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Miami Herald
6 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
Does new Miami law allow high-rises next to one-story houses? It's complicated
A fast-track, far-reaching plan by Miami officials to encourage development of high-rise housing clusters for a mile around transit rail stations, already set to become law, has stirred up alarm from residents worried about its potential to transform vast swaths of the city — but the impact likely won't play out for years, if not decades. In late July, Miami city commissioners unanimously approved the complex new zoning strategy, which goes by the unwieldy denomination of Transit Station Neighborhood Development, or TSND, barely a month after its release to a surprised and bewildered public. The TSND designation creates new zones in a radius of up to a mile around existing and planned Metrorail and commuter rail stations, including Brightline stations, inside city boundaries. Within those zones, developers can apply to build high-rise residential and commercial projects with considerably more units and height than the old local rules allowed, a strategy intended to sharply increase housing supply and affordability while boosting transit use. In exchange, the developers must set aside a percentage of units as affordable or workforce housing and provide a menu of other public benefits that can range from green space and improvements for pedestrians to building a new rail station, depending on how big they want to go. At the same July meeting, commissioners approved the first, and so far the only, TSND project. It's a massive plan by veteran Miami developer Michael Swerdlow and his partners, drawn up in response to a bid request by Miami-Dade County to replace aging public housing projects, that will erect some 5,000 apartments, extensive retail and a new station in Northwest Miami's Little River-Little Haiti neighborhood for the struggling Tri-Rail commuter train line's spur to downtown Miami. But the unusually short window for review left residents, activists and members of the city's own planning and zoning board — some of whom fruitlessly tried to get Miami officials to hold off on approval — complaining of confusion as they tried to digest the legislation's sometimes Byzantine details and its potential to encroach on some of Miami's extensive low-scale residential neighborhoods. 'This was pushed through in under 36 days with no meaningful public engagement — there wasn't even a copy of the final ordinance being proposed at the last commission meeting made available to the public,' said Marlene Erven, who heads the Coconut Grove Park Homeowners Association. 'What began as a plan tied to the Little River redevelopment was expanded to apply across the city, and it really puts every neighborhood at risk of up-zoning and destabilization.' At its heart, the backlash generated by the TSND initiative reflects an intensifying debate over the future of a city that was laid out largely in the fashion of a low-density, auto-oriented suburb of mostly single-family homes and small apartment buildings but that now faces pressure for increased density amid relentless development demands, a crippling affordable housing crisis, intractable traffic congestion and a lagging public transit system. It also comes as the city has clashed with Miami-Dade over the county's increasingly assertive deployment — even within city boundaries — of its own transit-station development rules, called Rapid Transit Zones, or RTZs for short, which preempt Miami's local zoning rules and already encourage redevelopment of comparable intensity to that offered by the TSNDs. For many residents and activists, the biggest issue with what they say are the otherwise laudable goals of the plan is its sheer breadth. A city map displaying the areas around more than a dozen stations where denser new TSND development could rise covers nearly half of Miami's geography, though single-family neighborhoods are exempt. City planners stress that inclusion in a map does not mean that all that territory will qualify for a TSND. Mel Meinhardt, a member of the homeowners advocacy group One Grove Alliance, was alarmed when he first saw that map at a planning and zoning board meeting. 'Looking at the map showing the one-mile radius of the areas affected — it was half the city of Miami!' Meinhardt said. 'The folks living in those areas are too busy with their lives to realize these quiet little technical changes could put a 24-story building in their backyard.' At the last minute, the commission agreed to also exempt all city-designated historic districts, such as Morningside and the MiMo district, as well as conservation districts that cover virtually all of Coconut Grove. Still, critics note that in some places the new transit zoning category means towers of somewhere from 12 stories to over 24 stories tall could rise immediately next to someone's single-family home — a circumstance that the innovative Miami 21 code, the city zoning law enacted in 2009 after four years of public hearings, was specifically designed to prevent or ameliorate. But city planners say that the increased development height and density around transit stations that critics fear after July's vote has already been happening because of the county's RTZs, but with little recourse by city of Miami officials or residents to blunt their impact. The city's TSNDs, they say, represent their best attempt to regain some control by offering developers — who will have a choice of which zoning plan to apply under, the city's or the county's — a better flavor of rezoning that's also far more beneficial for city residents. Not all Miamians see it that way. 