Wawa backs out in Coral Gables. After long battle, what’s next for prime site?
Cancel the meatball sandwiches.
Wawa, opposed by elementary school parents and some neighbors, has terminated its lease to build a gas station and convenience store on a prime piece of Coral Gables real estate at U.S. 1 and Grand Avenue.
With Wawa out, the fate of the property with a tangled history is again in question. Originally intended to be the site of affordable housing for residents of predominantly Black West Coconut Grove, the property has sat vacant for decades. The national chain, which began clearing the land one and a half years ago, joins the list of failed projects.
The popularity of Wawa’s mouth-watering chicken noodle soup was not enough to offset the ill will of West Grove neighbors and parents of G.W. Carver Elementary School students, who were aghast when construction plans approved surreptitiously by the city of Coral Gables were revealed in 2020.
Neighbors and parents formed the Gables Accountability Project (GAP) to fight city hall and banish Wawa. They sued the city in January 2021 for not following its own public hearing and permitting rules on commercial development. They couldn’t save two majestic old oak trees when construction began, but they did stop the bulldozers, and now the gas station hardly anybody wanted won’t be built across the street from the school.
“We’re absolutely elated that the Wawa, which would have caused traffic and pollution and sold products inappropriate for children, will not be built,” said Mildred Carlow, who has been a homeowner nearby for 40 years and grew up in one of the West Grove’s historic shotgun houses. “A gas station did not belong there. But I am deeply concerned about what will happen to the property now. It could be a fight all over again.”
Stymied by the GAP lawsuit that could “adversely affect” its development plan, Wawa, which had already “invested and spent significant funds,” according to a court filing, tried to end its lease in February and walk away from the project. But Wawa had to sue the land owner to recover a $525,000 surety bond. Circuit Court Judge Michael Hanzman ratified a settlement of the lawsuit on Aug. 16.
“We want a solution that enhances the neighborhood, that people can be proud of,” said attorney David Winker, who represents GAP in its ongoing lawsuit against Coral Gables, which green-lighted the project without proper public input or even a vote of the city commission. “This is a victory for the cause of government accountability and transparency. But we’re not celebrating until something awesome goes up there. Let’s do the process right this time and bring the community to the drawing board.”
Joint venture questions
The decision leaves an uncertain future for a company called Bahamian Village, a joint venture between developer Debra Sinkle Kolsky and the Lola B. Walker Homeowners Association, which had hoped to rent the property to Wawa. The developer and association foundation’s president say Wawa’s departure will only hurt a community that would have benefited from the project.
Bahamian Village owns the land, but has been unable to find a tenant for years. They need one because they have been digging a financial hole by taking out a mortgage totaling $2.3 million on the property that has a market value of $12 million. The mortgage is held by Sinkle Kolsky, who is also manager of Bahamian Village and signed on the borrower’s behalf in January, when the original $130,000 loan was modified for the ninth time.
“This is not the first setback the site has endured, and we will persevere,” Sinkle Kolsky said. “The homeowners have suffered an economic injustice at the hands of disgruntled people who sued to prevent their self-determination. It’s unfortunate because the homeowners association could have realized revenues of about $12 million they could have invested in their community, which has been the goal all along.”
In 2003, Miami-Dade County’s public housing department gave the 1.7-acre parcel to the association for a nominal $10 fee with the aim of building a project that would “benefit the community,” revitalize Grand Avenue and provide housing in an area with an acute shortage of affordable places to live.
Many of the three dozen homeowners in the association are elderly residents of Coral Gables’ MacFarlane Homestead Historic District, a triangular slice of land acquired by city founder George Merrick in 1925 as a segregated neighborhood for Black domestic and construction workers. Adjacent to the historically Black section of Coconut Grove founded by Bahamian settlers, it contains G.W. Carver Elementary and Middle schools.
