LIVE LOCAL ACT
my,” Abbo said. ”We’re here to work together and see how we can come up with a development that integrates well.”
REMOVING NOSTALGIA FROM HOLLYWOOD BROADWALK
The second proposal, along Hollywood’s famed two-mile beachfront Broadwalk, would require demolition of nine of the resort district’s modest but characteristic midCentury motels.
The plan by Brooklynbased real estate investors and developers Condra Property Group would replace the one- two- and three-story buildings and their 123 motel rooms with three separate structures on three blocks — the 18-story condo and apartment tower complex with ground-floor commercial, the beach club and restaurant facing the Broadwalk and an eight-story parking garage.
The residential complex would include 87 rental apartments, with an entrance separate from the condos, that meet the state definition of workforce or affordable housing. In a pre-application form filed with the city, the developers say the proposed height matches that of the city-sponsored Margaritaville Resort, and the density is less than that of Hyde Residences and Resort. Both properties sit farther south on Hollywood beach.
Condra partners Mark Drachman and Allen Konstam said they had previously proposed a 13-story hotel on property they had been assembling for several years, but the plan ran aground when Hollywood officials would not budge on their refusal to allow the developers to build higher than the current 65-foot height limit in the beach district.
Once Live Local passed, though, their attorney suggested they take advantage of its zoning override provisions, which also include a significant property-tax reduction, Drachman and Konstam said. The additional height and density allowed, along with the tax break, make the overall project financially feasible even with reduced apartment rents, they said.
“We jumped on it immediately,” Konstam said. Drachman added: “We are able to build a beautiful building that makes sense and offer affordable housing.”
Drachman said their development plan attempts to be “very mindful” of the Hollywood surroundings, placing the 18-story tower on the west side of their property towards A1A, with a low-rise club building facing the Broadwalk. The buildings they intend to tear down are outdated and in some cases in bad condition, they said.
The partners acknowledge that numerous neighbors and city officials are opposed to their plan, but contend local hotel workers would benefit because they could live in the apartments, though they have not yet set rent and income targets. They said they intend to submit an application to the city in September.
“It’s a location that’s kind of a NIMBY location,” Konstam said, referring to “not in my backyard” opponents of development. “Obviously people don’t want any development of any size there. People are going to have their opinions.
Others are absolutely excited.
“We didn’t propose an 18-story building the entire block, which we could have. Our goal is not to throw a monkey wrench into everyone’s area. We’re willing to work with the city and state to figure out this Live Local Act. We want everybody to be happy.”
But opponents say the scale and size of the project would tear apart the beach district’s historic low-scale fabric and pack more people and automobile traffic into narrow streets already jammed to the point of near-immobility in winter high season and holidays. The critics say it would also disrupt the resort area’s hospitality economy, which relies on tourists and snowbirds.
“This is going to be a disaster, that is a really bad idea,” said Marie Balmaseda, manager at the Hollywood Beach Hotel, whose owners rejected overtures to buy from the Condra developers. The motel would be sandwiched between the condo complex and the parking garage. “This is a very small area and it’s already packed. Think about it.”
A few blocks down the Broadwalk, the longtime owner of the 1955 Bel Aire Motel, Craig McAdams, said the resort area’s lowscale, familiar environment is what has drawn visitors to Hollywood beach from Canada and other points north for decades, including the regulars he depends on.
“This is what you call a mom-and-pop,” McAdams said of the motel, which has been in his family for 66 years. “And so you’re telling me that, at the signing of a pen, the state can change the face of Hollywood beach? So you can wipe out our laws and stick it to the residents? That ain’t right. Someone has to have a long-term vision for this area other than lining your own pocket.”
DISREGARDING COASTAL CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS
The narrow beach district stretches just two blocks between A1A and the Broadwalk. It’s already prone to flooding and highly vulnerable to the rising seas and storm surge driven by climate change, Hollywood city commissioner Caryl Shuham said.
Shuham said the new law is flawed because its one-size-fits-all approach allows no provisions for such disparate local conditions and impacts, which should be left to local officials to handle. Its effect on Hollywood beach would be “destructive,” she said.
“The idea that you would be encouraging density on barrier islands, how could they not have considered that?” Shuham said. “And how can you take away the public’s right to weigh in?”
Moreover, she said, the law encourages developers to run roughshod over the city’s careful planning to foster dense but carefully scaled mixed-use redevelopment, including affordable housing, in the city’s nearby downtown and along transit and transportation corridors, where it’s most appropriate.
