Snorkeling at Lowe’s

County allows developers to cross development boundary

By Cynthia Archbold

Neither dire warnings from a global warming task force, nor pleas from the county’s own planning and zoning boards, nor threats from the mayor nor potential lawsuits from the state stopped the Miami-Dade County Commission from voting 9-4 last Thursday to cross the urban development boundary — the imaginary line protecting the Everglades and the county’s water supply.

Only two days before the controversial public hearing to breach the UDB, commissioners heard alarming predictions from the county’s own global warming task force that open seawater will cover Miami-Dade County by mid-century: “Don’t use up open space and don’t go outside of the UDB,” Captain Dan Kipnis, an appointed member of the county’s Climate Change Advisory Task Force, had pleaded.

The task force, which is charged with helping the county prepare for a deluge of rising seawater in the coming decades, urged the commission to guard its water supply by protecting the Biscayne Aquifer from urban sprawl. They warned that Miami is ranked No. 1 in potential damages among the world’s port cities, facing $3.5 trillion in future destruction thanks to saltwater flooding.

Commissioners, soberly envisioning Miami as an urban Seaquarium, accepted the report’s findings and vowed to study and implement its recommendations.

Yet, two days later, the majority of those same commissioners approved construction of a Lowe’s home improvement store at Southwest Eighth Street and 137th Avenue and developer David Brown’s request to build an office complex at Kendall Drive and Southwest 167th Avenue. 

“Pretty soon, you’re going to have airboat rides looking at home improvement centers,” said Karen Esty, one of the 100 members of Hold the Line, an umbrella group of organizations that oppose urban sprawl beyond the UDB.

They’ve been fighting this battle for decades. Every two years, developers can apply to build projects outside of the UDB, and every year Hold the Line fights construction in the Everglades buffer zone.

On Thursday, they came in droves to voice their concerns about more sprawl and more traffic congestion, pollution and threats to clean water. But a seemingly equal number of residents in the western part of the county complained about long drives to get to Home Depot, overcrowding in Braddock High School and the need to build another school in the area where the Lowe’s would go. “Braddock High School is bursting at the seams,” said Miyera Diaz, an area resident.

Dozens of advocates and opponents spilled out into the hallway at the nine-hour meeting waiting for a chance to speak. Since it was Take Your Child to Work Day, kids were everywhere, listening quietly while the grownups tried to contain their emotions as they debated the future of the world their children will inherit.

The vote to puncture the UDB is extremely controversial, bucking orders from the Florida Department of Community Affairs and its mandate for Miami-Dade County to comply with state growth management laws, and defying recommendations from Mayor Carlos Alvarez, the county planning and zoning board and staff and the County Climate Change Task Force.

Opponents say the county doesn’t have the water supply for the project and that it isn’t necessary to build outside the UDB when there is plenty of land available within it for new construction.

Mayor Alvarez threatened to veto the UDB measure if the commission passed it; however, the nine votes would appear to override his veto.

If the mayor’s veto doesn’t hold, the proposals likely will be fought by the state Department of Community Affairs, which has already blasted the proposals in a 13-page letter, citing a lack of “planning for potable water” to support the applications. The DCA is expected to rule that the county is not in compliance with the state Growth Management Act, said Richard Grosso of the Everglades Law Center.

“I think it’s a high likelihood that they will find them out of compliance with growth management,” Grosso said. “The department is then required to initiate the legal challenge to them, and it would be the department against the county.”

Commissioner Katy Sorenson pointed out that Lowe’s could build a store right now on 16 acres of land it owns inside the UDB, right across the street. “It’s not a question of having a Lowe’s or not having a Lowe’s,” she said. “It’s a question of having it on the right side of the line or the wrong side of the line.”

However, Lowe’s lawyer Juan Mayol said the shape of the land wasn’t suited for the typical Lowe’s store layout.

He also held a trump card — Lowe’s promised to provide land for a new charter school on the proposed property. That lure proved to be the dealmaker.

“Nowhere does it say hold the line,” Commissioner Pepe Diaz said as he held up a copy of the county’s master plan. “What it does say is we need a compelling purpose. For me, a school is a compelling public purpose.”

Sorenson called the promise of the charter school “a red herring,” because building a school on land outside the UDB is outlawed by county policies and because there is no guarantee the school will be built.

Yet Diaz, Joe Martinez, Natacha Seijas, Audrey Edmonson, Rebeca Sosa, Dorrin Rolle, Bruno Barreiro, Barbara Jordan and Javier Souto voted for the developments. Commissioners Sorenson, Carlos Gimenez, Sally Heyman and Dennis Moss voted against.

“I think we are making a big mistake in approving these applications,” Sorenson said. “We’ve heard from the climate advisory board: a little bit every year, a little sea rise every year. You think one line doesn’t matter, one inch doesn’t matter. There will be another battle in another two years” because these developments will open the floodgates to more projects and more sprawl beyond the boundary.

Developers of two massive residential projects are expected to apply for zoning changes in 2010, said Richard Grosso of the Everglades Law Center. “They can buy farmland at farmland prices and then get county commissioners to vote to urbanize it and make it a heck of a lot more valuable,” he said. “That’s the history of how Dade County developed.”

But Grosso predicts the approved applications will not prevail. “I think the amendments are in a lot of trouble. They’re not in compliance with the Growth Management Act on several different grounds,” he said, adding that the DCA has 45 days to issue notice; if the county doesn’t comply, the state could sue.

Sorenson, meanwhile, warned the neighbors cheering for a new Lowe’s that there probably won’t be a new charter high school anytime soon because of likely legal battles with the state.

In any case, she said the county shouldn’t have to rely on a home improvement store to provide a school, or upon a developer to provide the road construction and a bridge to relieve traffic out west, as David Brown promised.

“The UDB people are going to have to get even more organized,” Sorenson said.