The SunPost

After heated debate, a proposal to build a Lowe’s home improvement store on land outside the Urban Development Boundary near the Everglades moved a step closer to approval Tuesday when the Miami-Dade County Commission narrowly gave it the go-ahead.

In a tight 8-5 vote, the commission backed the Lowe’s application and will ask the state’s Department of Community Affairs to review the application and send back its suggestions in January.

“You’re changing the footprint forever and once it’s gone, it’s gone,” lamented Commissioner Katy Sorenson, talking about the environmental value of 50-plus acres of virgin land in the western part of the county where Lowe’s wants to build.

It’s the third time that Lowe’s has applied to build on the land at the corner of Eighth Street and 138th Avenue — beyond a line that is supposed to protect the Everglades and prevent urban sprawl — over the objections of the county Planning and Zoning Department, which has steadfastly recommended denying the application.

Dozens of environmental activists wearing “Hold the Line” stickers objected to the project, saying it threatens precious resources.

“What part of the word ‘finite’ are we having trouble understanding?” asked activist Maria Roberts. “We have the ocean on one side, the wetlands on the other and a small strip of land in between. A lot of people have profited at the expense of the rest of us. We don’t need to nibble away at sensitive outlying wetlands,” she said. Roberts and other environmentalists advocate “smart growth,” enforcing the county’s UDB plan and redeveloping Miami’s existing urban core.

However, Lowe’s attorney, Juan Mayol, promised to help build a much-needed high school and a bridge over 138th Avenue, which some commissioners believe would significantly improve traffic in the area.

Commissioner Pepe Diaz, who represents the region where Lowe’s wants to build, was swayed by Lowe’s pledge to sell part of the land at a discount to build either a charter high school or a public high school big enough for 2,000 students and playing fields.

Dozens of his constituents spoke in support of the Lowe’s project and of building a new high school. Some neighbors of the proposed project said they want a big new store because they have to spend hours fighting traffic, since there’s no home improvement store nearby.

Jose Rodriguez was one of several residents who called the land that’s supposed to be buffering the Everglades “a dumping area,” full of tires and abandoned vehicles.

“This is not really the wetlands. It’s a swamp that people are abusing,” said Mario Ojios, president of Braddock High School’s Parent Teacher Association, adding that Braddock is “extra overcrowded” and that “we need some sort of relief.”

But Sorenson wondered aloud how many of the residents understood that Lowe’s wants to move the UDB and doesn’t have to. “We have available land right next door,” she told them, referring to 16 acres within the UDB that the chain store operator already owns. “We can have our cake and eat it too,” she said.

As for the promise of a new high school, Sorenson called it “wishful thinking.” She noted that Lowe’s isn’t offering to give away part of its land, but to sell it. She asked Mayol, “What kind of contract do you have with a charter school?”

“We don’t,” he replied. “We’re waiting to see what the school district wants.”

Meanwhile, Ivan Rodriguez, director of facilities planning for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, said there’s no plan to build a school in that area, nor does the school district’s five-year capital plan include funds to build one there. However, Rodriguez says the school board could amend the budget to include a new high school, if it chose to.

Allowing development outside the UDB is “a slippery slope,” said Miami Lakes Councilman Michael Pizzi. He urged the commission to vote no, saying the UDB is “cast in stone as the quality-of-life line, the line in the sand by which we protect our quality of life. It takes discipline and courage to say, ‘No, we’re not going beyond that point.’”

Yet Commissioner Natasha Seijas, whose district includes Miami Lakes, voted for the Lowe’s proposal. Also voting yes: Diaz, Audrey Edmonson, Joe Martinez, Dorrin Rolle, Barbara Jordan, Javier Souto and Chair Bruno Barreiro. Voting no: Sorenson, Carlos Gimenez, Sally Heyman, Dennis Moss and Rebeca Sosa.

