Miami-Dade Approves 378-Acre Development in Everglades
Commissioners override mayor's veto of South Dade Logistics and Tech District.
Miami-Dade County has approved the South Dade Logistics and Technical District, a 378-acre megaproject that will encompass 5.9M SF of industrial, office and retail space.
County commissioners voted this week to override Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s veto of the controversial project, which is located outside of the Urban Development Boundary (UDB) of south Miami-Dade.
Cava objected to the expansion of the UDB, which was created to protect the Everglades and Biscayne Bay from industrial sprawl.
In issuing her veto earlier this month, Cava told the board that federal officials told her the project site for the South Dade Logistics and Tech District encompasses land that has been designated for environmental restoration.
The mayor released a letter from the federal Office of Everglades Restoration Initiatives which indicates that the South Dade project site infringes on three separate sites that are slated for restoration.
In a statement to the commissioners, Cava told the board their approval of the project will open a “floodgate” of development in the environmental sensitive wetlands.
“To vote for this project is to vote against the future of our Bay, our water and our people. This project will benefit the few at the expense of the many,” Cava said, in the statement.
The developers of the megaproject, Coral Gables-based Coral Rock Development and Miami-based Aligned Real Estate Holdings, countered that the site was contaminated with arsenic, which would cost the county $47M to clean up.
A revision of the UDB requires two-thirds approval by the county board, which the developers failed to get the first four times they tried this year.
Gaining the county’s blessing for the logistics and tech park required some significant concessions from the developers. The partners agreed to cut the size of the project as planned in half and donate 622 acres of environmentally sensitive land to a county preservation program.
Aligned initially proposed the South Dade project in 2020. At the time, the plan was to develop an industrial park on almost 800 acres of farmland in South Dade, along the Florida Turnpike and east of a mangrove preserve along Biscayne Bay.
The county’s approval does not mean the developers are free to break ground: Coral Rock and Aligned still need to get approval from the state.