Development is major focus of rivals in race for Coral Gables mayor
After 20 years of debate about how to enlarge two aging parking garages behind Miracle Mile and after 24 design revisions by the current developer, the Coral Gables City Commission voted Tuesday to postpone construction for another three years.
Supporters of the project, which includes two mixed-use buildings 141 feet and 97 feet in height, argued that Coral Gables desperately needs the parking spaces and enhancement of its obsolete garages. Detractors said the city doesn’t need hulk and bulk dwarfing its Main Street.
The decision not to make a decision illustrates the angst permeating Coral Gables as election day approaches. Development has become a dirty word in the City Beautiful. Where to build, what to build and how big to build will be the top questions on residents’ minds when they go to the polls April 9.
In the campaign for mayor, incumbent Raul Valdes-Fauli and challenger Jeannett Slesnick offer contrasting visions of growth.
It’s a reprise of the 2017 race, which Valdes-Fauli won by 187 votes out of 8,415 cast. There are 35,591 registered voter in Coral Gables, a city of 50,000.
Valdes-Fauli is an advocate of what he calls “smart development” that will add to the density of downtown Coral Gables, making it a walkable place inhabited by people who work, eat and shop close to where they live.
While Slesnick says she knows that thriving cities can’t halt growth, she wants to proceed at a more deliberate pace, tapping the brakes on what she calls mega developments.
A dozen large-scale projects coming to fruition within the next three years will add 2,000 condos and apartments, hundreds of hotel rooms and hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail, office and restaurant space in a boom not seen since city founder George Merrick began building his Venice of the South in the 1920s.
In a city known for its tree-lined streets, historic homes and stringent zoning — where even the chosen shade of beige paint must be approved at City Hall — big, modern buildings are targets of residents’ wrath. They worry that Coral Gables is losing its charm.
When Slesnick heard yet another neighbor’s reference to the “Brickellization” of Coral Gables and its future as a traffic-clogged “Concrete Canyon,” she decided to run against Valdes-Fauli, who was running unopposed.
“Artful renderings with tiny trees, little kids and a few cars on the roads look very pretty, and so do 2-inch tall architectural models,” she said. “But once the building is finished and it’s in your face and you look up at the sheer size of it, you realize it’s a permanent alteration to the scale of the city and quality of life.
“There’s been a change in attitude because now people can see what is happening. They are angry.”
Valdes-Fauli says it’s not his fault. The projects sprouting now were approved prior to his two-year term and in the intervening years since his previous time in office, when he was a commissioner from 1985 to 1989 and when he was mayor from 1993 to 2001.
“Major changes in zoning occurred in 2007, when I was not serving,” he said, noting that Don Slesnick, Slesnick’s husband, was mayor at that time. “The developments I’ve voted for are in step with the city’s character. Look at The Shops at Merrick Park. That was a parking lot for garbage trucks. I championed that project.”
Valdes-Fauli aims to concentrate development along downtown corridors.
“Our downtown properties account for 45 percent of our tax base but only 5 percent of our area,” he said. “We have 13 million square feet of office space compared to 11 million in Brickell, but none of our buildings are over 15 stories tall. I consider that a triumph. Our height limitations are sacred.
“I support controlled, rational development.”
Three of the city’s largest and most controversial projects are the Paseo de la Riviera, a dual tower development with hotel rooms and student residences located across U.S. 1 from the University of Miami; Gables Station, a 15-story mixed-use project on U.S. 1 near the Douglas Road Metrorail station; and The Plaza, a 6-acre residential-hotel-office-retail-restaurant complex that will have more retail space than all Miracle Mile businesses combined. Slesnick opposed all three when she was a commissioner.
“Every time we fly into Miami and see the Biltmore tower in a sea of green, I realize we don’t need anything higher than 16 stories because we want the Biltmore to stand out,” she said. “We don’t want towers right up to the curb on U.S. 1.
“We need to stick to our master plan. Why pitch laws out the window? If we stick to it for two or three years, slow things down, appreciate what we have, we can live on the funding from these projects for decades.”
Valdes-Fauli said he would not have voted for the Paseo because “I don’t like the way it looks,” but probably would have voted for Gables Station and The Plaza.
“U.S. 1 is not a quiet residential street; it’s got 400,000 cars passing through the Gables every day,” he said. “I think Dadeland Station is an example of a good project that links people to public transit. We need sane development not only for the tax base but because it can reduce traffic. It is not accurate that development causes traffic. Traffic problems require traffic solutions.”
More residential units downtown will drive people to Miracle Mile and out of their cars, he said.
“We need people on Miracle Mile and we spent $24 million to renovate it, yet 22 shops are closed right now,” he said. “In our downtown, we’ve got the trolley, Freebee and Uber that make people less dependent on cars. Development creates pedestrian traffic, not car traffic.”
Slesnick, a real estate agent, and her husband, Don, have served on various historic preservation boards. Their daughter, Kathleen Kauffman, was historic preservation chief of Miami-Dade County for nine years.
“I stand for elegant buildings,” Slesnick said. “I stand for the architecture and green space that make Coral Gables distinctive — and the best city in the South.”
The wave of development that she highlighted in her newsletter, “Jeannett’s Journal,” which included 29 projects, “activated my mothering instinct, and I decided I wanted to put my arms around the city and protect it.”
Don Slesnick defeated Valdes-Fauli in 2001 and immediately tore down what had been constructed of Valdes-Fauli’s plan to build a controversial 60,000-square-foot annex onto historic City Hall. There’s been bad blood between the families since. They are neighbors but they no longer attend holiday parties at each others’ houses.
Valdes-Fauli, a lawyer, lives in an Old Spanish home and is also a proponent of historic preservation.
“I’ve lived in Coral Gables since 1971, and I’m doing everything I can to save what makes the city special,” he said. “I want to keep our residential neighborhoods beautiful and make our downtown vibrant.”
While development is the dominant issue, Valdes-Fauli and Slesnick are also talking to voters about overdue infrastructure repairs, holding the line on property taxes and reducing traffic. Valdes-Fauli wants to install additional smart technology at trouble-spot intersections. Slesnick wants more police patrolling streets plagued by cut-through traffic. Both support annexation of the High Pines and Little Gables neighborhoods. Slesnick seeks a closer relationship between the city and its public schools as well as the University of Miami. Valdes-Fauli would like to see more public art.
“I’m also campaigning for more openness and civility in government,” said Slesnick, who wants to hold the town hall meetings she organized as commissioner. “It’s important to listen to the people who live here. Consider their input on development rather than having projects decided by three yes votes at City Hall.”
As of March 14, Valdes-Fauli had raised $121,425 in campaign contributions, including $5,000 from developer Tibor Hollo’s companies, according to the city clerk’s reports. Slesnick had raised $132,413, including a $100,000 loan to herself and $100 from former Gov. Bob Graham.
This story was originally published March 29, 2019 at 7:00 AM.