Fla. mall has Gucci, Prada … and soon, affordable housing?
New law boosts projects, irking state’s towns
BAL HARBOUR, Fla. — In Bal Harbour, an oceanside village north of Miami Beach, a luxury mall says it wants to help tackle one of the nation’s — and Florida’s — most intractable problems: a lack of affordable housing.
It is an unexpected move for a retail temple where Gucci, Chanel, and Rolex are on offer. Affordable? Here?
But in a rare instance of bipartisan agreement, the Florida Legislature passed a law last spring intended to encourage projects like the one that the owner of the mall, Bal Harbour Shops, has in mind. Called the Live Local Act, the law allows developers to bypass certain local zoning rules and to qualify for tax breaks if their projects include enough “workforce housing.”
Local officials around the state, stripped of their power to say no, don’t like it. And nowhere has seen more backlash than little Bal Harbour.
For 40 years, the mall’s owner, Whitman Family Development, has wanted to build a hotel alongside the shopping center, on Collins Avenue, the village’s main drag. Neighbors and elected leaders repeatedly rejected the idea. But when the new housing law passed, the owner saw a way in.
The company filed an application to build a 20-story hotel and three residential towers with 600 units, 240 of which would be priced low enough to qualify as workforce housing under the law.
If the plan meets the law’s requirements, the village of about 3,100 people — where the median household income is about $86,000 a year, well above the state average — will be unable to stop it.
After the application was filed, infuriated residents packed Village Hall to decry the project. The village council, feeling ambushed, vowed to try to stop it. Then, last week, the mall’s owner sued the village, in what seems to be the first instance of a developer asking the courts to enforce the new law.
It is a small-town fight over a big-time issue, with both sides making reasonable points and no compromise in sight.
“The law doesn’t make sense, the way it’s being used by the developers,” said Neca Logan, 60, the president of the Bal Harbour Civic Association and a lifelong village resident. “This will change our community for the terrible.”
The law resembles others that states have passed in recent years curbing local governments’ ability to block new projects as rent burdens escalate. The hope is to speed construction and backfill what has become a national housing shortage. But around the country, local officials are pushing back.
The Bal Harbour case is the highest-profile dispute yet over the Live Local Act, but it has upset municipalities all over Florida since Governor Ron DeSantis signed it last March.
Miami Beach balked when the owners of the famed Clevelander Hotel on Ocean Drive floated plans for a restaurant and 30-story residential building. (The owners have since reduced it to 18 stories.)
Commissioners in Pasco County, north of Tampa, voted to sue any developer trying to use the law to build apartments on industrial or commercial property. At least two municipalities in Miami-Dade County temporarily suspended all development after the law’s passage.
Municipal leaders say they are exasperated with the Republican-controlled state government for overriding local authority. State legislators consider the law, which has prompted a slew of shelved developments to be dusted off and redrawn, a resounding success. Developers say that without the law, they would have no incentive to build anything resembling workforce housing.