Miami MLS stadium, climate change and political peace top new city manager’s agenda
Miami’s residents expect their government to keep the city clean and safe while managing real estate development and tackling large threats to the community’s well-being, such as the looming impacts of climate change.
It’s a big responsibility, and there’s a new boss overseeing the $1 billion bureaucracy that is supposed to handle the job: City Manager Art Noriega. After commissioners approved his appointment Monday, Noriega was sworn in as the top shot-caller overseeing a 4,000-person workforce tasked with running city parks, enforcing the city’s laws, issuing permits and spending taxpayer dollars.
As the city’s chief administrator, he also has to juggle the desires of his six bosses — five district commissioners and the mayor. From planned initiatives to political whims, Noriega has to execute the policies approved by elected officials and run the city’s day-to-day operations.
His biggest job is intangible — mending the relationship between the mayor and commissioners, and acting as a chief negotiator inside City Hall.
The less politics, the better, he said, acknowledging the difficulty of pleasing politicians who can often be at odds with one another.
“It won’t be easy,” Noriega told the Miami Herald, sitting in his corner penthouse office atop a downtown parking garage.
He must deal with fractures in Miami’s government, caused by tension and mistrust among elected officials and administrators. Former city manager Emilio González resigned in that rocky atmosphere. González’s critics on the commission complained that his staff was not responsive enough to questions and requests, and Noriega intends to change that.
“It starts and ends with communication,” Noriega said. The new manager wants his administration, himself included, to meet with commissioners more to keep them abreast on city projects.
The new manager said he would work with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who is not known to be a regular in commissioners’ offices at City Hall, to improve the mayor’s relationships with commissioners.
Noriega, who leaves his position as CEO of the Miami Parking Authority, will confront a number of urgent issues. Among them are the day-to-day operations of the city government that can aggravate residents. Homeowners and business owners complain about how long it takes to get permits for home improvements or open a business. The city’s code compliance officers use outdated technology and city laws that Noriega suggested need revision.
“A lot of it has to do with the way the code is written,” he said.
Miami Freedom Park for Inter Miami
One of his biggest jobs is negotiations over Miami Freedom Park, the planned redevelopment of city-owned Melreese golf course into a $1 billion commercial complex with a soccer stadium and public park. The complex would serve as the venue for home games played by David Beckham’s Major League Soccer franchise Inter Miami. The city could lease the property for 99 years to team owners for the project.
The manager said he anticipates providing a thorough update in April or May and delivering a finalized lease in late summer.
At the request of Suarez, Noriega has been involved in the negotiations for months, part of which is conversations about how to make sure parkland that is rezoned is replaced elsewhere, a requirement under city law.
“If they rezone 20 acres, we have an obligation to replace 20 acres,” Suarez said. “We are having significant and very intense conversations on this and what [the team’s] financial commitment will be.”
Other points to debate: lease payments to the city and the cost of environmental cleanup, which team owners have pledged to cover.
“Public money is not an option,” Noriega said.
The lease requires approval by four of five city commissioners because the city did not put the land out for public bid before starting negotiations with Inter Miami’s ownership, a move approved by voters in 2018. Noriega said the four-fifths requirement is a “heavy lift,” acknowledging the controversy the proposal has sparked among parks advocates and over concerns about how much money the city will make off the deal.
Climate change and Miami 21
When it comes to preparing for sea level rise fueled by climate change, Noriega said the city needs to update its building codes. He said he wants to elevate the work of the city’s resilience department, which is preparing a stormwater master plan that will serve as a guide to keeping Miami dry.
In 2017, Miamians voted to fund the Miami Forever bond, $400 million in government spending, including $200 million designated for climate change adaptation. The stormwater plan, expected to be complete in early 2021, will show where the city should install pumps and pipes, elevate roads and raise sea walls, but Noriega said the issue is urgent and the city should be looking for ways to act faster.
“You cannot overstate the importance of climate change and its impacts on the city,” Noriega said. “It’s not a next-year problem. It’s not a five-years-from-now problem. It’s a now problem.”
Noriega’s administration is also tasked with analyzing how the city can reduce its carbon emissions. Suarez recently signed a pledge to make the city government carbon neutral by 2050, a lofty goal with no concrete plan yet.
The new manager is heading the government of a city that has for some time been in rapid transition. Land values rise steadily, towing increases in property tax revenues, which fatten local governments’ coffers. Yet at the same time, the gap between Miami’s haves and have-nots widens, and housing becomes increasingly less affordable in a market driven by foreign investment and luxury development.
As a result, some residents have clamored for a revamp of the city’s Miami 21 zoning code that would rein in development pressures that threaten to gentrify neighborhoods. Specifically, advocates have scrutinized a zoning designation known as the “special area plan” (SAP). The city’s planning and zoning board has voted to abolish the tool, which allows developers to trade community benefits for broader development rights that allow bigger and denser projects. The City Commission has not taken a position on the matter, though commissioners formed a task force to review the whole zoning code.
Noriega, who was vice president at Miami-based developer Carlisle Group for nearly two years before becoming the parking authority’s CEO in 1999, agreed that Miami 21 deserves a review. He said he needs to more closely examine the issue of special area plans, though on first blush, he suggested changing the rules could curb gentrification while still encouraging development.
“I’m not entirely opposed to the special area plans,” he said. “I think there’s a way we can get more value from them.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2020 at 6:15 AM.