'They say this is beneficial for us, but that doesn't make any sense — how is this benefitting residents?' said Kim Hogan, who owns a townhome in Coconut Grove. 'We'll lose safety, community, character and charm. They want to turn everything into Brickell, and everyone is gonna leave. It'll just be foreign investors who're here only half the year,' Hogan added. The vehicle for the transit zoning is the Miami 21 code. It was designed explicitly to strike a balance between neighborhood protection and measures to foster development of dense urban zones, giving rise to modern-day Brickell, Edgewater and the gradual revival of downtown Miami. The code's 'transitional zoning' strictly limits the height of new buildings abutting low-scale residential areas. But the TSNDs could erase those protections, planning board member Paula De Carolis told city planners in a June hearing before she voted against the measure. That's a concern echoed by residents. 'Miami 21 zoning set up gradual height and density increases that allow incremental and respectful growth, quite rapidly actually, but it still respects the rights of neighborhoods as the city changes. There's a balance,' said the Grove's Meinhardt, a retired government engineer. 'Why is this being done so rapidly, so haphazardly? They're changing 20 years of rules overnight.' Like residents, De Carolis and other planning board members also took issue with the city's seeming hurry to get the plan approved. The planning board received two presentations from city planners shortly before its final vote on the legislation, which was being amended even as some members said they were struggling to fully understand it. Some noted that they were unable to offer meaningful recommendations for improvements before the measure was to go before the City Commission for a final hearing and vote of approval on July 24. After each presentation, planning board member Joseph Corral said, 'I get more confused.' 'This is massive. This is rezoning basically the whole city,' he said. 'We cannot possibly make a valid recommendation 30 minutes after reading this for the first time.' At the June planning board hearing, residents and board members also questioned the size of the designated transit zones, which can range from a half-mile to a full mile from a station. Transit-oriented development, a well-established approach across the country, typically extends to a half-mile reach — a comfortable walk for a pedestrian. But going out one mile, a distance that few in Miami will travel on foot to a station, undermines the premise that development at that distance could be reasonably linked to transit, while potentially blanketing too much of the city in high-rise, high-density new construction, critics say. 'I think the one mile is going to create a lot of problems,' planning board member Paul Mann said. 'I think it's going to change this city very dramatically.' Hogan, the Coconut Grove resident, said expecting people to walk a mile to reach a transit station is 'insane.' 'You start sweating if you walk outside, let alone walking a mile to a station,' she said. 'It doesn't make any sense.' 'No one is going to be using public transportation,' she added. 'These developers are just using the transit rezoning as an excuse to increase the number of units that they can sell.' Just how high or how far the contemplated TSNDs will actually go remains unclear, and it may not shake out for a long time. That's partly by design. Because the measure demands significant public contributions from developers and extensive review, city planners say it's unlikely it will lead to towers rapidly sprouting across the city in places where they don't belong. That, noted city planning director David Snow, is the problem with yet another controversial new housing-development measure, the state's Live Local law, which supersedes local height and density controls in the name of promoting construction of middle-class workforce housing. The city has received some 55 Live Local applications, and though none have yet broken ground, Snow suggested those pose a far greater threat to neighborhoods than the TSNDs. Live Local towers, he noted, can be 'peppered throughout the city with no rhyme or reason.' In a lengthy interview with the Miami Herald, Snow and assistant planning director Sevanne Steiner said they instead expect the TSND legislation to produce a measured, gradual process of densification around stations, with most of the new height and density close by. The rules and incentives are designed to encourage lower heights and density past the half-mile radius, they said. The scenario of a tower abutting a small home can happen, they acknowledged. But they stressed that most Miami 21 protections, including requirements that taller buildings next to short ones must be set back and step back as they rise to lessen their impact on neighbors, remain in force. They also stress that approval of developers' applications is not automatic. The city will