A lawsuit opposing a gas station and convenience store where Grand Avenue meets U S. 1 has been withdrawn, but plans for the affordable housing many envisioned are far from certain.
Nearly three years after a judge torpedoed plans for a Wawa gas station
on a long-vacant parcel in the West Grove once slated for affordable housing, plans for the site remain very much uncertain.
No recent building plans or permit applications have been filed for the 1.4-acre parcel at the corner of Grand Avenue and U.S. 1 in the Coral Gables section of the Grove.
Representatives of the ownership group controlling the property declined to answer questions from the Spotlight.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have anything to add that hasn’t already been reported,” said Debra Sinkle Kolsky, president of Redevco Management, which along with the Lola B. Walker Homeowners Association, has launched a for-profit venture to develop the site.
Lola B. Walker members Judith Davis and Clarice Cooper, also declined comment, saying the recent passing of board member Leona Cooper Baker adds to the uncertainty of plans for the parcel, which sits across from George Washington Carver Elementary and Middle Schools.
The board is expected to take up the matter at its next meeting sometime in January Cooper said. In its 2021 tax filing — the most recent available — the foundation set up by the association to manage the development venture shows it nearly $650,000 in the red.
The high visibility tract of land – a western gateway to Coconut Grove – is now in its third decade of development fits and starts. Deeded by Miami-Dade County to Lola B. Walker HOA for $10 in 2003 on the promise it be used for housing and other uses that “benefit the community” the land has sat largely untouched as neighborhood leaders and Redevco reviewed development options.
But these plans came to a screeching halt when word leaked of a plan to lease the property to Wawa, which critics claimed was incompatible with area needs and which posed a traffic and safety risk for the adjacent schools and Armbrister Park.
In 2020 a group of local residents and school parents, operating as the Gables Accountability Project, or GAP, sued the City of Coral Gables to halt the plan, arguing that it violated its own zoning rules and public notice requirements while approving the project.
“Everything they were doing was wrong and they wanted to do it in secret,” the group’s attorney, David Winker, told the Spotlight.
In January 2022, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman ruled that the city’s approval process for the Wawa project was “blatantly illegal.” Shortly thereafter – with other aspects of the lawsuit still pending — Wawa withdrew from its lease agreement.
Last May GAP withdrew its lawsuit entirely, as a means of helping to attract other investors or development partners to the site.
“We decided as a group that we were going to drop the lawsuit,” said Estelle Lockhart, a key GAP organizer and former Carver PTA president. “It was just getting dragged out and we had clearly accomplished our aims.”
The name chosen for the for-profit venture created in 2007 by Lola B. Walker and Redevco to develop the parcel – Bahamian Village LLC – gives hope to some residents that much-needed housing might one day rise from the site, in keeping with its the county’s early vision.
The site also has been mentioned as a possible location of the Bahamian Museum of Arts and Culture, a controversial initiative of U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson. A 2,900-square-foot building constructed in 2017 by Redevco included a room for a community center but that space is now closed for public use.
The land is valued at just over $12 million.
City of Coral Gables officials, including Mayor Vince Lago and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson, did not respond to the Spotlight’s request for comment.
With the lawsuit behind them, GAP’s Lockhart remains hopeful that a development proposal will be brought forward that the community can rally around.
“I think everybody is just trying to do the best that they can, with what they’ve been given,” Lockhart said. “If we can all keep that in mind, something good will come there, and we’re just looking forward to that happening.”
The Bahamian Museum of Arts and Culture, because of parking requirements, would take up the whole Redeco/Lola B. Walker site. Instead, there’s an ideal location on the Charles Avenue/Evangelist Street side of the Coconut Grove Playhouse. There’s enough vacant land there, owned by the State of Florida and leased to the County.
The Museum’s addition there would finally break the two-decade Playhouse grid-lock. How? Because all of the County and City elected officials would line up behind Congresswoman Wilson’s initiative, build the much needed parking garage, figure out how many seats for the Playhouse, all while finally doing something right for the adjacent West Grove/Little Bahamas neighbors who for at least half a century were separated by a barbed wire fence from the “White Grove’s” Playhouse.