Dear Vice President Biden: don't support suburban sprawl ... by gimleteye

Our Vice President is in town to meet with powerful Democrats. It is all about reviving the economy and the fiscal stimulus. The Miami Herald shows Joe meeting with Carlos (Alvarez, Mayor of Miami-Dade County) and Manny (Diaz, Mayor of the City of Miami) at the site of the billion dollar plus Miami Intermodal Center, meant to propel Miami International Airport (again) into the 21st century.

Mr. Vice President, what many civic activists have worried about, with respect to the fiscal stimulus, is that the money will fall into the hands of the sprawl builders who are largely responsible for creating the national economic crisis in the first place. This is a certainty if history is any guide.

If you read the Miami Herald this morning-- as I am sure you will-- the section I would advise you first reading the Herald advertising section called, the "Home Guide". The guide is buried somewhere behind the sports section. Today it is only a few flimsy pages, but it was once the powerful capital of Miami Herald profits (no more) and, as such, explains how the Latin Builders Association and the South Florida Builders Association prevailed in tamping down public criticism of the housing market bubble as it occurred.

There is no doubt that the production homebuilder lobby in Miami-Dade, that controlled local politics and state politics by extension for decades, is going to make a run at fiscal stimulus money to pave more roads out near the Everglades to meet transportation concurrency requirements of the State of Florida, in order to speed more zoning for platted subdivisions in farmland or commercial "job related" real estate. (Never mind such delectable items as; the homebuilders are actively lobbying the state legislature to eliminate transportation concurrency requirements in Florida state law, or, that sprawl booster banks are desperately seeking capital or to sell their banks outright.)

This failed economic model is on full view in the "Home Guide", Mr. Vice President, where I would call your attention to the only McMansion advertisement in the once muscular section. I would like to offer you a "guide" to reading this week's "Home Guide", that inform you of the waiting disaster if the fiscal stimulus money is used to "rescue" production homebuilders.

First, note that the developer is trying to sell inventory at more than a 50 percent discount to listed price: "auction-like prices on luxury estate homes". That's right: this business model that commandeered Florida politics for decades is, today, only viable for bottom feeders. Is that really how we want to get our economy going, Mr. Vice President? By appealing to bottom feeders?

I would like to draw your attention, Mr. Vice President, to a related point of history: it is the full half-page ad below the "auction-like price" info ad. This half page ad also advertises "HUGE price reduction at Sunset Falls" in Broward County. The ad is paid for by GL Homes. Here is a slice of history on GL Homes.

In December 1994, after a year and a half battle with community activists, a corporation called Atlantic Gulf Communities-- once a hugely influential production home builder in Miami, long ago bankrupt and a shell of its former self-- succeeded in obtaining permits in Broward for a 2000 home development called Sunset Lakes. (Sun Sentinel, December 21, 1994, Sunset Lakes in Miramar gets OK).

Sunset Lakes was a kind of Waterloo for Florida environmentalists; the place where the battle to stop sprawl was lost.

Both Miami Lakes (the Graham Companies) and Weston (Arvida, Cobb real estate), now communities totaling tens of thousands of residents, had emerged in a naïve era of zoning and permitting. But by 1994-- fifteen years ago, Mr. Vice President-- the battle lines were clearly drawn. In the case of Sunset Lakes in far western Broward County, it was a Democratic administration in Tallahassee that delivered a devastating blow to environmentalists.

“Broward County took its finger out of the dike today. You can’t restore what you’ve given away,” said Patti Webster of the Environmental Coalition of Broward County to the Sun Sentinel at the time of the zoning approval, only a mile and a half from the Everglades. The Sunset Lakes development was strong-armed through by lobbyists and bankers and production homebuilders who hungrily eyed vacant space near the Everglades as the next big thing.

The tragedy was that it occurred despite a newly formed blue ribbon panel, The Governor's Commission for a Sustainable South Florida, that specifically and explicitly sought to tamp down building in areas that were critical for water storage and Everglades restoration. All the players, except for civic activists fighting sprawl, were on the Governor's Commission.

In July 1995, a Democratic administration in Florida waved concerns that had been expressed by the weakest regulator in the nation, the US Army Corps of Engineers, that the land in question should be considered as a buffer between the Everglades and urban development—and approved the project.

The Chiles administration was unmoved by the clamor that Sunset Lakes would destroy open land “crucial for replenishing water to the Everglades and restocking underground reservoirs that will be the primary source of drinking water.” (Sun Sentinel, Miramar project heads for OK, July 26, 1995)

In November 1999, Atlantic Gulf sold its interest in Sunset Lakes to sprawl builder GL Homes, the advertiser in today's "Home Guide".

Today, ten years after GL Homes picked up Sunset Lakes, Mr. Vice President, the Broward land near the Everglades has been sucked dry by developers who are now gaming Congress for bailouts, subsidies and stimulus money to "improve" roadways near sprawling projects whose only conceivable purpose is to rescue wealthy and politically influential land speculators. Draw your own conclusions, please, and take this message back to Washington, Mr. Vice President, to our former community organizer and President. I really hope you will.