retain the power to deny approval or require modifications to proposals that would significantly disrupt the quality of life in established neighborhoods, they said. Rules that require analysis of impact on traffic, water supply and schools also apply. Proposals will receive public review before the planning board, and neighbors will be properly notified, they said. Snow and Steiner also defended their choices and the short time frame for review and approval, echoing comments Steiner made to the planning board. And they insist that the city had no other choice but to move forward quickly with the measure — a position that a reluctant 6-3 planning board majority, after an intense two-hour public meeting, adopted in recommending that the City Commission approve the TSND legislation. That's because the county has aggressively expanded its own transit zones by extending eligibility to numerous private properties, not just public property. Most recently, those county RTZ projects, such as the new Coconut Grove station mixed-use redevelopment and the ongoing Douglas Road station multi-tower project, were mostly limited to station properties. The county's transit zones encourage development near bus stations in addition to rail, both inside municipal limits as well as in unincorporated areas. The city has sued the county over its application of RTZs, saying it improperly usurps local control over zoning decisions. After unsuccessful mediation, the city and county have been in long but as-yet unsettled discussions over a compromise. In addition, a county ordinance now requires municipalities to come up with their own plans to promote affordable housing development. The city's TSND initiative attempts to resolve both issues, Snow said. In the past year, Miami's planning department had been working on alternatives when Swerdlow approached the city. The county had approved his plan, but he needed to increase the project's zoning to build what he wanted. Both agreed it would be much smoother and more efficient to have city planners review and approve the needed zoning under its own rules. They worked in tandem to come up with a plan that would be suitable not only for Swerdlow and the other major property owner in the area, Tennessee-based AJ Capital Partners, but also for developers in the rest of the city. 'All this does is replace the RTZ for our property,' said Swerdlow, who noted it also means the city will receive more revenue in the form of development impact fees than if the county had jurisdiction. Some final and critical details of the TSND rules, however, were added just before the planning board and City Commission votes, as city planners scrambled to address feedback by elected officials and the public. But that led to confusion and complaints that the public and even officials were not privy to important aspects of the program before its approval. An internal city memo dated July 22 — two days before the meeting where the City Commission gave its final approval — included substantive changes to the TSND legislation that the public didn't have the opportunity to review. Those changes included allowing for the high-density developments to crop up in areas surrounding future Metrorail, Brightline and Tri-Rail stations — rather than at existing rail stations only. The timing has angered some activists, leaving them asking: Why the rush? Showing up to speak during the public comment period at City Commission meetings, Meinhardt, the retired government engineer, said he found himself thinking: 'This is going at lighting speed, without any review — there's something up here. This raises a yellow flag.' Critics have pointed to Swerdlow's involvement as evidence that the city transit initiative is little more than a gift to developers. While Snow acknowledged that Swerdlow Group has its own timeline that is 'moving rapidly,' he said the need for speed wasn't so much for Swerdlow's benefit as it was to avoid entangling the plan in potential political controversy in the months ahead. Snow said his department was motivated to finalize the legislation by the July 24 meeting — the final one before a seven-week City Commission hiatus that extends into September. 'We challenged ourselves to really try to get this across the finish line before the summer break,' Snow said. Miami has been in a state of limbo in recent months after the City Commission passed a controversial ordinance postponing the November 2025 election to 2026 without voter approval. But now that the dust has begun to settle, following two court rulings last month finding the change was unconstitutional, it's likely that the election will take place in November of this year. Snow said there was pressure to move forward with the TSND plan before election season was in full swing. 'It was important for us to really get this done and not have it get caught up in the, you know, political storm we're gonna see in the next few months,' Snow said. Snow added that the city 'went above and beyond' in the 'short window' between the City Commission's first vote approving the changes on June 26 and its final approval on July 24. That included hosting a public Zoom meeting and making changes to the legislation that addressed resident concerns. Yet records from the clerk's office show it took nearly two weeks after the commission passed the legislation for the city attorney and assistant city attorney to give final approval on Aug. 6. Asked for the reason behind the delay, the City Attorney's Office told the Herald that modified legislation needs to be 'manually updated in the system' and that there were 'many items on the last agenda and several of the items had modifications.' The city also needs to create an application process for developers before it can be more widely used. Erven, the Grove HOA president, described the city's process as 'a one-way street.' 