Kendall Parkway project stalled over high costs. Will Miami-Dade make it pricier?

A planned 14-mile southern extension of State Road 836 into Kendall has quietly stalled over cost concerns as leaders of a state toll board continue to freeze spending on the project.

While the Greater Miami Expressway Agency (GMX) has about $6 million worth of engineering contracts in place for the planned Kendall Parkway extension of the 836, documents from the toll board’s most recent agenda show none of that money has been spent.

The agency has also frozen a program to purchase land along the planned route between the 836’s current endpoint near Northwest 12th Street down to Southwest 136th Street. The last parcel was bought in 2023 for the planned six-lane toll road, which was originally budgeted at $1 billion but, according to GMX, now, is expected to cost closer to $3 billion. Even though GMX was allocated $100 million in this year’s Florida budget for the project, the agency hasn’t used the money, saying the newly installed board still needs time to sort construction priorities.

“We’ve stopped spending on the project until the board tells us to move forward,” GMX Director Rafael Garcia told the Miami Herald this week. “It is on pause.”

Now, GMX claims there’s a new potential hurdle from a controversial development awaiting approval by the Miami-Dade County Commission.

A proposed headquarters complex for Kelly Tractor sits outside the county’s Urban Development Boundary, which separates suburban development from the county’s rural areas and shields environmentally sensitive areas from construction. The project site also sits at the start of the planned 836 extension, on a tree farm off Northwest 137th Avenue. The Kelly Tractor project is contentious enough that Mayor Daniella Levine Cava in February vetoed the commission’s approval of the plan. A revote is scheduled for Thursday.

While GMX didn’t weigh in before the first vote in January, this time the agency is warning commissioners that approving the Kelly project would only add to the Kendall Parkway’s daunting budget. The toll agency says it would need to acquire at least part of the 246-acre Kelly site if it wanted to build the Kendall Parkway, and allowing construction of a commercial complex there would make that purchase price higher.

“Approval of this application would materially impair GMX’s ability to advance and implement the SR 836 Southwest Extension,” Garcia wrote in a letter sent to the Levine Cava administration earlier this month.

GMX’s letter throws a late twist into a debate that so far has centered on the environment and whether the site represents a good spot for expanding the commercial activity by Kelly Tractor that’s already approved in a neighboring parcel.

Levine Cava said the Kelly Tractor project destroys too many wetlands and bypasses county rules on approving development proposed outside Miami-Dade’s Urban Development Boundary. Backers of the plan call it a reasonable way to fortify a homegrown company’s place in the local economy without causing environmental harm on land that’s a short drive from a major highway.

Should the proposal pass the County Commission again on Thursday, Levine Cava would have 10 days to issue another veto.

Miami-Dade Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, whose district includes part of the 836 extension route, told the Miami Herald that he supports the Kelly Tractor project and also wants the highway expansion built.

“GMX needs to start on that project as soon as possible. And I think we need to do whatever we can to help GMX make sure it moves forward,” Gonzalez said. “I’m not saying I’m against the Kelly Tractor project. I’m always for jobs and building responsibly. But we definitely, definitely need the Kendall Parkway.”

Miami-Dade backs the Kendall Parkway. Will it back Kelly Tractor, too?

The Miami-Dade government endorsed the Kendall Parkway under Levine Cava’s predecessor, then-Mayor Carlos Gimenez. Environmental groups fought it, saying it encouraged sprawl at the expense of wetlands along the route, which was designed to ease commuting times for residents in the Kendall area. It would be paid by borrowing construction costs against future toll revenue — both from existing GMX expressways and revenue from the new 14-mile extension, too.

GMX is funding big projects already — including the “Signature Bridge” under construction by the Florida Department of Transportation and behind schedule on the eastern end of the 836, which is also known as the Dolphin Expressway. GMX runs four other toll roads — the Airport, Don Shula, Gratigny and Snapper Creek expressways — and Garcia said the question facing board members is whether the Kendall Parkway would divert too many dollars from needed improvements for existing toll roads.

“We’re trying to figure out if it is still feasible,” he said. “Can we pay for it?”

GMX doesn’t say how much more expensive it expects the Kelly Tractor site to be if Miami-Dade allows the new headquarters to go up there. In an April 20 response, a Kelly Tractor lawyer told Miami-Dade commissioners it would be unfair to deny the project just to keep the land cheaper for a hypothetical GMX acquisition through Florida law that allows governments to force landowners to sell at market rates.

Approving the Kelly Tractor project “does not impair, nor limit, GMX’s ability to build the SR 836 Southwest Extension,” lawyer Andrew Prince Brigham wrote in the letter. “What approval ensures, however, is that if the property is taken for public use, its value will be measured fully and fairly — not artificially depressed by a regulatory denial…”

In objecting to the Kelly Tractor project, GMX is warning county commissioners about harm to an expressway extension that the agency itself won’t commit to building.

One factor is the toll board itself. Previously, the County Commission appointed a majority of the toll board’s seats. But in 2023, Miami-Dade lost a lengthy court fight trying to block a 2019 state law that gave Florida’s governor the right to appoint a majority of the board members.

The new legislation came with a name change too, with a board once known as the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (or MDX) becoming the Greater Miami Expressway Agency (or GMX).

Under MDX, board members not only approved the Kendall Parkway project but also started spending toll dollars to acquire the land needed to eventually build the new extension. Known as the “Willing Seller” program, it made offers to landowners along the route interested in selling quickly.

But when the GMX board took over in the summer of 2023, that program went idle. While GMX reports the agency owns or controls half of the 919 acres of land needed to build the 836 extension, the agency last purchased a parcel on Sept. 14, 2023, GMX communications manager Randy Grice said. The agency formally paused the Willing Seller program at the start of 2024, Grice said.

So far, GMX hasn’t even tried to spend state dollars allocated solely for the 836 extension. Florida’s 2026 budget has $100 million for the Kendall Parkway project, but the money remains untapped and under the control of the Florida Department of Transportation, said Garcia, GMX’s director.

He emphasized the 836 extension remains a live project for the agency, pending a decision by the GMX board.

“GMX has not said no” to the Kendall Parkway, Garcia said. “But we have to look at the whole system.”

This story was originally published April 22, 2026 at 6:47 PM.