Late on Arrival
Traffic Among Reasons Mid-Beach Residents Oppose
Proposed Condo Building

 “There is no absolute right to build to a maximum FAR.”

 
41^st Street looks fairly clear this Wednesday evening but neighbors say this thoroughfare is often bumper-to-bumper with cars. Photo by Ryan Brown.

By Erik Bojnansky

When Mark Derr, a writer and Sheridan Avenue resident, came up to the podium, he not only offered testimony to the Miami Beach Planning Board but also a DVD.

The video, produced by Mid-Beach homeowners Judy Stern, Costanza Zordan and Luca Zordan, was a documentary hardly 15 minutes long on the horrendous traffic problems on Arthur Godfrey Road, also known as 41st Street. With Alison Brown’s “Late on Arrival,” a folksy banjo tune, playing in the background, gridlocked traffic day and night is chronicled by someone driving a car while holding a video camera. Toward the end of the film the following phrases appear: “What’s Quality of Life? Less Traffic, Less Pollution, Less Noise, Less Commuting Time. More Time for Ourselves and for Our Loved Ones.”

The point: that a proposed seven-story, 42-unit residential building and a 138-space parking garage at 4120 Pine Tree Drive and 340 W. 42nd St. will make an already bad traffic situation around Arthur Godfrey Road worse.

On Tuesday, after two-and-half hours of debate, including statements from neighboring residents who insisted the project was out of scale for the area, the Planning Board unanimously continued Cabi 301 Commercial LLLP’s and Cabi 301 Residential LLP’s application to Jan. 23.

During that time, the board encouraged the developer’s representatives to negotiate with his neighbors.

But Carter McDowell, the developers’ attorney, said his clients have tried to negotiate with neighbors. Unfortunately, those neighbors keep insisting on a three-story project that is not “economically viable,” said McDowell.

Among his client’s options: filing suit against the city of Miami Beach.

“I heard a lot of neighbors say they didn’t want it,” McDowell said, “but no substantial competent evidence.”

Both Cabi companies are based at 19950 W. Country Club Drive, Suite 900, an Aventura office that also served as the home of Cabi Aventura Condo LLC, which is owned by Jacobo, Abraham and Elias Cababie. (Previous Jacobo Cababie developments include Parc at Turnberry in Aventura and Everglades on the Bay in Miami.) Their project, to be built beside a six-story office and bank, is to consist of 35 condominiums and a three-story garage “concealed at ground level by seven townhouse units,” according to a staff report from Planning Director Jorge Gomez. McDowell said his clients have the right to build a seven-story project based on zoning rules that have been in place there since 1972.

However, under a recently passed ordinance, any project larger than 50,000 square feet in a commercial district must receive conditional use permit from the Planning Board prior to moving forward. The Cabi project is more than 130,000 square feet in size, Gomez said.

Victor Diaz, chairman of the Planning Board, said the ordinance enabled the Planning Board to force developers to address the property rights of their neighbors as well as their own. “There is no absolute right to build to a maximum FAR,” he said. FAR stands for floor area ratio, a method many cities, including Miami Beach, use to calculate a property’s future density.

The main concern from city planners is not future traffic but the size of the project. “Although the structure is designed to meet the height permitted by code, a seven-story building facing a low-scale single-family [neighborhood] would have an adverse impact on the adjacent area,” Gomez wrote. “Notwithstanding, the scale and height could be mitigated by making certain design changes.”

“Our idea is to get the project here the feel of a three-story building,” Gomez told the board.

Several homeowners told the board they would be willing to accept a smaller-scale building. But many Mid-Beach residents fretted that traffic was already unbearable.

Penny Parham, a Sheridan resident who works for the Miami-Dade School Board, said besides Cabi, “numerous condominiums” have been approved on Collins Avenue that haven’t even opened yet: Fontainebleau II, Eden Roc Tower, Caribbean Tower and Aqua.

As it is now, commuting is virtually impossible, said Aaron Gross, an 18-year-old resident of 42nd Street. Taking the bus to a religious school in North Miami Beach, Gross said he is often 35 minutes late. Driving home on Saturday evening down 41st Street, his father, an Orthodox Jew, is often forced to park by a meter and walk the rest of the way home. “Six blocks should not take 20 minutes,” he said.

Joaquin Vargas, a senior transportation engineer working for Traf Tech, Cabi’s hired traffic expert, said the project will only generate 34 trips at peak times. After being repeatedly pressed by Diaz, Vargas said the study also showed that meant a total of 2,526 trips for the area during peak times, once the project is built. At one particular intersection, 3,500 vehicle trips were detected at Pine Tree and 41st Street, making it a level service D thoroughfare, the second lowest on the county’s scale.

McDowell, though, argued that the Cabi project will only generate five trips. “Five trips compared to 3,500 is so low it is unnoticeable.”

The developers must make the project concurrent traffic-wise before it can move forward under the city comprehensive plan, McDowell told the board.

“How are you proposing to meet concurrency?” Diaz asked.

“I can’t tell you as I [stand] here now,” McDowell replied.

McDowell also blamed the demolition of the 63rd Street flyover in North Beach. Prior to the Florida Department of Transportation removing the flyover and narrowing the intersection to one lane, there were 15,000 car trips on the flyover, McDowell said. Now, while work is being done, many cars that would otherwise take Alton Road to travel north of 63rd Street are instead taking 41st Street.

Other planning board members showed sympathy for the Cabi project.

“Sooner or later we will have a building there,” said board member Jorge Kuperman. “The traffic is going to get worse and worse because the city is growing at an amazing rate.”

Better to have a residential project on the lot, Kuperman said, than a commercial one, which would generate even more car trips. Kuperman, an architect, also felt a residential building was better than an unused lot “from an urbanism” perspective.

His views were echoed by board members Marlo Courtney and Matthew Adler.

“The site has development rights — something will be developed unless the city is prepared to do a taking and make it a part.” Adler said.

Comments? E-mail erik@miamisunpost.com.