A developer is planning to build a second high-rise tower with an additional 402 apartments in the West Grove, in partnership with Miami-Dade County on public land at the intersection of Douglas Road and South Dixie Highway.
Related Urban Development Group wants to supersize a previously approved public-private housing project on Douglas Road in Coconut Grove by adding a second high-rise tower with 402 apartments to the development mix.
The new tower would rise 25 stories and border South Dixie Highway, joining a previously announced 22-story tower at Douglas Road and Day Avenue, directly across the street from the neighborhood’s ALDI grocery store.
The expanded development would have 818 living units, including an undisclosed number of subsidized apartments (workforce or affordable), 811 parking spaces including a five-story parking garage, and a new public library, according to project plans submitted to Miami-Dade County for review.
It’s unclear whether the revised plans will require a second approval by the Miami-Dade County Commission, or whether Related Urban plans to take advantage of the developer-friendly Live Local Act to build one or both towers.
The plans submitted to the county reference Florida’s controversial Live Local Act, which preempts local zoning, but don’t make the developer’s intentions clear. Miami-Dade County officials didn’t respond Monday to a request for clarification.
Last year, the County Commission approved a previous proposal from Related Urban to replace three stories of senior housing on county-owned land with a 20-story apartment tower called Gallery in the Grove.
Read more: Highrise Housing Coming to the West Grove
That $148-million project – controversial in its own right – would have added 345 new apartments to the neighborhood, including 173 apartments priced below market for low- and moderate-income families and seniors.
Under the latest plans, that tower would rise 22 stories with 348 apartments, 374 parking spaces, and a 7,650-square-foot public library fronting on Douglas Road.
The new plans effectively double the size of the project by adding the second tower and a parking garage on South Dixie Highway, diagonally across the street from the Douglas Road Metrorail Station where a new apartment tower is under construction.
Altogether, the county is seeking to redevelop nine low-rise housing properties along Douglas Road in the West Grove. To accomplish that, the county issued a request-for-proposal (RFP) in 2023 inviting developers to build mixed-income housing on county-owned land.
The process culminated last year with the approval of two projects – the Gallery in the Grove project proposed by Related Urban, and a second project – Eviva by Integral Florida – with 450 apartments on Douglas Road between Oak and Day Avenues.
Read more: Second Highrise Tower Approved for West Grove
The two projects are part of an ambitious effort by the county to encourage more high-rise development on public land near Metrorail stations, in part by relaxing zoning restrictions.
Both projects were approved with the county’s new RTZ zoning that allows developers to pack more housing into taller buildings in rapid transit zones.
No thought is given to how these huge buildings are out of character and scale with the surrounding area, nor how all this density will further harm the public with more traffic congestion and burden critical infrastructure like potable water supply, sewage treatment capacity, garbage disposal capacity, park space per capita and hurricane evacuation time.
“Affordable” and “workforce” housing are used as political camouflage so our elected officials can give more building capacity to the developers that make campaign contributions.
Politicians place the public’s quality of life at a lower value than enabling developers’ profits.
This is another example of how we have government of developers, for developers, by developers.
The Live Local Act was sponsored by Vicki Lopez and Alexis Calatayud. Both are up for re-election. Please vote them out. Please help spread the word to vote for Rob Piper and Richard Lamondin instead.
I couldn’t help notice the massive cube shaped similarity to that of the Borg Starship, featured in several Star Trek episodes, along with their menacing threats “Resistance is futile” and “You will be assimilated”.
Yes! That’s exactly what I thought. You will be assimilated.
All the charm and character of a NY tenement. A 12 year old with a Lego set could have come up with a better design.
Looks great! Glad to see some high density housing finally being built near the Grove! For too long we have been pushing people out to “preserve character ans home prices.” Let’s all be real this isn’t infringing on anyone’s make believe neighborhood character, it’s adjacent to US1 and a Westar. Everyone needs to get over themselves and embracing building housing for the next generation.
Please know the City of Miami is already zoned to allow the construction of 8 times more housing units than were counted in the 2010 census. That means our population could be made 8 times larger than it is now, BEFORE any up-zonings and RTZ zonings like this project.
Are you embracing infinite growth? Are you also embracing traffic congestion?
I’m guessing the developer is using RTZ zoning approval…Maybe it’s time to sunset that mechanism, which in addition to Live Local state legislation, takes zoning power away from the City. And that violates a very important principle of democratic government, called the principle of “subsidiarity,” or letting those affected by a governmental decision be the ones who have the authority to make it….
Xavier
In order to reduce traffic, the municipalities should mandate that no parking be provided. That will promote greater use of Metrorail, Trolley’s, car sharing services and The Underline. After all, isn’t that what the these out of scale developments are supposed to justify!
What defines “low to moderate income”? What defines “subsidized housing”? And “below market value” in Coconut Grove means what, exactly? These are important, but as far as I can tell, undefined or unannounced, details that will tell us if these projects are sincere efforts to help the less fortunate, or yet another unforgivable hustle by developers with the unholy approval of our elected officials, at least three of whom were elected to support quality of life and stop these swindles.
And then there’s the traffic…