state authority, this nonsense wouldn't be tolerated. But we don't because Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida legislature are determined to surrender to thievery what we promised to protect so many years ago. Tough luck, Everglades.
FIU enthusiastically allowed its sports stadium to be named for zero-rated US Century Bank; the banksters who drove the boom and bust, converting wetlands and the Everglades in suburban sprawl until the whole mess cratered-- and the landscape scarred forever. In key respects, there has never been a true accounting of the role of speculators like the ones whose names get put on university buildings in the housing bubble and crash.
FIU wants to move the Dade County Fair Grounds in order to expand, but it is clear that the powers-that-be want every last inch of open space and ag land built to the edge of Everglades National Park. If we had strong state authority, this nonsense wouldn't be tolerated. But we don't because Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida legislature are determined to surrender to thievery what we promised to protect so many years ago. Tough luck, Everglades.
4 comments:
This is the perfect bait and switch. The youth fair should be placed near the center of population and transportation.
They are actually pimping out the kids as an excuse to encroach further up to the Everglades. Nice.
Why isn;
't the FIU medi school co-located with the teaching hospital? It does not sound very green to require such distant travel for the med students. The med school will have absolutely no conectivity with an undergraduate campus anyway. Med students do not have the time, nor do they want the distractions of being co-located with the main undergraduate facility.
The residents have given up enough of Tamiami Park. It is time for FIU to grow up, not sprawl out and go located the facilities where they belong - med school with the hospital.
This is a land grab pure and simple.
I completely agree this is a travesty. With the market crash, there are lots of empty buildings and perfectly good already-developed sites in the city to redevelop. Yes, it's more expensive (bulldozing the earth is easier than tearing down or retrofitting an existing structure)but they should factor in the costs to society of destroying wetlands/open space - developers need to eat the costs they impose on society, just like polluters must pay to clean up their biproducts of production...
This is a perfect opportunity to revitalize an urban area - where jobs and economic activity is desperately needed. Bring the Fair back to the urban fold. Use Community Redevelopment funds to finance it. Use Tourist Tax money to design it so it become a year-round public park space as well.
Wow as an FIU alum I'm pretty ashamed.
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