Judge rules against city in suit over bid to overhaul Rickenbacker marina. Now what?
Miami voters may once again decide the future of a valuable piece of city-owned waterfront property — this time on a judge’s orders.
In the latest twist to a years-long saga, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Fine has ordered the city of Miami to hold a new voter referendum on a plan to redevelop the Rickenbacker Marina because the city did not follow competitive bidding rules and played favorites during a hotly contested solicitation to lead a $100 million overhaul of the west end of Virginia Key.
The judge’s ruling is a sharp admonition of the City Commission’s decision to throw out all bids in 2020, the second time in six years that the city scrapped a public bid for a long-desired but frequently stalled project. The judge ruled that commissioners acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in rejecting all bids in 2020. Fine wrote that commissioners showed “favoritism” in 2021 by awarding the project to the second-place bidder, current operator Aabad Melwani, and holding a referendum without completing another round of bidding.
Voters rejected that proposal in November 2021. Now, they could be asked to consider the competing proposal by the first-place bidder, a development team that sued. The team includes RCI Group, led by principal Robert Christoph, and Suntex Marinas.
“Our goal is to get on the ballot in November,” said Kendall Coffey, attorney for the RCI/Suntex team. “We don’t want more delays. We don’t want more taxpayer expense.”
The decision, issued Friday, is the result of a lawsuit filed by the RCI/Suntex group, incorporated as Virginia Key LLC. This group was the top-ranked bidder after two staff evaluations over two rounds of bidding since 2015. The city has long sought to increase revenue through a new 75-year lease that would allow a developer to transform the west end of Virginia Key. The vision includes expanded capacity for storing vessels, including robotic boat storage, more wet slips and a new restaurant complex. Leases of waterfront land in Miami must be approved by referendum.
Melwani’s team has been operating the marina without a lease, on a month-to-month basis, since 2015 as a “holdover tenant” under an agreement reached during a previous lawsuit. The facility currently has dry storage for 350 vessels, wet slips for 200 vessels, and Whiskey Joe’s Bar and Grill.
Even though Christoph’s team would want to see the city comply and start drafting a ballot question so voters can decide in November, such a commission vote isn’t expected to happen quickly. On Monday, City Attorney Victoria Méndez told the Miami Herald the city plans to challenge Judge Fine’s ruling.
“We are disappointed with this ruling as he relied on his own interpretation of the facts rather than the clear record,” said Méndez, in a statement. “We plan to appeal.”
The protracted battle to redevelop 27 acres on the western edge of Virginia Key has fueled bitter accusations of impropriety against both bidding teams and their lobbyists, weighing down both solicitations. Commissioners have twice rejected city managers’ recommendations to lease the land to Christoph and his affiliates.
In July 2021, then-commissioner Ken Russell pushed for a ballot question on Melwani’s proposal as a way to finally bring the matter to a decision. For years, he discounted the RCI proposal because of the company’s involvement in a major Biscayne Bay sewage spill in 2000, an issue that was not disclosed in the first solicitation.
At the time, Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla opposed the referendum, arguing that a last-minute proposal by Christoph’s group would be a better deal for the city. Díaz de la Portilla also blasted the referendum on Melwani’s proposal as an attempt to “hoodwink our voters by giving them one option” and avoid a new competitive bidding process. The judge cited the commissioner’s statement as he ruled in Christoph’s favor, and the order also states that Russell’s problem with the sewage spill should not have factored into his decision because Christoph’s team disclosed information about the spill in the second bidding round.
In arguing that the commission’s vote was arbitrary, the judge also honed in on vague statements by Commissioner Joe Carollo during that November 2020 commission meeting. He said he had other reasons for not awarding the bid that he wouldn’t discuss unless he was compelled to do so in a deposition. At the time he made what turned out to be a prophetic statement: “If they want to sue, let them sue.”
Coffey said local governments have latitude in making decisions when awarding big-ticket contracts, but that latitude is “subject to the rule of law.”
“There comes a time when such a vitally important city asset can no longer be held hostage by politics, favoritism and pretext,” he said.
This story was originally published February 14, 2023 at 4:48 PM.
