RTZ overlay is for a student housing project: The Mark
The latest chapter in the Coral Gables zoning soap opera will play out in Miami-Dade Commission Chambers this week. It started last Tuesday when County Commissioner Raquel Regalado took her Rapid Transit Zoning show on the road — to City Hall.
Regalado showed up to the Aug. 26 Coral Gables Commission meeting to advocate for her pet project: expanding the county’s Rapid Transit Zone (RTZ) to create a new University Station Subzone around the UM Metrorail stop That overlay would pave the way for The Mark, a hulking student housing project that has some neighbors concerned.
The Miami-Dade County Commission will vote Wednesday on the a proposed RTZ expansion and University Station subzone that extends to properties within a quarter mile of the University Metrorail Station. Translation: The county will have zoning jurisdiction, not the city. And that clears the path for high-density, mixed-use projects.
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Developers who purchased the University Shopping Center in 2023, where the Bagel Emporium and TGI Fridays is, want to build a $70-million, sprawling mixed-use apartment complex, called The Mark, which will have 146 one-bedroom units, 99 two-bedroom units, and 151 three-bedroom units in two eight-story towers, connected by a bridge on the fifth floor. The ground floor will have restaurant and retail spaces.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, for her part, is cheerleading the move. Her memo in support of the ordinance talks about “equitable development,” “shorter trips,” and “visual compatibility with Coral Gables” — complete with “generous height allowances” and “enhanced landscaping.” Translation: Taller buildings with more trees in front of them.
“The Subzone aims to promote high-density, mixed-use development within a quarter-mile radius of the University Station, while integrating land use and transportation planning. The ordinance addresses the CDMP’s objective of integrating land use with transportation to attract transit ridership, produce shorter trips, and minimize transfers,” Levine Cava wrote. “This code amendment will facilitate the development of additional residential density and commercial development adjacent to the mass transit system.
La Alcaldesa also says that there will be a city representative on the Rapid Transit Developmental Impact Committee (RTDIC) and that the county will coordinate with the city “on a potential interlocal agreement to address future concerns and align regulatory processes.”
Good luck with that.
To the folks who actually live near University Station and the Bagel Emporium plaza that will be replaced with two residential towers, it sounds less like equitable development and more like a takeover. They say they’ve been blindsided by the scale of the proposal and worry that the neighborhood will be flooded with traffic and end up looking more like Brickell than the City Beautiful.
This is the same fight that’s already spilled over into Coral Gables’ Planning and Zoning Board, where longtime neighborhood activist and P&Z member Sue Kawalerski grilled Regalado so hard about the RTZ zoning superseding the city’s own code that the commissioner snapped back. Weeks after that public meeting, Kawalerski was unceremoniously bounced — another casualty of Mayor Vince Lago’s revenge tour. She has been blamed for forcing the developer to go to the county and apply RTZ criteria, which is more generous than the city’s code.
Read related: Coral Gables moves to ‘fire’ longtime activist from planning zoning board
Regalado, who doesn’t need anybody to defend her, has been one of the prime proponents of RTZ. And she says the Gables needs re housing and the area around the university is perfect for it.
“I don’t agree with demonizing student housing,” she told the Gables commissioners last week, and cited the BOX SSSS in South Miami as an example of a student housing project done right. It also resolved a problem with students “cutting up” rented housing, living 10 or more at a time.
“Students need a place to live,” Regalado said. “UM is a partner. They are doing their part on campus… [But] the transit corridor is the place to house students.” She noted that the location for The Mark is right where the university has their pedestrian bridge over U.S. 1.
“The concept that this is not a place for student housing, to me, is mind blowing,” she said. “I’m not saying it’s appropriate everywhere, but you might want to decide where it’s appropriate.”
Kawalerski has said it is not about student housing, per se, but the gradual changing of the neighborhood’s character.
Regalado told the Gables Commission that she would amend the item going before the county commission this week to include the lighting and open space requirements “to give everyone a little more comfort.” But both she and Lago waved the ugly specter of Live Local — the Florida law that allows even more density to promote affordable or workforce housing (which is really not that affordable for the workforce).
It’s convenient for Lago to throw the blame somewhere else for the runaway development he has ushered into the Gables.
“The city has no control,” he said, referring to RTZ and Live Local. “That train has left the station.”
But if you think that The Mark is the only stop on this route, think again. City Manager Peter Iglesias said this overlay is specific for that particular student housing project, it includes that property alone, but not another proposed development for the nearby Gables Waterway.
“We need to expand that overlay and work on something new,” Iglesias said.
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