A drive west on Kendall Drive, then a hard left onto Northwest 84th Avenue reveals a quiet neighborhood with manicured, often oversized, front yards leading to sizable single-family homes.
Here, homeowners are fighting developers’ plans for 261 apartments in four projects proposed under a controversial Miami-Dade County development rule that allows bigger buildings near routes targeted for bus expansion.
The problem? The express bus for Kendall Drive (Southwest 88th Street), planned for a decade, is yet to arrive and is quite far off due to a major funding gap. Yet, the density it allows for is a closer reality, residents say.
“This looks a lot like putting the cart before the horse,” Daniel Efrain Arguelles told Miami-Dade staff members at a Tuesday night meeting on the issue.
All four projects are planned within a block and a half of each other in the Continental Park neighborhood and near Baptist Hospital of Miami.
Developers Walter Lista and Bob Liu of Capital Partners Management, through affiliates, propose two of the developments: one with 75 units in up to three-story buildings, and another with five-story buildings with 42 units. The Serralta Family Trust wants to build a three-story, 67-unit building, and Cape Summit 69 Holdings plans a three-story, 79-unit project.
The proposals call for rezoning single-family and estate lots to multifamily.
County staff is still reviewing the applications for compatibility with traffic, sidewalks and the neighborhood. Then, the Kendall Community Council will vote on the rezonings at a yet unscheduled meeting. The losing side can appeal the council’s decision to the county commission.
About 125 residents wearing matching tangerine-colored “Protect Continental Park” T-shirts packed a community center at the meeting, at times lashing out at county staff members. Another 70-plus residents watched on Zoom, and over 1,000 have objected to the proposals online.
Homeowners are pushing back with concerns over traffic on already congested streets, potential backups for emergency transport headed to Baptist, more floods due to paving over vacant land that soaks up rainfall, erosion of the area’s feel and a plunge of their property values, according to letters opposing the projects and statements at Tuesday’s meeting.
Many say this will open the floodgate to more development in Continental Park.
“This is an epidemic of hyperdensity to go ahead and enrich the pockets of developers. … I really do wish the developers were here to hear this,” Jorleen Aguiles said to loud applause from her neighbors. “If they are not, I am going to send out a very straight message to them: We are a powerful community and there is power in numbers no matter what the government officials say, no matter what the developer says.”
The developers’ attorneys didn’t return The Real Deal’s requests for comment.
But in filings to the county, they wrote that the proposals align with the existing and future development in the area, pointing out that nearby lots also have pending applications for similar projects, and some are already built, including a 128-unit complex.
Miami-Dade’s 2016 transportation plan, an aspiration to ease traffic woes by expanding bus and rail lines, called for transit expansion on six roads.
Since then, the county has added an express bus on one route, and the other projects seem far out in the future.
In a July memo, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said that the county faces a $7.6 billion revenue gap over the next 20 years to complete the projects, including on Kendall Drive, the Miami Herald reported. Unless the county explores a new tax, the projects face a 2045 timeline, she wrote.
In the meantime, proposals for projects under the rapid transit zoning have been filed. Under the rules, the closer a site is to a transit corridor such as Kendall Drive, the bigger a project can be: Up to 60 units per acre and a 2x floor area ratio on lots within a quarter mile of the road, and up to 36 units per acre and a 1.5x floor area ration on lots a half mile.
Continental Park residents were quick to point out developers are seizing on the zoning bonus, even though rapid transit isn’t here.
“What if these four developments go through [and] there is not a single transit, fast transit built on Kendall Drive for the next 50 years?” Felipe Barrios said. “You’ve ruined our neighborhood.”
County Commissioner Raquel Regalado, who represents the area, revealed at the onset of the meeting that she has drafted legislation aimed to give Kendallites control of their growth and development. Regalado left after speaking first at the meeting, saying she wants to avoid perceptions of conflict of interest if she has to vote on the multifamily projects.
Her proposed legislation calls for forming a neighborhood focus group that will collaborate on a growth and development plan, or a charette, as well as for a path to include this plan in the county’s comprehensive development master plan, a blueprint for future growth.
But residents already created a Kendall charette years ago, and it called for protection against exactly the type of proposed development but it was never included in Miami-Dade development regulations, one resident said toward the meeting’s end.
“Now we are going to start all over again?” she said. “They need to relook at what the language is in the comprehensive development master plan and how it was written, and it needs to match what was recommended. Why would you want to put a three story, five story, six story, eight story multifamily next to single-family homes.”
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