Miami-Dade commissioner wants county to drop privatization push for Venetian Causeway
A Miami-Dade commissioner who represents Miami Beach wants the county to drop current plans to privatize the Venetian Causeway, releasing a memo saying the toll road shouldn’t be tacked on to a long-running effort to let a for-profit operator take over the busier Rickenbacker Causeway linking Miami with Key Biscayne.
“I find including the Venetian Causeway in the Toll Road [proposal] to be disingenuous, an afterthought,” Commissioner Sally Heyman, who has represented Miami Beach since 2002, wrote in a memo Friday to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “Now is the time to remove the Venetian Causeway” from the privatization proposal.
Heyman’s memo makes her the most prominent opponent so far for Levine Cava’s privatization plan, which aims to raise more than $510 million in improvements on both causeways, including replacing the 11 bridges on the Venetian and the Bear Cut Bridge on the Rickenbacker.
A for-profit company would collect toll revenue and earn profits from restaurants, shops and rentals along the county beaches off the causeways — park areas that would also be upgraded under the plan.
The privatization push for the Rickenbacker isn’t new. It’s modeled after architect Bernard Zyscovich’s “Plan Z,” which would use private dollars to transform the popular cycling route into a safer, modernized recreational area and fund a replacement for Bear Cut, which underwent emergency repairs in 2014.
Zyscovich’s plan gained some momentum under the previous mayor, Carlos Gimenez, but it remained on the shelf through the November election, when Levine Cava took office.
Zyscovich’s development group, including a private equity firm and former Miami-Dade parks chief Jack Kardys, submitted a privatization proposal in March that included his Plan Z concept for the Rickenbacker and a new concept: turn the Venetian over to the same operator for several decades to fund improvements there, too.
The Venetian addition drew quick opposition from property owners along the residential thoroughfare linking Miami with a string of Miami Beach harbor islands north of the MacArthur Causeway.
They pointed to Florida being at the tail end of a study that began seven years ago to study replacing the bridges, and questioned why Miami-Dade was rushing to launch a new process that would be tied to another set of bridges elsewhere.
Dan Gelber, Miami Beach’s mayor, said Friday that the Venetian privatization plan took him by surprise. He was supportive of Heyman’s objections.
“I know virtually nothing about it [and] heard about it well after the fact, and for that reason tend to agree with her concerns” he said.
In a statement, Levine Cava’s office didn’t respond to Heyman’s criticism beyond stating the Florida Transportation Department’s study of the Venetian “will be taken under consideration” as the administration finishes the request for proposals that would officially kick off the bidding process.
“Venetian residents and businesses can be assured that they will be heard, as we consider all the options available during this process,” the statement read.
This story was originally published August 13, 2021 at 7:56 PM.