It’s easy to not make the difficult choice when no one puts it in front of you.

By Rebecca Wakefield

Victor Diaz Jr. is an intense man, one who takes himself too seriously at times. He is the dapper chairman of the Miami Beach Planning Board. He is a partner at the prominent Miami law firm of Podhurst Orseck, but is known on Miami Beach for his involvement in numerous issues, such as historic preservation and increasing Hispanic representation. He has never run for office, but he does get involved in campaigns, including those of former Mayor Neisen Kasdin and Commissioner Matti Bower. 

Diaz occupies a strange niche in Beach politics in that he is both an insider and an activist who consistently uses his talents and connections to push his vision of good government, much to the chagrin of some developers and the lawyers and lobbyists who work for them. He is well informed, clever, meticulous and a bit obsessive. He is passionate about topics many folks find eye-bleedingly dull. Fortunately, he is on the right side of most of the issues. This is good, because the man really could be an evil genius if he wished.

I sat down with him recently to discuss his concerns about the direction the city of Miami Beach is taking in terms of overdevelopment, traffic problems, lack of affordable housing, campaign finance reform and other elements that together determine the kind of city we live in.

Diaz participated in this interview because he sees the Beach as nearing a crisis point and he wants to know whether anyone else out there gives a damn while there’s still time. He raised some thought-provoking questions, with his characteristic blend of optimism and cynicism. At the end of the interview, I wasn’t sure whether to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder, or shake him and say, “Forget it, Victor. It’s just Chinatown.”

What is on your mind, Victor?

Many things are on my mind. I have been on the land use boards, one or another for over a decade. Beyond that I’ve been a citizen of the city of Miami Beach for 15 years and I have been fairly active in city politics. I care very deeply about the city. It has amazing potential, not only in terms of its livability and its diversity but also in terms of its potential to serve as an example of good government.

As I look back on my involvement in the city, I feel like I have a responsibility to provoke a dialogue about issues I care deeply about and to exercise some leadership on moving the city forward on issues I care about. I’m so desperately trying not to lose the magic of Miami Beach. I see things slipping away.

Can you be more specific?

Yes. I think there is a strong sentiment for growth management in the city. I have watched as a civic activist, as political campaigns have been waged on the Beach, where with rare exceptions the candidates position themselves as being in favor of growth management and against overdevelopment. During that time, the city has made progress, but without a doubt the city has not been as aggressive in growth management as the citizenry should expect. 

Why do you think that is?

Because ultimately on one side of the debate are individuals who want to pour more concrete in Miami Beach and there is money to be made from pouring concrete. There is a huge industry in Miami Beach of lawyers and lobbyists to advocate for the position of developers, pitted against some lonely voices in the community, many of whom are engaged only when issues affect their particular neighborhood and aren’t viewing it from a broader, citywide perspective. Groups that once were active have been lost in the process, [such as] the preservation movement, the Miami Beach Taxpayer’s Association.

Lobbyists are well spoken and polished, that’s why they are well paid. But the housewife who stands up and says the emperor has no clothes or the civic activist who says, not in my neighborhood, is treated as some sort of crazy. As a member of the planning board, I try to level the playing field so that the people who don’t have the skills and experience are given the information they need to be able to make the arguments and the people who do have the skills are cross-examined so they can’t use smoke and mirrors to confuse the reality of what’s going on.

What needs to change?

The will of the people, who vote year after year for progressive growth management initiatives, is not being translated rapidly enough into policy. For example, a year ago the citizens of Miami Beach were asked in a referendum their opinion on imposing limits on the number of big projects in excess of 50,000 square feet. They passed that by a very convincing margin.

I would have translated that into an immediate moratorium. Not citywide. Perhaps you could have translated the will into a moratorium in areas of the city where you already have excessive development, or on projects that haven’t been permitted. Or on projects that have been permitted but haven’t begun construction. There’s a whole range of positions that could have been taken, but the net effect has been nothing has been done in terms of tangible policy.

We have a concurrency system that has failed. We’ve had [the city’s] administration come in to the planning board and admit the system is not working and we have planning studies and requests for qualifications to do planning studies. That is going to take years.

Let’s temporarily put on hold projects until we can let the process of the city catch up. There’s no incentive now for the development community to support those initiatives. Once they know that until those initiatives are completed they’re not going to be able to move forward with their projects, they will be the strongest supporters of pushing that process forward. If there’s not a temporary hold, they have every incentive to slow it down. Unless you believe they’re motivated by purely altruistic factors.

(Raucous laughter, which dies slowly into giddy titters)

Please note that the reporter is laughing. Every building that goes up with failed concurrency, that means we’re not mitigating the traffic impact correctly, that we’re not collecting enough for park impact fees and parking impact fees. Even though we’ve had all this building, we haven’t collected enough money to even build one decent park. It’s like $300,000 even though we’ve accommodated hundreds of millions in construction. You can’t even remodel a playground for that. We will never catch up unless we stop the pace of development long enough to let the planning process move forward with procedures that are well thought out and strike a balance to continue to promote development and redevelopment, but to protect the interests of the residents.

So how do you realistically get a moratorium?

Simple. Any commissioner could introduce it tomorrow and it could be debated.

No, seriously.

It’s courage.

Yeah, but where is that going to come from?

I would hope it will come from our elected officials.

Uh-huh. How likely do you think that is?

I still believe that if the debate is brought squarely to the public forum, the elected officials will weigh this carefully. It’s easy to not make the difficult choice when no one puts it in front of you. But when someone forces you to confront an issue, then you have to make a choice. Once they go on record, for or against these positions, then the citizenry will have something to judge them by when they go for re-election or when they try to run for mayor. It’s very easy to hide behind slogans if there hasn’t been a record of specific proposals on which people can be judged.

I think Miami Beach is the last hope for a progressive, livable urban city in South Florida. If we can’t turn the tables so the developer pays his fair share of impact, then what other community can? We’ve reached a critical point. Are we going to continue to overdevelop some areas and underdevelop other areas, and fail with traffic and infrastructure problems? Will we be a city that has rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, Hispanic and non-Hispanic, Jew and gentile, or we are going to become more homogenized? If we become that, the city will not have the long-term viability it could have.

I’m a successful businessman and can afford to live in the city. But I don’t want to live in a city that only has people who look and think like me. I want to live in a city that’s diverse and where I’m confronted with the realities of everybody’s existence, not just my dilemma about whether I’m going to eat at Osteria del Teatro or Touch.