After costs balloon, Miami Beach restarts bidding for North Beach community complex
As Miami Beach officials have looked to transform the city’s North Beach neighborhood in recent years, a large-scale community complex at the site of a surface parking lot has been a centerpiece of the vision.
The proposed project at 72nd Street and Collins Avenue, near the Miami Beach Bandshell amphitheater, would feature a parking garage, a library, a gym and a rooftop Olympic-size swimming pool. When voters approved $439 million in general obligation bonds in 2018, the community complex was the most expensive item on the city’s wish list.
But the project has been divisive among residents and has yet to get off the ground as its budget soars.
After the city sought bids for design and construction in 2020, officials found the anticipated costs were well beyond the original $54 million in bond funds set aside — and even beyond an adjusted $85 million target for construction the city set amid rising costs during the pandemic.
Top-ranked bidder Haskell’s estimates brought the total expected project cost to around $120 million, according to city officials. Second-ranked PCL Construction couldn’t meet the city’s budget, either. In October, at the request of City Manager Alina Hudak, the city commission voted to reject all bids.
Now the city is starting over. Last week, commissioners authorized a new round of bidding, starting with a request for qualifications to design the project. A subsequent bid process will address construction.
The commission has signed off on about $100 million in funding for the project from a variety of sources, including the $54 million in general obligation bonds, additional money from the city’s parking and “pay-as-you-go” budgets, and future bonds to cover parking costs.
Residents speak out for, against the project
Several residents who spoke at a Dec. 14 meeting, including Miami Beach Senior High School students, said the proposed 50-meter Olympic pool would be a game-changer for swimmers who frequently need to leave Miami Beach to compete. The complex would also house a 25-meter warm-up pool.
“North Beach very much deserves this project,” Commissioner David Richardson said. “I personally will never give up on North Beach and this amenity for this community.”
But the plan doesn’t have universal support.
Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez said that, while local swimmers deserve an aquatics center, the city shouldn’t move forward with a project that is far more costly than the original general-obligation bond contemplated. The complex would also include a community center, retail, green space and a jogging path.
“What’s being proposed is no longer what the taxpayers voted for,” Rosen Gonzalez said.
An online petition started by residents opposing the plan has more than 600 signatures, arguing the rooftop pools and added parking spaces aren’t needed. The existing parking lot has about 300 spaces. The new garage would have about 500.
Rosen Gonzalez said the additional parking would partially make up for waivers of parking requirements that the city has granted to developers of several new towers in North Beach — and suggested developers, not taxpayers, should cover the parking garage costs.
“I don’t think we need to pay for developers’ parking,” Rosen Gonzalez said.
Some residents have raised concerns that the original bond language mentioned a rooftop “competition” pool but didn’t specifically say it would be an Olympic pool, which is twice the length of other competition pools.
Others are skeptical about the city relocating the North Shore Branch Library to the new community complex and talk of potentially selling the current city-owned library site at 75th Street and Collins Avenue.
Richardson said the area deserves a new library, as the existing one is “filled with mold.” The library recently closed for renovations that are expected to take about nine weeks.
Miami Beach United, a group of resident-activists that weighs in on city issues, is opposing the community complex. In a recent email, the group said it’s time to reallocate the bond funding to other projects in North Beach.
“We’re not against the notion of putting something more beneficial and useful [than a surface parking lot] there, necessarily, but we have serious concerns about what’s going there now and the cost,” said Tanya Bhatt, the vice president of marketing for Miami Beach United. “That’s not what the voters agreed to. They agreed to a $54 million project that was much more modest in scope.”
Byron Carlyle Theater site debated
Debate over the project reflects broader tension over the future of North Beach, an area north of 60th Street that lacks the raucous feel of South Beach or the many high-rises of Mid-Beach — and where rents are relatively affordable compared to other parts of the city.
Residents have resisted some development pressure, most recently by voting down a ballot question to allow Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross to build a larger hotel and condo than is presently allowed at the former Deauville Beach Resort site.
City officials also continue to debate the future of the Byron Carlyle Theater on 71st Street, which has been closed since 2019 after falling into disrepair. Residents fought developers’ plan to build apartments and a cultural center at the site last year — a petition got over 1,200 signatures — and commissioners ultimately voted to scrap the plan.
Now, officials must decide how to spend more than $30 million in bond money for the facility approved by voters in November. Rosen Gonzalez says it should go toward a standalone performing arts center that remains city-owned, while others say the city should remain open to some combination of a theater and “workforce” housing there.
The issue — much like the community complex and the Deauville site — pits Rosen Gonzalez and residents like Bhatt against city officials including Mayor Dan Gelber and Richardson as they chart the neighborhood’s future path.
Gelber said it’s important for the city to forge ahead.
“So many of these projects,” he said, “we are just constantly kicking them down the road.”
This story was originally published December 20, 2022 at 12:59 PM with the headline "After costs balloon, Miami Beach restarts bidding for North Beach community complex."
