Miami developer pitches new site for Miami-Dade’s incinerator. Two cities don’t like it

Weeks before a showdown vote on where to build Miami-Dade’s new garbage incinerator, a Miami developer is offering a new site in an agricultural area outside of Hialeah Gardens on the western edge of the county.

David Martin, chief executive of the Terra development firm, is pitching his 65-acre site as remote enough to let Miami-Dade commissioners avoid the fights underway from Doral and Miramar as the county considers incinerator locations near neighborhoods in those cities.

The 1982 incinerator that was burning nearly half of Miami-Dade’s garbage for decades at a site in Doral shut down after a fire in February 2023, and Doral is pushing the county to pick a new location for constructing a replacement.

READ MORE: Miami-Dade plans to build the biggest waste-to-energy facility in the country

Martin’s proposed location is a tree farm off Okeechobee Road by Northwest 137th Avenue. That site is nearly 2 miles away from the closest neighborhood in Miramar, a Broward County city promising to sue Miami-Dade if the county moves forward with building a $1.5 billion incinerator near the county line.

The incinerator site recommended by Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, at an abandoned air strip known as Opa-locka West, sits less than a half-mile from the same Miramar neighborhood. Miramar and Doral are about 12 miles apart.

Miami-Dade is also considering a private site in Medley, near the existing Doral incinerator.

The Martin offer injects an influential developer into one of the most contentious decisions awaiting commissioners after the August elections that handed Levine Cava and six board members new four-year terms. Martin is a reliable donor in local races and was in the news last year for an eye-popping $1.2 billion offer to purchase a real estate portfolio that included the former Miami Herald headquarters on city waterfront before that transaction with the new owner fizzled.

Martin’s site also brings some of the same downsides as the airfield location. It sits outside Miami-Dade’s Urban Development Boundary, which divides suburban construction from the county’s rural areas and is designed to shield the Everglades and farmland from sprawl. Michael Goldstein, a Miramar lawyer, described the two sites as “functionally the same” and said that Miramar would oppose both locations.

The mayor of Hialeah Gardens, a city about 3.5 miles southeast from the Martin site, also is not a fan of the new location added to the incinerator mix.

“My preference would be they don’t build it anywhere near our city,” Yioset De La Cruz, the mayor of Hialeah Gardens, said Wednesday. “I think it can make a difference in air quality.”

READ MORE: Miami-Dade will soon pick a site for new trash incinerator. Miramar opposes the top pick

While Doral residents complained of garbage odors from the Doral plant, Levine Cava and other county leaders argue that modernized incinerator technology has mostly eliminated the air-quality issues that plague the older generation of trash-processing facilities. Known as “waste-to-energy” plants because they generate some electricity while burning trash, incinerators allow local governments to dispose of garbage without relying exclusively on burying waste in landfills or recycling it.

Miami-Dade commissioners are expected to debate the future of the county incinerator at their Sept. 17 meeting. Miramar is vowing to pack the chamber with residents opposing a possible move to the airstrip less than a half-mile from Miramar’s Sunset Lakes housing development.

Separately, Doral has pushing for years to remove the incinerator, which was built in a remote area, only to see housing developments pop up near it in the decades that followed. One of the nearby residents is the county commissioner representing the area, former Doral mayor Juan Carlos Bermudez.

A Martin representative declined to comment. The developer’s Aug. 19 written proposal to Bermudez, obtained this week by the Miami Herald, involves a swap in which Martin would provide the land for a new incinerator site in exchange for a county-owned plot outside of Doral that he wants for a mix of commercial and residential development. He would not be involved in what Miami-Dade built on the proposed incinerator site.

Martin wants the county-owned land outside of Doral, where Northwest 58th Street meets 87th Avenue, for a mix of commercial and residential development. Currently used by the county’s Solid Waste Department — it has a station where residents who pay for Miami-Dade trash services can dispose of home chemicals — Martin would build 1,002 apartments units in low-rise buildings and 1 million square feet of industrial space.

The county’s plans for a soccer park next to the Solid Waste site would not be affected, since Martin’s development would be designed to accommodate the proposed recreational hub, Martin said in an Aug. 19 letter to Bermudez. Bermudez did not respond to a request for comment.

This story was originally published August 29, 2024 at 11:11 AM.