How a tractor headquarters unleashed an environmental battle in Miami-Dade County

Miami-Dade commissioners on Thursday handed Kelly Tractor another setback in the company’s fight to win Miami-Dade approval to build a headquarters outside the county’s development zone.

Commissioners voted to delay a final vote on the project plan, but only after the legislative tea leaves were looking hazardous for Kelly Tractor, a heavy equipment dealer. It appeared the company would not have enough votes on the commission to override a likely veto by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, leaving Kelly’s lobbying team needing more time to try and move at least one commissioner to vote their way after a contentious debate.

“I believe there is a lot of hypocrisy going on today,” said Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez, whose district includes the 246-acre tree farm where Kelly wants to build offices, machine shops and places to store the tractors they sell. “It is all about politics.”

This was the second showdown vote on the commission for Kelly, a longtime Miami-Dade business that wants to move its Doral headquarters to a larger campus on land that sits outside the county’s Urban Development Boundary (UDB), which separates suburban development from rural areas. In February, Levine Cava vetoed the commission’s first approval of the tractor company’s plan, setting up the attempted revote on Thursday.

“The Urban Development Boundary exists for a reason,” Levine Cava told commissioners Thursday, before the board voted to defer a final decision until the commission meets again on May 5. “These guidelines are not bargaining chips.”

Two issues divided Miami-Dade’s elected leaders over the Kelly plan. The first was the wetlands the company planned to pave to build the new headquarters. But Levine Cava told commissioners Thursday that Kelly had submitted a revised plan that had largely satisfied the environmental concerns.

The other issue was justifying a large commercial project outside the UDB when county planning staff contend there is enough industrial real estate available within the development zone that Kelly could purchase for its new headquarters.

Kelly says that’s not true and that the site is perfect for the company to grow within Miami-Dade, its headquarters since the 1960s. The company also points out the land sits next to a tractor-trailer depot already approved by Miami-Dade on land that’s also outside the UDB and that Miami-Dade once seriously considered building a sewage-treatment plant on the site before that project fizzled years ago.

“We’re trying to grow our business to a location we’ve owned for more than 40 years,” owner Chris Kelly told the Miami Herald before the meeting. “It’s already surrounded by development.”

It takes nine of the 13 commissioners to override a mayor’s veto, and Kelly requested the deferral after it looked like only eight commissioners were ready to vote with the company.

Commissioners Vicki Lopez and Raquel Regalado, who backed Kelly in January, switched to side with Levine Cava after her Feb. 1 veto. The likely swing vote Thursday belonged to Commissioner Marleine Bastien, who missed the first approval vote in January, when Commissioners Danielle Cohen Higgins and Micky Steinberg cast the only no votes.

When Bastien announced she opposed the Kelly proposal on Thursday, it was clear Kelly would be heading into a veto fight they couldn’t win without flipping a vote.

Another complication facing commissioners was the last-minute intervention of a state-controlled toll board.

The Greater Miami Expressway Agency (GMX), which controls the nearby 836 highway, wrote in a letter to commissioners this month that approving the Kelly project would make it more expensive to build a planned six-lane 836 extension to Kendall, a $3 billion project that would include the tractor company’s land.

GMX’s objections did not go over well with some commissioners, who complained about the toll agency pausing progress on the 836 extension — known as the Kendall Parkway — until its board decides whether the toll agency can afford the project.

“They’ve been sitting idly by. They have stalled the progression of the Parkway,” Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez said. “I don’t know what the board of directors of GMX is doing.”