'These are public meetings just to check off a box so they can say they had a public meeting — no one can really provide input or get responses,' Erven said. One leading expert — Miami 21 principal author Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk — suggests the city could have avoided some of the public backlash if it had taken more time to listen to and incorporate public comment and if it had published detailed maps showing more precise impacts in neighborhoods. Though she said the legislation meshes with Miami 21 and its protections, she said the code already has a section encouraging transit-oriented development that could have been amended instead of creating an entirely new program. But if managed properly, she said, the new changes could have a 'significant positive impact' on affordability and transit. 'This might have landed better if it was being considered for several locations where it could happen, instead of the broad brush,' Plater-Zyberk said. 'I wonder why it could not have been done within the code instead of getting everyone riled up about it.' If anything, the approval process for the Swerdlow project suggests the TSND may be painstaking and anything but a gimme for other developers who may seek to build under it. It sets out a complicated procedure that first requires a land-use change under the city's comprehensive plan, which guides where, how much and what kind of development is allowed. Under TSNDs, the city must first approve a new 'transit-node' designation for a property that depends on how much the area can reasonably accommodate. Then, a developer can elect to submit a TSND plan under two categories — general or enhanced — that specify what can be built, how dense and how tall a project can be, to what distance from a station it can be, and what public benefits must be provided. The enhanced category has extensive requirements saying a property must be no less than three acres. Other requirements range from building or improving an existing rail station and development of a master plan that details how the project will be laid out, including new or improved streets and pedestrian connections. A developer looking to build out one mile must provide new pedestrian and bike paths or a transit circulator shuttle. Swerdlow, for instance, said he plans to provide the Freebee service used by several local municipalities as a free car-share alternative. The extensive requirements mean that only a relatively short list of ambitious and well-financed developers with the capacity to plan and build an entire urban neighborhood are likely to apply for the most intensive 'enhanced' category of TSND. It also means there may be limited areas in the city where the most intensive TSNDs would be feasible or even possible. The city planning department is now studying the areas around Metrorail stations in Allapattah for possible transit-node designation, though it's at a preliminary stage, Snow and Steiner said. Since some of Miami's requirements are more stringent than the county's, the city TSNDs require fewer units to be set aside for affordable and workforce housing so as not to discourage developers from working with Miami. But the income restrictions are far lower, meaning they would produce more true affordability than buildings under the county RTZ. 'It's vastly more affordable housing,' Swerdlow said of his project. 'We tried to do the right thing.' Swerdlow's planner, Juan Mullerat, founding principal of Miami urban design firm Plusurbia, said he believes the Little River project will demonstrate the TSND's viability as a well-calibrated remedy to the city's severe growing pains, even if it changes the landscape many residents are accustomed to. He also noted it won't happen overnight. Swerdlow's project will take many years to build out, he said. 'From a planning standpoint, more development, more housing around stations, especially affordable housing, is critical,' Mullerat said. 'This is a perfect opportunity to apply the alternative to RTZ, given that there is a willing developer to create a station and put that much housing around it.' 'We do need the height around the station in order to support it,' he added. 'You can't have a city with functional transit if you don't provide that density. Is it going to be different? Yes, by all means. But it's the responsible thing to do.' Veteran Miami neighborhood activist Elvis Cruz, meanwhile, argues that the TSND will enrich developers while neighborhoods and residents are left to cope with worse traffic and a declining quality of life. 'The big picture is that developers are extremely powerful throughout the state. Now we're getting the city of Miami to do their bidding,' Cruz said. 'This is all about enabling profit for developers, and they're using affordable and workforce housing as camouflage.'
