See Fred Grimm's article today about a development on a spoil island in Dumbfounding Bay: E
ven millionaires worry about developers encroaching on the neighborhood. He says:
No, this wasn’t about a sidewalk. Not really. This was about our American way of life. Or at least our South Florida way of life, which entails fending off hurricanes, pythons, flesh-eating zombies and developers intent on building something overbearing next door.
Next door, in this case, would be the next island over.
Island Estates contains 21 waterfront homes on a fill island in Dumfoundling Bay, a fat bulge in the Intracoastal Waterway between Aventura and Sunny Isles Beach. Residents of what the court documents describe as South Island contend that they were deceived by the project’s developer who also owns another nearby fill island, aka North Island, which contains nine empty acres. Developers, of course, regard nine empty acres in the vicinity of Biscayne Bay as utterly untenable, an itch that must be scratched.
Except that the only way to get from North Island to the mainland would be a two-lane bridge onto the brick-trimmed road that dissects Island Estates down the middle.
Homeowners claim that when they bought their waterfront homes on Island Estates, developer Gary Cohen had promised that North Island would become “Casas de Oro,” an even pricier subdivision with just 17 homes on 16,000-square-foot lots.
 |
| I have snorkeled around the Island everyone is fighting about. I named it Kay Island. There are Mangroves on its Western edge and Plenty of fish. The other island you see is the rich people island. They paid $3 or $4 million for houses in their enclave and were promised my Kay Island would be developed the same as their island. |
 |
| Here is what the developer NOW has planned for the Island. No fair. I hope the rich people prevail in court. |
 |
| Greynold's Miami Dade County Park Yesterday |
Mr. Mayor don't say people want malls and theme parks. Here are people playing touch football in the park. There was a wedding going on in one of the picnic shelters at the same time. People want greenspace.
6 comments:
This is a better editorial page than the Herald. Another issue you could have raised is the lack of vision and planning that seems to come up almost daily by our elected officials.
Re Gimenez and his mall/fake economic development project: it's called not governing in the public interest. Also, file under just plain dumb.
South Miami residents have the same problem with Mayor Philip Stoddard. His latest interpretation of the City’s Land Development Code (LDC) is that developers can pave over their entire lot, so long as they pave over the previously intended green space with Aqua-Bric, permeable brick pavers. To ensure that His Honor’s new interpretation of green space is permitted, without amending the City’s LDC, our beloved Mayor Stoddard has conveniently hired a land use attorney and placed special interests on key citizen boards in the City. People in South Miami want green space too!
Even 100 units is way too many from a traffic concurrency issue alone going through that neighborhood on a slow day. I hope the neighbors not only win but they get reimbursed their legal fees. The proposed development is not remotely compatible to say the least.
I think the Mall is just a way to upzone land to obtain a higher price to sell wetlands to the highest bidder. It won't be built but the commission will probably rubber stamps their approvals because we still have the good old Pepe "pave over it" Diaz and his crew on the commission.
Residents want open green space. Gimenez doesn't get it. He wanted to pave Bicentennial Park. In fact, Gimenez's chief toady, Ralph Toledo's wife is a lobbyist/land use attorney who gets hired to lobby Gimenez to kill trees so developers can build more buildings.
Love that park.
Post a Comment