Coral Gables commission forges deal on contentious Miracle Mile rezoning. Will it fly?
Coral Gables officials looking for a key to unlocking redevelopment on ailing Miracle Mile without obliterating its small-scale charm say they may have found it: A consensus measure that would cap new construction at four stories.
That’s taller than most existing buildings on the Mile, but two stories shorter than current rules permit. At the same time, city commissioners and planners appear to have settled on an outright ban on parking within the footprint of any new buildings on the retail street.
Together, they say, the contemplated new rules will protect the Mile’s pedestrian-first ambience while promoting mixed-use development at the right scale to revitalize one of South Florida’s signature streets, long plagued by vacant shops and a lack of foot traffic.
That fresh compromise, forged during a two-hour public city commission workshop last week, may resolve a sometimes heated, months-long debate over the fate of the Mile that was sparked by a broader update of the Gables’ stringent zoning code. The commission is scheduled to take a first vote on the Miracle Mile measure March 9. A second and final vote would follow on March 23.
Commission members were at pains to point out that the consensus reached will lower height caps on the Mile compared to what’s allowed now.
“We are lowering the height on Miracle Mile — that’s h, e, i, g, h, t,” Gables Mayor Raul Valdes-Faui said during the Wednesday workshop, adding later: “Whatever we get, it’s going to be an improvement over what we have today.”
Commissioners approved the broader, mostly technical zoning update on Feb. 8 by a 4-1 vote, with vice mayor Vince Lago dissenting. But they agreed at the time to put off a final vote on proposed tweaks to rules governing Miracle Mile, by far the most contentious piece of the zoning rewrite, to consider alternatives.
The Miracle Mile measure has become a bone of contention in a crowded city election with few other issues to fire up voters.
Candidates for two open commission seats have dominated public hearings and community meetings on the question, accusing incumbents of ramming through the rezoning proposed by city planners while ignoring public consternation over an intense development boom in the city.
The original Miracle Mile proposal developed by city planning director Ramon Trias and consultant Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, a noted architect and University of Miami professor, sought to tweak existing zoning on the street to spur small-scale redevelopment.
The key, they concluded, is to allow owners of the often obsolete, one- and two-story buildings on small lots that dominate the street to redevelop while providing required parking somewhere else nearby. The small lots can’t accommodate the required parking, effectively encouraging any owners wanting to redevelop to aggregate property and build big with on-site parking garages — something city officials want to prevent.
To avoid litigation from property owners over potential downzoning claims, that original plan kept height limits at currently allowed levels of 70 feet, or six stories, while requiring new buildings to step back at four stories to preserve the street’s intimate feel. Nothing has been built at that height on the street, however, in part because of the difficulty in accommodating on-site parking on shallow lots.
The proposal raised the hackles of residents and preservationists who feared it could lead to a uniform, 70-foot-high “concrete canyon” along the Mile — a concern some commission members, including Lago, seconded.
The debate boiled down to precisely how tall any new construction on the Mile should be, a question that’s anything but straightforward because it depends on complex technical and legal variables.
All five commissioners agreed on allowing developers on the Mile the option of so-called “remote parking” within a 1,000-foot radius of their property. Ample parking is available near the Mile in both public and private garages, and the supply will be enough to meet demand for about a decade even as redevelopment occurs, city administrators assured commissioners.
Lago and Commissioner Patricia Keon, both vying for the retiring Valdes-Fauli’s seat, each released an alternative proposal, as did Commissioner Michael Mena. At this week’s workshop, Coral Gables’ five elected officials weighed four proposals, including a slightly tweaked plan from city planners, before settling on the four-story compromise substantially along the lines of Mena’s alternative.
This time, only a handful of people turned up on Zoom to oppose the Mile changes.
The proposals were designed to avoid directly downzoning the Mile, something Gables City Attorney Miriam Soler Ramos warned could open up the municipality to property-rights lawsuits.
To keep a lid on heights, all proposals banned the use of additional “air rights” on the Mile. Those development rights can be purchased by developers from owners of historically designated properties to add stories to projects in the downtown Gables over what basic zoning allows, but their use must be approved by the commission. Because the approval is discretionary, Soler Ramos said barring them doesn’t constitute a property “taking.”
Lago, however, proposed also prohibiting the use on the Mile of the city’s so-called Mediterranean bonus, a measure that allows developers who adopt the Gables’ trademark architectural style to add stories to downtown projects. That ban would effectively reduce development capacity and limit heights to four stories on the street. Lago also proposed still allowing developers to build a garage if they chose to, providing them flexibility to skirt property-rights concerns.
But Lago’s plan ran into concerns from other commissioners that it would still encourage developers to aggregate property and build street-killing garages and access ramps fronting the Mile.
Keon proposed no hard-and-fast height cap, saying small lot sizes effectively would keep most new building heights under six stories, since development capacity is dependent on the property footprint. Avoiding a hard cap also preserves creative flexibility for architects by not constricting a building’s shape, she argued. Keon persuaded fellow commissioners to embrace city planner’s proposal for ground-floor stories of up to 15 feet to satisfy requirements from high-end retailers.
Mena proposed a strict four-story cap, or about 50 feet, with a step-back at the fourth floor. That means building owners could have terrace restaurants or other uses on the fourth floor, promoting activity on the street, he said. Mena also proposed requiring remote parking for new buildings on the Mile instead of making it optional, an idea other commissioners appeared to embrace along with the four-story height limit.
Trias, the planning director, said the proposal will work if the city also eliminates building setbacks on the Mile. The ability to build to the property line means redevelopment or expansion projects could still use the full capacity allowed under current rules while hewing to a 50-foot cap, avoiding any takings issue, Trias said. Again, commissioners agreed.
Commissioners noted that there is ample precedent on the Mile for 50-foot heights — such as the large building at 55 Miracle Mile that houses the new Gramercy restaurant, among other businesses. The building, which occupies multiple lots, was the last significant construction on the street, made possible because required parking is in a garage in a companion condo high-rise at its rear.
At roughly that same 50-foot height, Mena said, the cap in his proposal respects property rights and the Mile’s modest scale while encouraging new development that enhances and modernizes the street.
“I appreciate the fundamental concern about the Mile, that it not be developed into something that is out of scale with what residents expect Miracle Mile to be,” Mena said in an interview before the workshop. “But we have to be cognizant of the property rights of those owners. We can’t just come in and say, ‘Hey, you can only do two stories now.’ “
But Mena said he wanted to avert the possibility of parking decks on the street by any means possible.
“I think that would be a travesty on the Mile,” he said. “No one wants to see development on that scale. What I’m trying to do is foreclose this possibility.”
This story was originally published March 2, 2021 at 6:00 AM.