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
EXCLUSIVE: SKYX Secures Deal To Wire 5,700 Smart Homes In Miami's Smart Home Project
SKYX Platforms Corp. (NASDAQ:SKYX), a smart home tech firm with over 97 patents, announced a major partnership Wednesday with a $3 billion, 63-acre smart city development in Miami's Little River District. The 63-acre mixed-use urban project, led by SG Holdings (a joint venture of Swerdlow Group, SJM Partners, and Alben Duffie), will feature over 5,700 condos and apartments—including affordable and workforce housing—350,000 sq. ft. of retail, a $35 million Tri-Rail station, and 1.5 million sq. ft. of parks, bike paths, and shuttle lanes. The company said the project, designed by internationally renowned architecture firm Arquitectonica, will mark the first fully integrated smart home city in Florida. SKYX will supply over 500,000 units of its advanced plug-and-play smart home technologies, including ceiling outlets, AI-enabled platforms, lighting, emergency products, and more. Every residential unit will feature SKYX's all-in-one smart platform with built-in WiFi, app and voice controls, intercom, emergency alerts, color-changing lights, and safety sensors. Free internet will be provided across all residential units. Michael Swerdlow, Founder and CEO of Swerdlow Group and lead partner at SG Holdings, said the $3 billion development aims to transform Miami's urban landscape by integrating advanced technologies like SKYX's smart home platform, bringing lasting value to residents and the community. Rani Kohen, Founder, Inventor, and Executive Chairman of SKYX, stated, "We are proud to collaborate with Miami on an urban mix-use smart city project of this magnitude in the heart of the city. Our advanced plug & play smart platform was designed to support the next generation of urban developments, and we look forward to the opportunity to contribute to a connected, safer, and more efficient living environment." Backed by U.S. and global manufacturers, SKYX's role in the project supports its long-term recurring revenue strategy through product upgrades, subscriptions, and platform integrations. The development marks the first smart home city of its kind in Florida. Last week, Sky Harbour reported first-quarter 2025 results, posting a loss of 19 cents per share, beating estimates by a cent. Revenue came in at $5.59 million, missing expectations, but still rose 133% year-over-year, driven by campus expansion.. With $97.4M in liquidity, operations began at Phoenix, Dallas, and Denver, and launches soon. New long-term leases in Seattle, Hillsboro, and Stewart expand the national hangar network. Price Action: SKYH shares closed 3.79% lower to $11.42 on Tuesday. Read next:UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? This article EXCLUSIVE: SKYX Secures Deal To Wire 5,700 Smart Homes In Miami's Smart Home Project originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Now with more affordable housing, massive makeover plan for Little River nears approval
It was already one of the biggest redevelopment proposals in Miami-Dade history, a $3 billion plan aiming to remake a broad swath of Miami's Little River-Little Haiti neighborhood with an intensive focus on affordable housing, transit and jobs. Now, as it heads toward likely approval from the County Commission, it's only gotten larger in scope and ambition. Since its unveiling a year ago, the plan spearheaded by Coconut Grove-based developer Swerdlow Group has added hundreds of affordable apartments, more big-box shopping and commercial space, and a fresh element — over 2,000 workforce condos aimed at providing homeownership to middle-income families who are finding it increasingly difficult to buy in the city, especially in the urban core. That brings the total number of units in the plan to over 5,700, all qualifying as affordable or workforce housing under county guidelines. In addition, veteran developer Michael Swerdlow and his partners in SG Holdings have committed to a list of benefits for construction workers that include higher-than-usual wages, jobs for residents from local public and low-income housing, and what the developer describes as an 'industry-leading' program to protect them against extreme heat, a principal cause of illness and death as the climate warms. The guarantees were in part a response to demands from WeCount!, a coalition of community groups and labor unions. READ MORE: Immigrant workers who are building South Florida fight for better pay, work conditions After winning 5-0 endorsements from the County Commission's Housing and Appropriations committees, the massive plan is scheduled for full commission consideration on Tuesday. Swerdlow said he's confident it will win approval, given that nine of the board's 13 members have already voted in support in the committee hearings. With county approval in hand, Swerdlow will turn next to securing zoning changes from the city of Miami that he said are already favorably under discussion, and approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Groundbreaking should come next year, he said. The project, to be built over eight years, will provide not just housing and jobs with good pay to a neighborhood badly in need of both but should also help propel a turnaround for a broader area of central Miami that hasn't seen meaningful investment in decades, Swerdlow said in an interview. 'The number of new units is significant,' Swerdlow said. 'It should spur enormous growth around it. Everyone for 20 blocks in every direction is going to gain a lot from this. It's going to be very good for everybody.' The development group, working in coordination with a big Little River property owner, AJ Capital Partners, was the sole respondent last year to a bid request from Miami-Dade's Housing department to redevelop several of its properties in the neighborhood, comprising four aging public housing projects and a county storage depot. The county sought proposals under a federally sponsored program that encourages the conversion of traditional, often outdated public housing projects into modern, mixed-income communities. But Swerdlow's bid proposal went significantly beyond that to encompass a nearly mile-long stretch of the overlapping Little River and Little Haiti neighborhoods, an eye-popping 65 acres of private and public land, and some 5,000 new high-rise apartments affordable to people with incomes ranging from very low to middle-income. The plan's scope was expanded and