Cleaning Up
Commission Fast-Tracks Building and Zoning Survey, Backs New Project 

Conducting a focus group, which he estimates to cost as little as $1,400, would be much “quicker and cheaper,” Cabrera said.

A rendering of the Giralda Complex, which will loom above Coral Gables’ “restaurant row”

By Cynthia Archbold

City officials have gotten over their shock that the Coral Gables Building and Zoning Department became a crime scene two months ago.

Now they want to make sure that cleaning it up doesn’t drag on forever.

On Wednesday the Coral Gables City Commission granted City Manager David Brown permission to waive bidding requirements to expedite hiring a consultant to conduct a customer service focus group and perform a survey for the users of the building and zoning department.

Instead of going through the lengthy request for proposal process, the city manager will be able to spend up to $25,000 to hire a firm to get the job done right away.

It was Vice Mayor Maria Anderson’s idea to conduct a customer survey, but when city staff presented their plan of attack at the commission meeting, including hiring a firm by posting a request for $20,000 proposals, she worried that the process would take too long to be effective.

Commissioner Ralph Cabrera echoed her concern. “We’re looking at 16 weeks,” he said. Conducting a focus group, which he estimates to cost as little as $1,400, would be much “quicker and cheaper,” Cabrera said.

But Anderson insisted on the need for architects, contractors and residents to make their criticisms anonymously through a survey.

The mayor and commissioners decided to do both the focus group and the survey. “We have to have feedback,” Anderson says.

In recent months the building and zoning department has had to deal with a record amount of construction applications. In the near future one of them will be for the Giralda Complex, proposed by developer Jeffrey E. Lehrman, Esq., which was approved Wednesday by the commission on first reading.

The complex will soar eight stories above restaurant row, offering 44 new multifamily homes and 474 parking spaces.

The new construction means extra congestion in an area already choked with gridlock. Traffic studies show a new traffic light will be needed at the intersection of Giralda and Le Jeune Road.

To accommodate the Giralda Complex, designed by Fullerton Diaz Architects, the commission approved a change of land use from “commercial, low-rise intensity” to “commercial, mid-rise intensity” on Giralda Avenue between Salzedo and Galiano streets.

The Giralda Complex had been passed 6-0 by the Planning and Zoning Board, and was recommended by the planning department staff.

Still, commissioners balked at the 97-foot height towering over a block that consists of single story restaurants, and which involves knocking down a parking garage and two commercial buildings.

Anderson voted for the proposal on first reading but asked the city to propose incentives to prevent other property owners from also building taller buildings.

Zeke Guilford, Lehrman’s attorney, said allowing the extra height enables the architect “to build a better architectural product.”

John Fullerton explained that if he were forced to design a shorter building it would appear squatter — a massive block instead of a more graceful Mediterranean plaza, with aesthetically pleasing colonnades, pedestrian areas, setbacks and terraces.

To comply with the city’s open space requirements and mitigate the additional height, the developer is also providing landscaping and site improvements for the City Museum’s urban plaza.

But Ralph Cabrera said, “The fact that the developer wants to give money to the museum….doesn’t help me think it’s not going to increase density.”

As far as the idea of more height improving the architectural quality, he said, “If the citizens of Coral Gables knew about this product they wouldn’t want this product.”

The Giralda Complex comes back for final approval on Tuesday, Dec. 12.

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