Officials hope land swap will help Cutler Bay preserve green space, build new town hall

Cutler Bay’s old “Potato Field” hasn’t produced a crop in years. It’s overgrown with banana trees and other Florida flora. But now the farmland will become the town’s centerpiece.

The town of Cutler Bay has completed a land swap with a private property owner for 16 acres located north of Southwest 212th Street and east of Old Cutler Road, in exchange for a six-story office building and adjacent property at 10720 Caribbean Blvd. that houses the existing town hall, said Rafael Casals, city manager of Cutler Bay.

The new city hall will be small, just big enough to house the city’s 32 staffers. The rest of the land will be used for perks the entire town can enjoy. Lots of the land will remain open green space.

Casals envisions concerts, art shows and maybe a splash pad as the centerpiece of the town. Definitely not more athletic fields.

It will be a place for the community to gather, he said.

Mayor Tom Meerbott said he could see a water feature fitting well in the space. Maybe an amphitheater for plays or a pavilion for large picnics.

The city will discuss ideas for the space with residents over the next five to eight months, Casals said. The council plans to put a general obligation bond on the ballot to pay for construction of the new facilities, whatever they are.

“It’s going to have a Norman Rockwell kind of feel,” Meerbott said.

The old city hall is in great condition, Casals said. The interior is decorated like a Hyatt, with sleek floors and natural accents. And it’s the first building South Florida drivers see once they get off the Turnpike.

But it’s simply too much space.

When city officials purchased the building in 2010, they initially thought they’d be able to lease out the extra space to companies looking to move out of high traffic areas in the city.

Right now, the city’s 32 employees are occupying 26,000 of 76,000 square feet of office space — including the 250-seat, 2,768-square-foot council chambers. That rounds out to 34 percent of the available space.

The entire penthouse of the building has been vacant since the town bought the building. All 13,000 square feet.

Ten years later, the other offices remain empty and it’s finally time to move on, Casals said. The city’s offices should be closer to the center of town anyway.

Which makes “the Potato Field” — located in the center of town — the perfect choice, Casals explained.

Potato farmers once tilled the fertile land on Old Cutler Road. Now, its zoning would allow up to 480 housing units — far more development than what some residents want.

The area already has hefty traffic with a church, medical center and smattering of subdivisions in a one-mile radius. Traffic is the number one complaint from residents, Meerbott said.

Town officials imposed a six-month moratorium on development in July while they study the area’s traffic and mobility, as well as landscape standards and designs. The study was later extended until April 17, Casals said.

“Open green space is at a premium, especially in South Florida,” Meerbott said. It’s an opportunity to preserve a large chunk of the town’s natural landscape and mitigate some of the impact of sea level rise.

This way, at least part of the field, which was most recently a tree farm, will stay a large grassy field for generations of Cutler Bay residents.

“Folks thought it was courageous of the Town Council to take off the development of 480 units, as the road is already gridlocked,” Casals said.

It takes half an hour to pass through Cutler Bay when you’re sailing along at two miles per hour. Meerbott estimates that letting a developer build on the land would have added another 1,500 cars to the roads.

“We really can’t build on any more roads,” he said. “The traffic down here is at an F level.”

F level traffic means stop-and-go waves, poor travel times, low comfort and convenience, and increased accident exposure. Traffic on Old Cutler Road has historically been very congested.

For over a year, the attorneys worked closely with town officials and the private property owner, GCF Investments Inc., to finalize the land swap, which was completed Jan. 17, Casals said. Negotiations carried over to the current Town Council after an election occurred in November 2018.

The town swapped two lots for the field, valued at $17 million — the existing building, valued at $11 million, and a city-owned lot that houses a Mercedes-Benz dealership and is valued at $3 million. The city paid the $3 million difference from its reserves.

The Town Council will stay in its current quarters for now, Casals said. The city has a five-year lease that can be extended two to three years more to stay in the building until the new facility is designed and built, Casals said.

Town officials hope the sale of the building will bring in investors willing to pump money into the city, he said.

And it’s a chance for the 15-year-old city to create its own iconic structure, Casals said. It’s something that the youngest city in Miami-Dade County is missing — a Cutler Bay landmark.

“People can say, ‘Oh, let’s go to Central Park.’ ”