refined during months of negotiations with the county and input from residents and workers' rights groups, Swerdlow said. Under the current proposal, some 2,284 rental apartments will be affordable to people with very low and low incomes, with 1,398 workforce units aimed at people making up to 120% of the county median income, which is now at $79,400. The developers also decided to pursue workforce condos, although that element will require specific authorization from the federal government, Swerdlow said. Swerdlow said the plan has been conceived in stages so that existing public-housing tenants will not be even temporarily displaced from their homes — an issue that has been a pitfall for another big county housing redevelopment effort. Under the HUD Rental Assistance Demonstration program, all current residents of Victory Homes, New Haven Gardens and two smaller sites, with a total of 314 households with low incomes, must be guaranteed new units in the Swerdlow development at the same subsidized rents they're paying now. New towers to house them will be built first on adjacent sites, Swerdlow said. That means the residents will have to pack their belongings only once, then cross the street to their new apartments on moving day, he said. Only then will the old housing developments be demolished. But at a WeCount! news conference on March 5, Victory Homes resident Erica Varela complained that neither Swerdlow nor the county had consulted with residents and questioned whether their guarantees of replacement housing without displacement can be trusted. 'This will mean an enormous change in this place where we live,' Varela said in Spanish. 'That right is not always respected. We need to make sure that this right is met in full, because there is a history of broken promises in this community.' In other Rental Assistance Demonstration projects in Miami-Dade — including one of the largest, the conversion of the Liberty Square housing development in Liberty City by the Related Group's affordable-housing arm — many tenants ended up leaving permanently after enduring more than one relocation by the developers while waiting years for their replacement apartments to be finished. The Liberty Square issue was the subject of a documentary, 'Razing Liberty Square.' Swerdlow said his group and county officials held one informational meeting with over 150 local residents in attendance on March 6, the day after the WeCount! conference, and will host several more before plans are finalized. The Little River project will be financed by a combination of private investment, which Swerdlow said has already been secured, and the sale of federal tax credits designed to support affordable housing development. AJ Capital, which bought a majority stake in a 27-acre collection of mostly industrial properties in the neighborhood in 2021 from Miami owners who had converted several into hip cafes, restaurants and workplaces, will build its own as-yet-unspecified development separately but in coordination with Swerdlow, though at a higher income scale. The two developers will also partner in creation of a special development district that would direct property-tax revenue from the new construction into needed infrastructure improvements, like sewage lines, streets and sidewalks, that the project will require. The taxing district plan also would include financing of a planned new station for the recently inaugurated Tri-Rail commuter train service to downtown Miami, which runs on Florida East Coast Railway tracks through the spine of the redevelopment area. The Swerdlow plan also includes big-box stores, a new Main Street-style shopping street, and acres of parks and green spaces. The properties, though not all contiguous, extend in a band two to five city blocks wide that runs roughly from just west of Interstate 95 to Northeast Second Avenue. Aside from the county housing projects, the project area is a mostly ramshackle collection of aging and sometimes vacant warehouse and industrial buildings, auto-body shops, and empty lots, though a long-established working-class neighborhood of single-family homes sits to its north. Also to the north is the St. Mary's Cathedral church and school. The development group, which has also purchased commercial property in the vicinity, is now close to concluding deals for a Home Depot, a BJ's Wholesale Club and a major supermarket, Swerdlow said. That would bring commercial space in Swerdlow's portion of the plan to a considerable 370,000 square feet. In tandem with the AJ Capital properties, he said, the plan will result in a walkable and transit-linked community with a broad range of incomes that can be economically sustainable and support quality amenities and shops. Swerdlow noted that the affordable and public housing units in his buildings will be indistinguishable from the workforce apartments and that all residents will have access to amenities like gyms, gardens and swimming pools. 'We're going to do whatever we can to make this a real neighborhood,' Swerdlow said, adding that having people with a mix of incomes is a superior to the old public-housing model of low-income families isolated in projects. 'It's very important that we have a balanced community. It just works better.' The developers are awaiting feedback from several more public meetings in the neighborhood before finalizing site plans and building designs, already in the works by Miami-based Arquitectonica. National engineering and design firm Kimley-Horn is working on the Tri-Rail station plan. The development group is also working with Miami's planning department on adopting the county's Rapid Transit Zone rules, which apply around bus and train stations and allow greater density than the city's Miami 21 zoning plan, Swerdlow said. The county can impose the transit zoning on municipalities, but that has been a source of friction with Miami officials. Swerdlow, who built the Dolphin Mall in west Miami-Dade, is the rare Miami developer with the reputation and experience to pull off a profitable commercial development combined with significant levels of affordable housing. His group's recently opened Block 55 at Sawyer's Walk, in Miami's historically Black neighborhood of Overtown, blends 578 affordable apartments for seniors with corporate offices, restaurants and big-box shops like Target, Ross and Aldi. The Overtown project was fully leased before opening and is drawing crowds of shoppers in an area long short of both housing and places to shop.