Pizzi is asking Mayor Carlos Alvarez to veto the Lowe’s proposal. The mayor has 10 days to decide. Meanwhile, regardless of the mayor’s decision, Sorenson believes the state’s Department of Community Affairs will order the county to deny the proposal, as it has done previously. The commission’s final vote comes in April, when it will need nine votes to move the UDB.

South of Fifth Street residents say they scored a huge victory when the Miami Beach Planning Board voted Nov. 27 to close the so-called “accessory use” loophole that allows such restaurants as Prime One Twelve and DeVito South Beach to operate in their neighborhood.

The proposal would create a 1-to-1 ratio of hotel rooms to restaurant seats and limit the number of people allowed in restaurant and bar areas. The existing restaurants, Prime One Twelve and DeVito South Beach, would be grandfathered in.

Some in the hotel industry feel the plan, especially the occupancy limit, could hinder their success. But activist Frank Del Vecchio, who has led the grassroots effort to close the loophole, praised the board’s action and said it signals a policy shift from a decade of rapid growth to smart growth.

Del Vecchio is confident that the new “resident-friendly” commission sworn in on Nov. 21 will accept the Planning Board’s recommendation.

“It reconciles the adverse effects of growth, and the Planning Board has met its responsibility of dealing with growth management,” he said. “This is a very positive moment.”

The area affected is nine square blocks along Collins Avenue and Ocean Drive below Fourth Street. In that historic district, city code only permits restaurants to exist in hotels, and they can’t be bigger than the size necessary to serve that hotel’s guests — up to 49 percent of the hotel’s floor-to-area ratio.

Prime One Twelve, in the Browns Hotel at 112 Ocean Drive, is allowed 80 restaurant seats for an eight-room hotel. Neighbors say the successful restaurant creates noise and congestion, with daily food deliveries, garbage in the alley, valets competing for parking spots and the nightly chatter of hundreds of people coming and going. DeVito South Beach, up the street at 150 Ocean Drive, is a similar story.

Though no one disputes that the two are first-class establishments, Del Vecchio, the South of Fifth Neighborhood Association and other concerned citizens want to prevent more such businesses from diminishing the quality of life in their relatively quiet, mostly residential neighborhood.

Parties representing both the residents and the hotel and restaurant industries tentatively agreed on the 1-to-1 ratio of hotel rooms to restaurant seats at the Sept. 25 Planning Board meeting. However, an amendment limiting the total number of people allowed in these restaurant and bar areas raised some objection from hoteliers at Tuesday’s meeting since it would limit restaurant occupancy to 150 percent of a hotel’s total rooms. In other words, a hotel with 60 rooms would be allowed a total of 60 restaurant and bar seats and a total of 90 people in the accessory-use restaurant at one time.

Stuart Blumberg, president of the Greater Miami and Beaches Hotel Association, said the occupancy limit would mean hotels might have to turn guests away from their restaurants and bars.

“I don’t think that’s correct in trying to operate a successful hotel, or an accessory use to that hotel, by telling the customer we can’t take you in anymore,” Blumberg said.

South Beach resident Henry Stolar insisted that the city regulate the number of people frequenting a restaurant, not just the number of seats.

“Seats are inanimate; bodies are real,” he said. “Seats do not drive cars; people do. Seats do not need parking spaces; people do. Seats do not create traffic problems; people do. Seats do not screech tires; valets do. Seats do not make noise, or toss litter, or drink too much, or urinate publicly, or shout, yell and scream, or create sanitation and disorderly conduct problems. People do those things. So to legislate only seats, is not to address what is inherently a people problem.”

The legislation will likely affect the proposed 130-room Bijou Hotel, which is proposed to be built at 315-320 Ocean Drive.

Del Vecchio and neighbors fear that the hotel — now designed with a restaurant, bar, lounge and rooftop pool — could morph into a nightspot like the Shore Club or Nikki Beach Club. Through an appeal, Del Vecchio has kept the project tied up in the Historic Preservation Board, despite an initial approval Sept. 11.