Homeowners president ‘disgusted’ by meddling
Judy Davis, a retired teacher, is president of the Lola B. Walker Homeowners Association Foundation, and she is “disgusted” by what she considers meddling in plans for the property.
“We’re tired of 20 years of outsiders telling us what’s best for our community, as if they know better,” she said. “What’s happening is unfair and I think a lot of it has to do with discrimination. The only way I’ll give up on that property is if I’m dead.”
Davis, 74, is a descendant of Bahamians who lived in Coconut Grove and helped build Coral Gables. When she was a student at the all-Black, all-ages Carver — she was valedictorian of its last segregated senior class in 1966 — a gas station operated across the street from the school. So did a bar. Also a restaurant, a beauty and barber shop and rental bungalows.
“Nobody cared about a gas station when it was a Black school, and Old Smokey was spitting so much ash and dust on us that we couldn’t go outside for P.E. class,” Davis said, referring to a notorious trash incinerator that was shut down in 1970, leaving a toxic legacy of contaminated soil. “That property has been dormant for years and nobody tried to develop it until we did.”
Property key to future plans
The foundation wants to invest rental revenue from the property in the community. It has built four houses and renovated others, and has plans to build more housing and to sponsor educational programs and cultural events, Davis said.
“The plan was to bring things into the community that we would pay for. We’re not asking for handouts,” she said. “Our partner [Sinkle Kolsky] needs to make some money so she can recoup what she’s spent to maintain the property and we need money to help the community. People say we’re lining our pockets but that is not true.
“We’re not selling the property because we need to hang in there until the dream comes to fruition.”
But Carlow said some who live in the community have long had questions about the plans. At the July meeting of the homeowners association, she said no update on the Wawa project was given when she inquired. She’s also been unable to obtain financial statements for the association.
“My assessment is that the property is a taboo subject discussed among a very few select members of the association,” said Carlow, 74, who is a plaintiff in GAP’s lawsuit. She lives in the Golden Gate neighborhood. “Every project that has been proposed fell apart and I’m worried about the foundation’s debt.
“We’re always complaining about the lack of input into what gets built in our community. Well, now we have a new opportunity.”
A tangled history
Over the years, Bahamian Village plans for a residential-commercial development ran into obstacles (including illegal power lines running over the property), then various plans for a restaurant collapsed until finally, in January 2020, a new project — a Wawa gas station — got the go-ahead from Coral Gables. Ten months later, neighbors, Carver parents, Carver’s principal and the Miami-Dade County School Board objected, saying they were kept in the dark, belatedly finding out about the Wawa after it was approved via a special settlement agreement that enabled the city to waive fees, skip public hearings, “expedite the review and approval process,” and allow the city attorney and city manager to finalize plans by themselves.
Hanzman called the gas station “blatantly illegal” in his ruling earlier this year chastising city officials for usurping their authority as they rushed through approval of the Wawa, bypassing public input and the usual city oversight. He criticized the city for its “disingenuous” portrayal of the change in the site plan from restaurant to gas station as a “minor modification.”
After that defeat in court, the city said it wanted a stay of the lawsuit to allow time to reexamine future options for the property, such as revisiting the restaurant plan or reverting to the original goal of affordable housing or a combination of housing and local businesses.
GAP had been requesting discussions for more than a year, but the city would not engage, calling the suit frivolous. Former Mayor Raúl Valdés-Fauli called GAP’s concerns “laughable” and some commissioners said the Carver parents were racist.
The city rejected any depiction of the deal as secret and said it was done in support of the pro-Wawa neighbors who surround the property.
Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago advocates open discussion of the property’s future — although it is private property, Sinkle Kolsky emphasized. He wants to expand activities at a community center created as part of the Wawa deal. The community center is actually a conference room at the back of the office building of Redevco, Sinkle Kolsky’s development company, which was built on the east side of what would have been a large Wawa parking lot.
U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson has scouted the neighborhood and said the site could be the home of a proposed Bahamian Museum of Arts and Culture.
This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 9:08 AM.