Miami Herald
28-03-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Now with more affordable housing, massive makeover plan for Little River nears approval
It was already one of the biggest redevelopment proposals in Miami-Dade history, a $3 billion plan aiming to remake a broad swath of Miami's Little River-Little Haiti neighborhood with an intensive focus on affordable housing, transit and jobs. Now, as it heads toward likely approval from the County Commission, it's only gotten larger in scope and ambition. Since its unveiling a year ago, the plan spearheaded by Coconut Grove-based developer Swerdlow Group has added hundreds of affordable apartments, more big-box shopping and commercial space, and a fresh element — over 2,000 workforce condos aimed at providing homeownership to middle-income families who are finding it increasingly difficult to buy in the city, especially in the urban core. That brings the total number of units in the plan to over 5,700, all qualifying as affordable or workforce housing under county guidelines. In addition, veteran developer Michael Swerdlow and his partners in SG Holdings have committed to a list of benefits for construction workers that include higher-than-usual wages, jobs for residents from local public and low-income housing, and what the developer describes as an 'industry-leading' program to protect them against extreme heat, a principal cause of illness and death as the climate warms. The guarantees were in part a response to demands from WeCount!, a coalition of community groups and labor unions. READ MORE: Immigrant workers who are building South Florida fight for better pay, work conditions After winning 5-0 endorsements from the County Commission's Housing and Appropriations committees, the massive plan is scheduled for full commission consideration on Tuesday. Swerdlow said he's confident it will win approval, given that nine of the board's 13 members have already voted in support in the committee hearings. With county approval in hand, Swerdlow will turn next to securing zoning changes from the city of Miami that he said are already favorably under discussion, and approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Groundbreaking should come next year, he said. The project, to be built over eight years, will provide not just housing and jobs with good pay to a neighborhood badly in need of both but should also help propel a turnaround for a broader area of central Miami that hasn't seen meaningful investment in decades, Swerdlow said in an interview. 'The number of new units is significant,' Swerdlow said. 'It should spur enormous growth around it. Everyone for 20 blocks in every direction is going to gain a lot from this. It's going to be very good for everybody.' The development group, working in coordination with a big Little River property owner, AJ Capital Partners, was the sole respondent last year to a bid request from Miami-Dade's Housing department to redevelop several of its properties in the neighborhood, comprising four aging public housing projects and a county storage depot. The county sought proposals under a federally sponsored program that encourages the conversion of traditional, often outdated public housing projects into modern, mixed-income communities. But Swerdlow's bid proposal went significantly beyond that to encompass a nearly mile-long stretch of the overlapping Little River and Little Haiti neighborhoods, an eye-popping 65 acres of private and public land, and some 5,000 new high-rise apartments affordable to people with incomes ranging from very low to middle-income. The plan's scope was expanded and refined during months of negotiations with the county and input from residents and workers' rights groups, Swerdlow said. Under the current proposal, some 2,284 rental apartments will be affordable to people with very low and low incomes, with 1,398 workforce units aimed at people making up to 120% of the county median income, which is now at $79,400. The developers also decided to pursue workforce condos, although that element will require specific authorization from the federal government, Swerdlow said. Swerdlow said the plan has been conceived in stages so that existing public-housing tenants will not be even temporarily displaced from their homes — an issue that has been a pitfall for another big county housing redevelopment effort. Under the HUD Rental Assistance Demonstration program, all current residents of Victory Homes, New Haven Gardens and two smaller sites, with a total of 314 households with low incomes, must be guaranteed new units in the Swerdlow development at the same subsidized rents they're paying now. New towers to house them will be built first on adjacent sites, Swerdlow said. That means the residents will have to pack their belongings only once, then cross the street to their new apartments on moving day, he said. Only then will the old housing developments be demolished. But at a WeCount! news conference on March 5, Victory Homes resident Erica Varela complained that neither Swerdlow nor the county had consulted with residents and questioned whether their guarantees of replacement housing without displacement can be trusted. 