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Battleground
Mercy Hospital. |
By Rebecca Wakefield
The
Miami Herald’s Mike Vasquez is quite the
trooper. This past Tuesday, Vasquez, all cherub cheeks and
hair gel, sat gamely through nine hours of a hearing at
Miami City Hall at which nothing happened.
The matter up for
consideration was whether to allow the Related Group and its
affiliates to build three very tall luxury condo towers next
to Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove.
Related Group chairman/CEO
Jorge Perez, looking very moguly in his tailored suit and
orange power tie, sat patiently, but with growing annoyance,
in the third row. The dozen or so highly paid minions (plus
maybe another dozen employees) arguing his case before the
commission occasionally dropped back a few paces to kneel at
his side and whisper reassurances.
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After about three or four hours, my brain began
to bleed and I was unable to absorb any more
nonsense. |
Led by the impressive and
ubiquitous Greenberg Traurig development attorney Lucia
Dougherty, Team Related made a hell of a pitch, with
renderings, artistic theories on traffic, experts galore,
and the distracting sight of a deeply tanned young assistant
of some sort in a tight leather skirt and pearl-colored
satin top who looked like she was on loan from the set of
Desperate Housewives. It was just perfect.
I’ve always thought that
someone should make a reality series out of the Related
Group — something that has the dramatic pace of a doctor,
lawyer, or cop show, but that captures the craziness of the
boom and bust development cycles, the insane amounts of
money, the political deal-making, and the attendant
personality disorders that go along with it all. Now
that’s Miami, way more than homicide detectives, models
or tattoo artists.
Anyway, in the audience,
besides Mercy Hospital president and CEO John Matuska and
other Mercy employees, there were a group of mostly elderly
or infirm people in yellow T-shirts with slogans such as
“Yes Grove Bay, Improve Mercy” and “Control Growth, Minimize
Traffic.”
Lobbyist Rosario Kennedy
walked around making sure all the yellow T-shirts had signed
up to speak. Around dinnertime, when it became clear the
public would not be speaking for quite a while, a Mercy van
came around to the front of City Hall and picked up most of
this group, hopefully to feed them.
On the other side of the
philosophical divide, there was a brief union of wealthy and
generally content Miamians with the often discontented
activists who tend to disapprove of much of the development
that has assailed them in recent years.
|
I’ve always
thought that someone should make a reality series
out of the Related Group. |
Well-coifed women with
chunky, expensive necklaces and sweater sets perched
attentively on their chairs, a tasteful pale blue sticker
above their hearts exhorting the commission to “Support
Vizcaya.” This was the issue that had joined the two groups
to oppose the luxury development.
Normally, this crowd might
be on the other side because Mercy Hospital officials say
the $96 million sale of its property to the developer will
allow it to renovate aging facilities. But Vizcaya, the
beautiful, historic estate of former industrialist James
Deering, is a national treasure. The board of Vizcaya
believes that these towers (even after Perez offered to
shave off a few stories) would spoil the natural beauty of
the place by essentially having glass and steel eyesores
rising from just beyond the gardens.
Other opponents are afraid
that if the city allows the government/institutional land
use of the Mercy property to be rezoned for high-density
residential development, it will trigger the Brickellization
of the Grove. Still others just don’t like the idea of yet
another high-rise for the idle rich stealing the sunlight
and jacking up their property taxes.
After about three or four
hours, my brain began to bleed and I was unable to absorb
any more nonsense. Clearly Commissioners Marc Sarnoff and
Tomas Regalado were going to vote no. Most likely Angel
Gonzalez and Michelle Spence-Jones would vote yes. Probably
Joe Sanchez was the swing vote. Could we not settle this
with a yacht race? A poker game? Donate one of the cheaper
units ($3 million) to house the poor?
I started roaming the
halls and picking up random snippets of conversation.
Attorneys for Related were griping about Sarnoff’s extensive
grilling of their experts. “Oh he’s biased,” muttered one.
“He’s lost it.”
“God, these are all
tricks he’s pulling,” complained another. “He knows
better than this.”
“Let’s get everyone
liquored!” joked one woman (nearly the only sensible thing I
heard the whole time).
Jack Luft, a former city
planner brought in to argue the finer points of city zoning
codes, fumed after his turn on the coals. “People love to
say ‘Hell with the law, I have a different opinion,’” he
told a colleague. “If this goes to court, and it probably
will, I will hammer this point.”
Down the hall, Jorge Perez
told Channel 10 reporter Glenna Milberg that his project was
not going to be disruptive to the neighborhood. “You always
have some naysayers and that’s what we have,” he opined.
Regalado quipped to me in
passing that the last time the commission heard this issue,
it seemed to be all about health care. This time it was all
about Vizcaya. He grinned, impishly.
The Herald’s
Vasquez wandered over to Israel Kreps, an amiable public
relations rep for Mercy Hospital, and asked him how long he
thought the meeting would last. Kreps shrugged helplessly.
“I thought it might be
over by 6,” Vasquez said, a little sadly. “I’m always
optimistic and I’m always wrong.”
Boy, was he wrong. By
about five hours.
Around the corner, a
lawyer remarked to a colleague that “everyone wants
development, but no one wants to die,” which seemed to me,
at the end of the affair, the perfect assessment of
Commissioner Sanchez’s state of mind when he convinced the
rest of the commission to defer a decision until he’d had
time to study the issue.
Comments? E-mail
wakefield@miamisunpost.com
