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Parking Lot
Handover
CRA Commences
Negotiations Despite Overtown Committee’s Objections
“The community needs that parking.”
This parking lot,
used by nearby businesses and residents, may soon be a construction
site. Photo by Ryan Brown
By Ryan Brown
At the intersection
of Northwest 10th Street and Third Avenue, in the heart of Overtown,
is a small but very effective parking lot — offering free spaces in
proximity to the downtown area.
The Miami Community
Redevelopment Agency-owned lot, which provides easy access to local
businesses and ample, safe parking in a dense area, has caught the
attention of local developer Alberto Milo Jr. Milo’s firm, Urban
Development Group (UDG), lists two completed projects on its Web
site, an upscale high-rise condo building in Spring Gardens and
Sunset Palm Villas in Little River, an affordable-housing townhomes
project.
“We will be
replacing the parking that is currently available to the public now
in a new parking garage,” Milo says. “Moreover, this shows the
city’s commitment and that of Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones to
the betterment of Overtown. This will be a public-private
partnership.”
In an apparent
effort to involve the Overtown community in the decision whether or
not to open negotiations with UDG, District 5 Commissioner
Spence-Jones put together a committee of Overtown residents to judge
among themselves whether or not the project is in Overtown’s best
interest. (Spence-Jones’ district includes Overtown.) The group’s
purpose was to present its conclusion to the city’s CRA board.
According to
longtime Overtown resident and activist Irby McKnight, the committee
was forced to come together and make a decision only hours before
the Nov. 27 CRA meeting. The committee met at noon while the CRA
meeting took place around 6 p.m.
The decision the
committee presented to Miami’s commissioners (who comprise the CRA
board) was to avoid opening negotiations with any developer, leaving
the parking lot as it stands.
“The community
needs that parking,” McKnight said. “I know because I live in the
neighborhood.”
McKnight noted that
local businesses would struggle during the construction. Besides
losing the Third Avenue parking, the project will inevitably tie up
streets, McKnight said.
The landmark
Jackson’s Soul Food restaurant is located directly across the street
from the lot.
“It will kill their
business before they even realize it,” says McKnight.
But Spence-Jones
and other Miami city commissioners, acting as the CRA’s board, still
voted to open negotiations with UDG to build on the lot, despite the
committee’s opinion.
Spence-Jones had
not answered questions the SunPost e-mailed her by deadline.
Milo does seem to have a history with some of the sitting
commissioners.
In an article from
the Daily Business Review on Oct. 12, 2005, Oscar Pedro
Musibay reported that in 2004, Commissioner Joe Sanchez “voted to
approve an affordable housing project called ‘Wagner Square’ to be
developed by Milo’s Urban Development Group and receiving $1.2
million in city support. Weeks later, Sanchez put down a deposit on
a new, affordably priced unit in a separate 96-unit condominium
tower built by Milo.”
Also, Sanchez’s
2005 campaign reports list Urban Development Group as a fundraiser.
Sanchez did not
return phone calls from the SunPost by deadline.
Spence-Jones also
has campaign donations listed from Milo and Urban Development Group.
The UDG project
will be called “Jazz Village,” and will, according to Milo, “be a
true mixed-use, mixed-income development. It will have retail and
commercial space on the ground floor.”
An Oct. 25 Miami
Herald article stated that Jazz Village is being built as part
of a proposed Historic Overtown Folklife Village district, an area
that promises to bring 2,400 new housing units. Jazz Village is to
consist of a workforce training school and housing.
Milo said he is especially proud of the school aspect of his
project. “I’m more excited about Medvance — they are a national
medical training school,” he said. “They will be opening a new state
of the art, 25,000-square-foot school at Jazz Village.”
McKnight is still
skeptical and doesn’t see why Medvance is needed. “Anybody that
wants to get job placement, for $5 they can sign up for classes at
Lindsey Hopkins,” he said, referring to the technical education
center at 750 NW 20th St.
McKnight said there
have been many technical schools that opened but later closed in
Overtown, some of them overnight, sticking students, who acquired
government loans to attend the schools, with the bill.
“Overtown is
occupied by families. This is a city of families,” McKnight said.
“I’m sick of the rip-off schemes that go on in Overtown.”
Comments? E-mail
ryan@miamisunpost.com.
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