'This will mean an enormous change in this place where we live,' Varela said in Spanish. 'That right is not always respected. We need to make sure that this right is met in full, because there is a history of broken promises in this community.' In other Rental Assistance Demonstration projects in Miami-Dade — including one of the largest, the conversion of the Liberty Square housing development in Liberty City by the Related Group's affordable-housing arm — many tenants ended up leaving permanently after enduring more than one relocation by the developers while waiting years for their replacement apartments to be finished. The Liberty Square issue was the subject of a documentary, 'Razing Liberty Square.' Swerdlow said his group and county officials held one informational meeting with over 150 local residents in attendance on March 6, the day after the WeCount! conference, and will host several more before plans are finalized. The Little River project will be financed by a combination of private investment, which Swerdlow said has already been secured, and the sale of federal tax credits designed to support affordable housing development. AJ Capital, which bought a majority stake in a 27-acre collection of mostly industrial properties in the neighborhood in 2021 from Miami owners who had converted several into hip cafes, restaurants and workplaces, will build its own as-yet-unspecified development separately but in coordination with Swerdlow, though at a higher income scale. The two developers will also partner in creation of a special development district that would direct property-tax revenue from the new construction into needed infrastructure improvements, like sewage lines, streets and sidewalks, that the project will require. The taxing district plan also would include financing of a planned new station for the recently inaugurated Tri-Rail commuter train service to downtown Miami, which runs on Florida East Coast Railway tracks through the spine of the redevelopment area. The Swerdlow plan also includes big-box stores, a new Main Street-style shopping street, and acres of parks and green spaces. The properties, though not all contiguous, extend in a band two to five city blocks wide that runs roughly from just west of Interstate 95 to Northeast Second Avenue. Aside from the county housing projects, the project area is a mostly ramshackle collection of aging and sometimes vacant warehouse and industrial buildings, auto-body shops, and empty lots, though a long-established working-class neighborhood of single-family homes sits to its north. Also to the north is the St. Mary's Cathedral church and school. The development group, which has also purchased commercial property in the vicinity, is now close to concluding deals for a Home Depot, a BJ's Wholesale Club and a major supermarket, Swerdlow said. That would bring commercial space in Swerdlow's portion of the plan to a considerable 370,000 square feet. In tandem with the AJ Capital properties, he said, the plan will result in a walkable and transit-linked community with a broad range of incomes that can be economically sustainable and support quality amenities and shops. Swerdlow noted that the affordable and public housing units in his buildings will be indistinguishable from the workforce apartments and that all residents will have access to amenities like gyms, gardens and swimming pools. 'We're going to do whatever we can to make this a real neighborhood,' Swerdlow said, adding that having people with a mix of incomes is a superior to the old public-housing model of low-income families isolated in projects. 'It's very important that we have a balanced community. It just works better.' The developers are awaiting feedback from several more public meetings in the neighborhood before finalizing site plans and building designs, already in the works by Miami-based Arquitectonica. National engineering and design firm Kimley-Horn is working on the Tri-Rail station plan. The development group is also working with Miami's planning department on adopting the county's Rapid Transit Zone rules, which apply around bus and train stations and allow greater density than the city's Miami 21 zoning plan, Swerdlow said. The county can impose the transit zoning on municipalities, but that has been a source of friction with Miami officials. Swerdlow, who built the Dolphin Mall in west Miami-Dade, is the rare Miami developer with the reputation and experience to pull off a profitable commercial development combined with significant levels of affordable housing. His group's recently opened Block 55 at Sawyer's Walk, in Miami's historically Black neighborhood of Overtown, blends 578 affordable apartments for seniors with corporate offices, restaurants and big-box shops like Target, Ross and Aldi. The Overtown project was fully leased before opening and is drawing crowds of shoppers in an area long short of both housing and places to shop.