Bijou developer Fred Rado refused to comment about his project’s future. He did, however, offer an opinion to the Planning Board about the new ordinance: “The occupancy of 150 is a little bit difficult for a hotel to work with, I believe.”

The City Commission likely will hear the Planning Board’s recommendation in January.

The planning board could not decide on the boundaries for a westward expansion of the Flamingo Park History District. Photo by Mitchell Zachs/magicalphotos.com

Deadlocked after two votes on how to extend the Flamingo Park Historic District westward, the Miami Beach Planning Board decided Tuesday to hand off both ideas to the City Commission.

One reason for the tie vote was the absence of the board’s seventh member, Jorge Kuperman. But that aside, resident opposition to the political ramifications of designating an area historic had the board stumped.

Building regulations in historic districts are more stringent than elsewhere, which some Planning Board members said could make the area’s revitalization less appealing to developers. Critics of expanding the historic district also questioned why it should be extended into an area where they say many of the buildings don’t have historical value.

Those in favor of enlarging the district pointed to the important role that Miami Beach’s preserved Art Deco architecture has played in the city’s renaissance and world-class stature.

“It’s not about every building being historically significant and contributing,” said Planning Board Chairman Marlo Courtney, an expansion supporter. “It’s about bringing more aesthetics to the neighborhood.”

The idea to extend the Flamingo Park Historic District began to grow legs on July 13, 2006, when the city’s Historic Preservation Board discussed adding to it “all properties on the east side of Alton Road between Seventh Street and 14th Street.” The district, originally designated in June 1990 and enlarged slightly in November 1992, covers the area roughly between Sixth Street and North Lincoln Lane, and from Washington Court to Lenox Court.

The expansion topic bounced between the Historic Preservation Board, the City Commission and city staff for more than a year, until Sept. 11, when the Historic Preservation Board decided the westward expansion should include “the east right of way line of Alton Road between Eighth Street and 14th Street only.”

Jimmy Resnick, a property owner who lives in the 1200 block of Alton Road, which is in the proposed expansion area, criticized what he felt have been haphazard, politically influenced decisions to pull some blocks out of the original expansion area and leave others in.

“You take away Seventh to Eighth Street. Why? Because, politically, everybody spoke and screamed and yelled,” Resnick said. “And you take Sixth and Seventh Street because everybody screamed and yelled. I guess I didn’t scream loud enough so you left my block in there too. I mean, it’s just ludicrous.”

Erika Brigham, a member of the Historic Preservation Board, spoke in favor of expansion as a means of protecting the rest of the Flamingo Park Historic District and ensuring that people entering the city from the MacArthur Causeway flyover ramp would continue seeing an aesthetically pleasing destination.

“I would urge you, if you feel that way, to please come suggest to the City Commission that it put the 700 block in,” Brigham said.

Robert Kaplan made a motion, seconded by Ted Berman, to exclude everything below 12th Street. Matthew Adler, Cathy Leff and Courtney voted no. Berman, Kaplan and Richard Kuper voted yes.

Adler made another motion, which was seconded by Leff, to include the entire staff-recommended area between Eighth and 14th streets. Kaplan, Kuper and Berman voted no. Adler, Leff and Courtney voted yes.

“It’s, in my opinion, unfortunate this board didn’t make a decision,” Courtney said.

The City Commission is likely to hear the ordinance in January. A decision to approve the expansion requires five of seven votes from the commission.

With the town manager’s resignation less than a month away, the Surfside Town Commission unanimously moved to place the police chief in charge of the municipality’s day-to-day operations.

Town Manager W.D. Higginbotham will resign Dec. 14 and police Chief Dave Allen will become interim town manager.

Higginbotham, previously the city manager of Gainesville, joined Surfside in 2006, just before four of five seats on the Town Commission changed hands in an election. He was making $128,750 a year.

Allen was a police major with the Miami Beach Police Department when he was hired as Surfside’s interim police chief in 2006. He was became the permanent chief in January.

How much Allen will be paid as town manager will be worked out at the Dec. 11 Surfside Town Commission meeting. Also on the agenda: how Surfside will go about searching for a permanent replacement.

