After a year of trying, a contentious industrial project proposed outside Miami-Dade County’s Urban Development Boundary finally got approval, despite environmental groups’ concerns over the loss of wetlands.
Kelly Tractor, a heavy machinery supplier, will get to develop its up to 2.7 million-square-foot headquarters outside the Urban Development Boundary, the invisible line meant to stop construction from creeping onto agricultural land and wetlands. Miami-Dade County commissioners approved the project with a 9-3 vote on Tuesday, enough to override county Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s veto of the project, the Miami Herald reported.
Kelly Tractor, led by fourth generation members of the Kelly family, owns the 246-acre site west of Northwest 137th Avenue and near the Dolphin Expressway in Sweetwater.
The proposal touched off a firestorm, as projects outside the UDB usually do. Although Miami-Dade has a reputation as a developer-friendly county, building outside the line is one of the toughest proposals a developer can make.
Environmental groups and some county residents decried the potential impacts on wetlands, pointing out their vital purpose of cleaning pollutants in water before it reaches Biscayne Bay and the Everglades, recharge the county’s drinking water aquifer and reduce flooding.
Kelly Tractor, which initially came up for a vote in January, has tweaked its project throughout the year, with the final proposal committing to preserving 63 acres of wetlands on the site and 20 acres elsewhere.
But opponents also took issue with Kelly Tractor’s application process: It used the county’s “text amendment” route, which essentially allowed it to change what it’s allowed to build outside the UDB. The typical process would have been to move the boundary line, an application that would have required layers of reviews by the county and state.
The commission’s approval of the project “doesn’t move the UDB,” Laura Reynolds, of Hold the Line Coalition that opposes development outside the UDB, told the publication. “It just makes it irrelevant.”
Environmental groups also previously have said that the “text amendment” process allows Kelly Tractor to obtain approval with only a conceptual — and not specific — site plan, meaning it’s impossible to know whether Kelly Tractor will affect wetlands beyond the 63 acres it voted to preserve.
But Kelly Tractor has argued that it’s outgrown its Doral headquarters, where it’s been since 1971, and it will create more skilled labor jobs, which are of vital importance amid Miami-Dade’s affordability problem that’s pricing out many longtime locals. It also previously has said it was county staff members who told the firm to use the “text amendment” process.
Commissioners Danielle Cohen Higgins, Vicki Lopez and Micky Steinberg voted against the measure. Commissioner Marleine Bastien was absent. Commissioner Raquel Regalado, largely seen as the swing vote and who previously opposed the project, voted in favor, saying the new proposals “puts roughly 80 acres of wetlands into public ownership,” according to the publication.
— Lidia Dinkova
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