Then there’s the question of enforcement: The law requires developers to keep rents for units set aside under Live Local at required low levels for 30 years, but doesn’t say how that will be verified, or who will take on the onerous task.
Given the doubts, Hollywood assistant city manager Raelin Storey said town officials are not ready to move on any applications under the
Live Local Act until such issues are cleared up — something she said might take litigation to determine.
“We are still analyzing the law and it’s going to take a little while. There are questions we are still sorting through,” Storey said. “It’s going to require the courts or the state to provide clarity. We’re not going to allow something to go forward without more clarity on that.
”We see many of the positive elements of Live Local, including the financing and getting development to market rapidly. We need affordable housing desperately. But then there are the concerns over how development looks and the impact on the existing fabric of our community, and this does seem to throw that out the window. It’s an opportunity for random development.”
Critics like Shuham say the zoning override rules also risk creating considerable public backlash against the laudable goal of dramatically increasing the state’s supply of workforce or affordable housing.
And some question whether the substantial benefits Live Local funnels to developers will pay off in terms of truly increasing the supply of homes for those most in need of affordable housing in Florida.
The act does reverse the state and the Legislature’s own longstanding practice of diverting millions of dollars in revenue earmarked for affordable housing to other uses.
It’s also clearly drafted, at least in part, to aim at cities and counties that made it hard for developers to build housing in many places through zoning restrictions, including prohibitions on building residential development in commercially zoned areas, or low density limits that encourage sprawl and artificially restrict housing supply.
‘PRO-DEVELOPER STUFF COUCHED AS AFFORDABLE HOUSING’
That’s, however, not generally the case in Miami-Dade or cities like Miami, which already encourage development mixing residential and commercial. Miami-Dade has enacted far-reaching rules that encourage highdensity development, including workforce and low-income housing, at and around public transit stations and along transit corridors, and require municipalities to lift restrictions on high-density housing development.
Compared to the carefully calibrated county approach, one MiamiDade official not authorized to speak to the media called the Live Local law a blunt instrument.
There is also the question of who precisely the law will help.
It targets people making up to 120% of the local area median income, with rent levels set for each location by the state Housing Finance Corp. Developers can follow that standard or offer the set-aside housing at a 10% discount off prevailing market rents, depending on which alternative results in lower rents.
In Miami-Dade County, the median income is currently set at $74,700 for a two-person household. In Broward, it’s $82,100. That means projects approved under the Live Local Act should be affordable to two-person households making no more than $89,640 in Miami-Dade and $98,520 in Broward.
Those numbers define so-called workforce housing, typically described as being aimed at essential workers like teachers, cops and firefighters or hospitality workers who increasingly can’t afford to live near their jobs. That’s different from what’s generally understood to be affordable housing, which targets residents making below the county’s median income level.
Estimates compiled by Miami Homes for All, a housing advocacy group, show the local housing shortage is most severe for households making under 80% of the county’s median income.
But the law doesn’t help those lower-income households that advocates say are the most in need of assistance. One executive at a large affordable development firm said the zoning provisions do little to foster construction of housing affordable to people making less than the median income, which requires significant public subsidies and a complex mix of federal tax credits and financing, especially given the current high cost of construction. In fact, developers already doing subsidized affordable housing don’t qualify for the property tax breaks under Live Local.
Instead, the law is geared to encouraging developers of market-rate projects to get into the workforce housing arena by offering so much profitable extra development capacity that they can afford to charge lower rents on some homes.
One partner at a major Miami law firm with a large land-use team predicted the Florida law will be attractive chiefly to developers looking to build mid-rise projects given sky-high construction, financing and insurance costs. Building above eight stories multiplies costs because of structural building-code requirements.
Attorney Anthony De Yurre, a partner at Bilzin Sumberg, said that extra floor or two of development capacity can be enough of an incentive for developers that he predicted the law will produce what it’s meant to — a proliferation of mixedincome projects across the state, most at a middle scale.
“This will ultimately create mixed-income developments, so that developers are incentivized to include workforce housing along with market-rate housing, but not subsidized affordable housing,” De Yurre said.
Some skeptics and critics, though, say they think the law will do more good for developers than for Floridians struggling with housing costs.
“It’s a lot of pro-developer stuff, couched as affordable housing,” Hollywood commissioner Shuham said.
Said Doral mayor Fraga: “I know developers have had their eyes on this bill for some time. It’s a gift for them.”