One fell asleep. Another logged off. But commissioners approved Intracoastal Mall project.
A proposed massive redevelopment of the Intracoastal Mall was approved by the North Miami Beach City Commission in a marathon and sometimes fiery hearing that ran more than eight hours into early Wednesday morning.
The public meeting, which began at 6 p.m. Tuesday, focused on two ordinances. The first was the master plan for Uptown Harbour, a giant mixed-use project that would bring more than 3,000 condos and apartments, 575,000 square feet of office and retail space, and a 100-foot-wide canal to the outdoor mall site at 3861 NE 163rd St., on the Sunny Isles Causeway.
The second ordinance was to grant developer Dezer Development 30-year land rights for the 30-acre property, since the project could take up to 20 years to complete.
The ordinances were approved by votes of 4-3 and 3-2, respectively. The votes were both second readings, which finalized preliminary votes taken at a meeting last month.
The reason for the discrepancy in the voting totals: The virtual meeting ran so late that one commissioner went to bed and another fell asleep before the second vote.
“You can’t have a meeting as important as this one that goes on until 3 o’clock in the morning,” said Commissioner Phyllis Smith, who voted no on the first ordinance. “I agreed to go until 1 a.m. Then I left the meeting and I will regret that for the rest of my life. But these meetings are supposed to be available to the public, and most people have to work the next morning.”
Smith said a humiliating conversation with Mayor Anthony DeFillipo, who shouted her down during an exchange, also contributed to her decision to leave the meeting early. “Mute her right now! Mute her right now! That’s enough!” the mayor yelled when the commissioner suggested she was unable to get answers about the project from city staff.
DeFillipo told the Miami Herald he was also upset that Smith brought up a 2018 article in the Miami New Times that ranked North Miami Beach the second-most corrupt city in Miami-Dade. Earlier in the evening, a member of the public — the husband of Commissioner Fortuna Smukler — also brought up the article. DeFillipo said he had the comment stricken from the record.
“We have not had any problems in North Miami Beach for the past two years,” said DeFillipo, who was elected in 2018 and is facing a challenger in the Nov. 3 election. “I’m not gonna allow, as the chair of that meeting, for [Smith] or anybody else to continue bringing that up without it being a fact-based statement.”
The midnight hour
Commissioner Paule Villard, who voted yes on the first ordinance, said the meeting stretched on so long she fell asleep and woke up after the second vote had been taken.
“I was sitting right at my desk and I just passed out,” Villard said. “To tell you the truth, I was feeling really sick yesterday. I wasn’t going to attend the meeting, but I knew how important it was. I thought it was going to finish early but I couldn’t do it any more.”
Villard turned off her camera about an hour before the second vote was taken. The city clerk said she tried to contact Villard but couldn’t reach her. City Attorney Dan Espino said it was the virtual equivalent of a commissioner leaving the dais during an in-person meeting, and that the vote could go on without her.
With Villard and Smith absent, the commission still had the five votes it needed for a quorum.
The two approvals mean Dezer Development can proceed with the controversial project, which has residents of the nearby Eastern Shores neighborhood worried about the excess traffic the development will bring to the area. Eastern Shores is only accessible by one road, Northeast 35th Avenue, which the developers plan to expand and use as an entryway to the mammoth project.
The existing mall now houses an iPic movie theater, T.J. Maxx, Winn-Dixie and Old Navy stores, among smaller businesses.
“The commission’s approval of Uptown Harbour marks a significant milestone for the development,” said Gil Dezer, owner and president of Dezer Development, in a statement to the Herald. “We’re grateful for the city’s support throughout this process and look forward to continued cooperation as we embark on this landmark project.
“Our development and design teams have created a remarkable vision of reimagined waterfront, and now we get to turn that vision into a neighborhood for the city and its residents and visitors to enjoy for generations to come,” said Dezer, whose firm is overseeing the project and previously developed the Porsche Design Tower and Residences by Armani/Casa in Sunny Isles Beach.
What’s next
The next step for the project will be approval by the Florida Department of Transportation, which will determine whether the 35th Avenue expansion and a left turn signal on eastbound Northeast 163rd Street that would lead drivers onto NE 36th Avenue would satisfy the city’s legal requirements.
The project is still subject to approval from various Miami-Dade building agencies.
In 2015, North Miami Beach adjusted its zoning ordinance to allow for denser, taller construction. But the ordinance also states a redevelopment of the Intracoastal Mall area would need to provide “multiple access points” to and from State Road 826 (NE 163rd St.) so as to not overburden NE 35th Avenue.
“City staff failed the majority of the residents of Eastern Shores miserably,” said Commissioner Barbara Kramer, who voted against both ordinances.
Smukler said roughly 140 people showed up to speak at the meeting, most of them opposed to the use of 36th Avenue as an access point. She said commissioners also received a petition with 600 signatures on it.
“I voted no for two reasons,” she said. ”First, the city has not held a workshop to educate the commissioners on the project. This is the same city that holds a workshop to decide which toilet paper to use. The second reason is that the developer is not meeting the requirement to provide multiple egress and ingress points so as to not overburden Northeast 35th Avenue.”
Smukler said commissioners were given a 1,500-page agenda a few days prior to the first reading on Sept. 24 that had no indexes or dividers. On Tuesday, just 15 minutes before the meeting, she received updates to the master plan and add-ons to the land agreement she had no time to read.
“I love Gil Dezer and I think it’s wonderful he is developing a project like this one in our city,” Commissioner Smith said. “But if you signed an agreement to do something and now you realize that’s not possible, you have to go back to the drawing board.”
This story was originally published October 21, 2020 at 2:14 PM.
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