Judge lets street closures stand in Silver Bluff after county sues Miami to reopen them

Miami’s Silver Bluff neighborhood can keep its dead-end streets for now after a judge denied Miami-Dade County’s emergency request to bar the city from using temporary barriers to divert traffic at four intersections.

The ruling by Judge Mark Blumstein doesn’t resolve a fight that has divided the county and city leadership representing the neighborhood, a popular short-cut for drivers wanting to avoid the lights and traffic of nearby U.S. 1. Miami-Dade sued Miami on Saturday to block the closures that went up March 1, and the litigation will get a full hearing at a later date if the two sides can’t reach a compromise.

But the decision did give a quick win for Miami, which dispatched police on Friday to prevent a county public works crew — with its own escort by Miami-Dade police — from removing barricades that closed off side streets feeding into Coral Way and Southwest 17th avenue. Miami-Dade retreated once city police intervened, opting to seek a court order instead.

Saturday’s suit asked Blumstein to bar Miami from keeping the streets closed, since the county has jurisdiction over permanent street closures, even inside city limits.

“This has to end,” Bruce Libhaber, the assistant county attorney handling the case. “They are thumbing their noses at the law.”

In his ruling, Blumstein did require Miami to change the barriers the city crews installed Tuesday, working into the night. He cited testimony from a county transportation administrator who said Miami-Dade requires a different barrier to temporarily close a street. Instead of concrete barricades, Blumstein ordered Miami to put up plastic barriers that are either filled with water or sand, which are safer in a car crash.

Libhaber objected to an order allowing streets to remain closed, but Blumstein said that argument needed to be saved “for another day.” Shortly after the three-hour hearing ended, city crews were swapping out the barricades Sunday afternoon.

The morning hearing was the most direct confrontation yet in a long-running battle over closing Silver Bluff streets, a dispute that touched on two perennial sources of Miami stress: traffic and politics.

Residents leading the charge say their neighborhood streets were handling highway-like traffic as commuters and delivery trucks zoom by their homes, rolling stop signs but unimpeded by the traffic lights they’d face on Coral Way or U.S. 1. With three blocks now closed to 17th Avenue or Coral Way, residents say they don’t fear the streets anyway.

“I didn’t realize how many children we had in this neighborhood. Families are talking and coming out... We’re a neighborhood again,” Beba Mann said during the hearing, the only Silver Bluff resident allowed to testify as more than 50 people watched the online proceedings.

Mann became emotional recounting a relative’s two-year-old son straying from the sidewalk outside her house, only to be nearly struck by a pick-up truck. “He could have been killed,” she said.

Other residents call the arguments short-sighted, claiming the closed-off streets will only shift cut-through traffic elsewhere while disrupting local driving habits. Alfredo Cancelo, who lives on Coral Way, shared a video of an ambulance crew parking on one side of the city barrier and removing a patient by stretcher.

“It’s a hardship,” he said in an interview Sunday. “For me to put gas in my car or go to the grocery store, I have to drive 10 blocks and make a U-turn.”

This current dispute escalated when Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava wrote Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on March 3, saying she “must insist” the barriers be removed. Suare said he told her to get a court order.

The city commissioner representing the area, Joe Carollo, publicly blames Silver Bluff’s county commissioner, Eileen Higgins, for Miami-Dade’s demands, which Higgins denies.

Carollo also called it discrimination to target Silver Bluff street closures when other cities have cordoned-off neighborhoods. “Why haven’t they done anything in Coral Gables for years?” he said in a recent interview. “Or is it only the rich, elitist here who can have street closures?”

Victoria Mendez, Miami’s lead attorney, said at Sunday’s hearing that the city was happy to swap out its barriers but that closing the streets was the safest option for the neighborhood.

“Maintaining the barriers and the closures there are what’s safest for the community,” she said. “Removing them will continue the unsafe conditions.”

Miami Herald staff writer Joey Flechas contributed to this report.

This story was originally published March 7, 2021 at 6:02 PM.