Miami-Dade commission backs entertainment village on land mayor wants for electric buses
A business group wanting to purchase almost 50 acres of government land near Homestead for an open-air entertainment village won a vote before the Miami-Dade County Commission on Wednesday, despite objections from Mayor Daniella Levine Cava that the property is needed as a repair depot for the county’s new electric-bus line.
“This is the largest remaining parcel of county land,” Levine Cava told commissioners. “We need to make sure we’re getting maximum benefit from it.”
Commissioner Kionne McGhee sponsored the item requiring county negotiations for the no-bid purchase, which would need another board vote for approval. The item gives Levine Cava 180 days to present a proposed agreement to the board.
Homestead Town Center LLC, a corporate entity out of St. Petersburg formed in October, proposed a cluster of restaurants, bars and offices built with cargo containers, as well as soccer fields and performance spaces to bring a new entertainment option for South Miami-Dade on land outside the Homestead Air Reserve Base.
The county’s transit arm wants the land off Southwest 280th Street and Southwest 127th Avenue for a maintenance yard to service a fleet of electric buses Miami-Dade is purchasing for its new rapid-transit bus line on the South Miami-Dade busway. McGhee opposes putting the yard there, in part because of noise pollution for residential neighborhoods nearby.
The resolution approved Wednesday allows the county to charge electric buses on the Homestead land, but doesn’t accommodate the maintenance yard the administration wants. McGhee called the proposed entertainment village the kind of destination needed to attract fans from Homestead’s NASCAR track and give residents an exciting place to be close to home.
“This can be a huge game-changer,” he said.
The Levine Cava administration, in a memo released Tuesday, said the development team seems to lack the construction and leasing experience required to transform the vacant land into a sprawling entertainment venue.
Partners in the venture who attended Wednesday’s meeting, investment executive Yrene Tamayo, marketing executive Jossua Parini and lawyer Ahmand Johnson, declined to answer questions after the vote. “We don’t have any comment,” Johnson said when asked about the need for a 47-acre parcel. “The proceedings speak for themselves. And we look forward to negotiations.”
Commissioners René Garcia and Eileen Higgins voted against the resolution, which assigns McGhee the role of commission representative in the negotiations between Homestead Town Center and the administration. Higgins, chair of the board’s Transportation committee, called the plan a setback for the new rapid-transit line, especially since Miami-Dade already paid $450,000 on an environmental study of the site required by federal regulators.
“We were just ready to submit it for approval,” Higgins said. “Starting over delays this process for a year.”
Eulois Cleckley, the county’s transit director, said a later opening of the maintenance facility won’t delay the start of electric-bus service on the new transit line of express stations, scheduled to be finished next year. But moving to another site would make it costlier to operate, he said.
McGhee, elected in 2020, opposed the 2018 county vote approving the bus line. A state representative from South Miami-Dade at the time, he urged commissioners to pursue the Metrorail extension that was sold to voters during a 2002 referendum on a new transportation sales tax.
While prior McGhee legislation sought to pause the bus project, he said the entertainment-park plan shouldn’t be seen as an impediment to the new transit line now that construction is underway.
“That battle has been waged,” he said, “and that battle has been lost.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2022 at 7:00 AM.