“We definitely support as broad a search as possible,” said Commissioner Marc Imberman.

In July, Higginbotham announced his intention to resign, complaining that he was being micromanaged by Commissioner Mark Blumstein. He later reversed his stance after other commissioners and several residents expressed support for him to stay. In his resignation letter to the commission, Higginbotham said he wanted to start a “new chapter in his life.”

The Sunny Isles Beach City Commission approved a site plan proposal for Oceanika Villas, a 20-unit townhouse development slated for the 18900 and 19000 blocks of Atlantic Boulevard in the northern section of the Golden Shores neighborhood.

The project will replace 16 aging duplexes that will be demolished, said attorney Jeff Perlow, representing development firm Oceanic Development LLC.

Oceanika Villas will consist of four buildings, each with five townhouse units. The two-story units will range in price from $1.4 million to $1.7 million and represent the first new townhouse project to go forward since Sunny Isles Beach incorporated in 1997.

But Commissioner Roslyn Brezin objected at the Nov. 15 meeting to what she felt was sparse landscaping, particularly next to a backyard wall. “I see a walled-in area,” she said. “I don’t see any kind of floral beautification.”

Commissioner Dan Iglesias echoed her concerns. “I agree. We’re trying to hide the wall,” he said, noting that the project would be visible to motorists entering the city on the William Lehman Causeway.

Perlow maintained that the project would meet the city’s landscaping standards, but he agreed to install landscaping to visually buffer the wall, although that landscaping would lie within a utility easement.

Vice Mayor Lewis Thaler and Commissioner Gerry Goodman raised the drainage issue. Noting that the project’s front is dominated by double-wide concrete driveways, Goodman expressed concern that storm-water runoff would flood adjacent properties. He noted that a nearby resident recently complained after a home was built without adequate drainage design. “I want to avoid flooding in Golden Shores,” said Goodman. Thaler agreed. “The containment [of storm water] is very important,” he said.

Perlow noted that there will be a grassy swale out front, drains in the streets and French drains in the property’s rear.

The applicant also agreed to pay 1 percent of construction costs into the city’s Public Art Trust Fund in lieu of providing a displayable art work.

Assistant City Manager Jorge Vera noted that the 1.5-acre site had not yet been platted, which has to be done. Concerned about the narrowness of the lot, he also raised the issue of access during construction. “You need to plan in order to minimize the impact to the community, since you have one way in and one way out,” he said.

The Sunny Isles Beach City Commission gave the developer of the Da Vinci condo tower project at 17141 Collins Ave. up to three more months to acquire a building permit on Nov. 15.

In December 2005, developer Mully SB LLC received variances and site plan approval to build a 27-story, 69-unit oceanfront high-rise. Mully also agreed to pay several million dollars to purchase zoning bonuses and development rights transfers in exchange for permission to exceed current building codes.

City code gave Mully SB LLC until December 2007 to secure building permits, or their development rights would expire. However, Greenberg Traurig attorney Cliff Schulman said his client has been unable to get coastal construction permits, and, with the coming holidays, it seems unlikely they will get them by December. He said officials of Mully SB LLC, which is owned by Nathan Benson and Raymond Gottlieb, already received deposits on 46 units, representing $89 million in sales, but cannot close on the deals or secure construction financing without a building permit.

City officials balked at granting such a lengthy extension. Commissioner Gerry Goodman seemed incredulous that Mully SB hadn’t been able to obtain a permit. Mayor Norman Edelcup said he would be willing to extend only until January or February. A longer extension, he said, would delay payments to the city. “I wouldn’t mind giving a shorter extension,” said Edelcup, who added that if the short-term extension passes without a resolution, the developer should be required to pay a portion of the TDR and zoning bonus funds, which normally come due when a building permit is issued.

Schulman then asked for, and received, an extension until March. At that point, he said, his client would pay $6 million to the city, satisfying most of its obligation.