Few people attend virtual meeting on Eastside Ridge plan
A rendering shows the proposed Eastside Ridge project on the edge of Little Haiti. The plan includes residential, hotel, office and retail space in 14 buildings, some over 20 stories tall.
Eastside Ridge, the massive, oft-delayed project that would raze and redevelop 22 acres of apartments on the edge of Miami’s Little Haiti, is back in the public eye — and the public doesn’t seem pleased, at least judging from the first of two virtual community meetings sponsored by the property owner.
On Tuesday evening, SPV Realty, owners of the aging but affordable Design Place apartment complex, finally hosted a new public forum to gather public input on their proposal after more than a year of resisting demands that they do so from the city of Miami’s planning and zoning board.
The 90-minute virtual meeting, hosted on Zoom, was lightly attended. Halfway through, only 16 members of the public had joined three consultants for the developer, a moderator and a technical host.
That’s because few people in the area were notified, project critics in attendance complained.
Vicky Leiva, an attorney for SPV, acknowledged that emails had gone to a list of only about 30 people and local neighborhood associations. But Bob Powers, a local activist, said invitations should have gone out to the scores of people he said had provided contact information to the developers’ team during previous heavily attended meetings on the project.
The critics also said it was “disingenuous” to hold the meeting in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic on a virtual platform in an area where many of the most directly affected people, particularly in impoverished Little Haiti, don’t have computers or web access.
“It was very shoddy,” Powers told the hosts. “You did the least you had to do. That is really disappointing.”
Participants were also sharply critical when it came to substantive issues prompted by the project’s scale and traffic impacts, which they contended would overwhelm homes and low-rise apartments in the vicinity, including Little Haiti and resurgent neighborhoods to the east. No one spoke in favor of the plan.
SPV’s special area plan proposal would replace the existing 500 apartments in scattered, low-rise buildings dating to the 1940s with 5.4 million square feet of residential, hotel, office and retail spaces throughout 14 buildings, some over 20 stories tall. The developer has promised to set aside
315 new apartments as “workforce housing” affordable to working people and invest $10 million in an unspecified community fund, measures critics say are insufficient to make up for Eastside’s impact.
Asked what had changed since the team last appeared before the city planning board in February, moderator Stephen Hunter, an attorney, replied: “Nothing has changed.” He stressed that the goal of Tuesday’s meeting, after brief presentations from project planner Kobi Karp and traffic consultants at Kimley-Horn, was to listen to public input.
But that response didn’t sit well with neighbor Robin Porter, who along with other critics has persistently questioned what she described as the project’s proposed “massing and density and all that trickles down from that.”
“I see a lot of fancy dancing, checking off a box for a community meeting,” Porter told the hosts. “This is glossing over the issues.”
SPV’s lack of responsiveness in the past has prompted the city planning board to defer a key vote on the controversial project six times. SPV sued the board and city to force a vote, but lost in court. The last time, in February, the board told the would-be developers to hold at least two public meetings and to conduct a new study of traffic impact before they would reconsider the application.
The would-be developers plan a second virtual meeting on Oct. 19; registration can be found at eastsideridge.com. But it’s unclear whether they have satisfied the board’s demand for a new traffic plan that addresses concerns from neighboring property owners. At Tuesday’s meetings, consultants presented portions of what they cast as an updated plan based on fresh data. But critics say it appears to rely mainly on data that is several years old.
The Eastside proposal can’t go to the city commission for a final vote until the planning board makes a recommendation either for or against zoning and landuse changes sought by SPV as part of its special area plan application. Such SAPs, as they’re known, have become highly controversial because critics say they accelerate gentrification in poor neighborhoods and produce grossly overscaled development.
One nearby and equally massive project, the Magic City Special Area Plan in the heart of Little Haiti, was approved by the city commission last year after months of contentious debate. But the developers have done little beyond renovation of a set of existing warehouses on the property. A Little Haiti resident whose apartment overlooks the Magic City site has sued to overturn the approval. That suit is pending in the appellate division of MiamiDade Circuit Court, which heard oral arguments in the case on Oct. 1.