Opinion: Don’t Let City Officials Surrender the Upzoning Battle

Proposed changes to Miami’s zoning code – which city commissioner will vote on Thursday – could add thousands of residents, and their cars, to Coconut Grove’s increasingly crowded neighborhoods and streets.

Editor’s Note: Andy Parrish is a longtime resident of Coconut Grove, a neighborhood activist, and a former member of Miami’s Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board. He wrote this opinion piece for the Spotlight.

Buckle up your seatbelts. The neighborhood you save might just be your own.

The June 18th Planning Zoning and Appeals Board (PZAB) meeting was both enlightening and discouraging. Item 15 on the Board’s agenda — nine small-type pages long — stated “Height shall be permitted in accordance with the T6-12-O Transect” with bonus height allowed. That means buildings of 12 stories and up could be constructed within 1 mile of Metrorail Stations in 4 “nodes” ranging in density from 150 units per acre up to 500 units per acre. City staff recommended approval.

Item 15 passed on a 6-3 vote after the only five members of the public there all spoke against it. The Board recommended to the City Commission that height be limited to eight stories if the development site is farther than ½ mile from the station, and only after the issuance of an “exception” as set forth in the Miami 21 zoning code.

First, it should be noted that this complicated proposed legislation is coming at us fast and furious. Ordinary citizens have little time to digest its potential impact and to share their thoughts with public officials. Second, in the words of one PZAB member, the Board was being asked to vote on “the lesser of two evils”, in what that member called a “competition” between the County’s Rapid Transit Zone (RTZ) zoning that allows even higher buildings to intrude into residential neighborhoods, and this Item 15 crafted to entice developers to choose “node” upzoning over RTZ zoning in exchange for possibly more expeditious permitting with negotiable “public benefits.”

How did we get to this discouraging point? The Miami 21 Code, passed over two decades ago, was designed around Miami’s dozen “Transects” ranging in function and density — from low-density, primarily residential areas to high density mixed-use. The fundamental key to this Transect design structure are the “successional” zoning rules protecting two and three-story neighborhoods from having even five-story buildings immediately adjacent to them. Deviations from these rules were supposed to be few and far between, with up-zonings to be implemented neighborhood-by-neighborhood after careful bi-annual reviews by the city. When those reviews never happened, the successional rules were gradually eroded on a case-by-case basis throughout the City in what some urban planners — and affected neighbors — would say amounted to “spot zoning.”

Then COVID 19 hit, and thousands of new residents came to live in Florida and in Miami-Dade County. Suddenly, there was urgency about an “affordable housing crisis” that had been brewing for years. The state passed the “Live Local” Act preempting local zoning laws. Miami-Dade County dusted off its RTZ zoning law passed in 2016, and up popped new high-rises along the Metrorail like the 37-story one at Douglas Road and U.S. 1. The city, after a last-minute mysterious amendment, created a brand new zoning category out of thin air called “Enhanced T5” allowing eight stories where five was the maximum before. And now the county has decided to expand the RTZ tentacles up to 1 mile on either side of Metrorail, excluding only T3-zoned residential neighborhoods but with no separation required. You could have a 12-story building immediately next to a single-family home.

What is the overall message here? It’s that the county and state have determined to “solve” the affordable housing crisis with high-rise apartment buildings while ignoring all other possible alternatives — alternatives that other cities are trying.  “High-rise-only” ignores the impact these structures will have on Miami’s diverse single-family and duplex neighborhoods that comprise over 70% of the city’s area. And never mind the increasing traffic and burden on infrastructure, schools and the environment.

As for our Magic City’s response? It’s “We surrender. What can Miami do against the twin Goliaths of county and state?”

This writer’s answer to the city: Get a backbone. Stand up for your residents even if you lose eventually in court. Let the state and particularly the county hear that Miami’s residents will not let their neighborhoods be destroyed by incompatible high-rise development conflicting with Miami 21’s Article 2.1.2.a. stated intent: “Improving the relationship between low Density Residential neighborhoods and adjacent Commercial Corridors with appropriate transitions of Density and Height following the theory of the Transect.”