Developers fail to make the case for an industrial facility

The proposed South Dade Logistics District — hailed by its traders as a occupation-making savior for south Miami-Dade County — is rather damaging and unneeded industrial enhancement.

The extended-phrase well being and prosperity of south Miami-Dade County depends not only on work, but on a healthful Biscayne Bay, clean drinking water, security of the Everglades and a practical agriculture market. That’s why we’re calling on the Miami-Dade County Fee to observe staff’s recommendation and vote No on May possibly 19.

Work opportunities? Similar significant developments presently proposed or under way in South Dade — in locations in which industrial use is at the moment permitted — supply the potential for at minimum 6,400 further positions, according to the county’s professional team. In point, beforehand approved warehouse-model progress initiatives continue being mainly unbuilt, because of to waning desire. Why would the Miami-Dade County Commission transform 800 acres of successful agricultural land furnishing lengthy-expression employment in South Dade to let much more warehouses?

In its 1,400-site assessment of the venture, the county decided the investors powering this land-use change, Aligned Authentic Estate Holdings and South Dade Industrial Partners, have not substantiated their inflated work quantities, which presume a full make-out of the 800-acre website. And there is not even an precise advancement program for the bulk of the 800 acres, which the applicants do not essentially individual.

The builders argue that a new major employment centre to bring in careers is desperately desired for South Dade, and that there is not more than enough obtainable land in South Dade to help all those work opportunities. This is verifiably wrong. The county report concludes: “Specified that South Tier’s present-day industrial land provide at present has the ability to maintain industrial progress outside of the 12 months 2040, expanding the acreage extra than twofold . . . as proposed in the software, operates contrary to the plan objectives of prioritising the use of present websites at present inside of the [Urban Development Boundary.]

“Additionally, the software does not exhibit why available industrial parcels in the UDB are not sufficient for the proposed industrial development.”

What’s far more, regional farmers and state agricultural professionals contradict the applicant’s promises that the land is not agriculturally useful and stage out that the venture will reduce agricultural output and positions.

If this application is accepted, it will final result in a windfall for buyers — a sizeable increase in house values and far more entitlements for the use of the land. What it will not do is provide an financial boon to the region’s inhabitants. And it will come at the expenditure of county taxpayers who will be on the hook for very long-phrase routine maintenance of new public infrastructure wanted for this enormous development — which is in an space confirmed inclined to flooding.

Then there’s Biscayne Bay. The challenge would do damage to decades of arranging to shield and restore Biscayne Bay and the encompassing natural environment. The applicants’ statements that their job will safeguard the bay and connected ecosystems are absurd. They have been refuted by each and every regional, condition and federal environmental company that has reviewed its strategies.

Those people organizations, as nicely as a team of nicely-respected impartial scientific, technical and economic authorities, have created crystal clear that building an industrial facility on major of 800 acres of special farmland and open up room — strategically located for restoring freshwater flows into Biscayne Bay and its bordering wetlands — threatens to compromise ongoing Everglades restoration initiatives needed to restore the Bay. In a technical investigation, these professionals turned down the applicant’s suspect promises that an industrial facility will be much better for the bay than the recent farming uses.

County rules preclude putting new urban infrastructure on this lower-lying land that is susceptible to sea-level increase and coastal storms. The developer portrays the project’s important environmental difficulties as by some means a fiction designed by “some environmental teams.”

The truth is that the county’s environmental and scheduling workers have issued two damning studies and rebuttals of the applicant’s claims — relative to almost every aspect of the challenge. State environmental and agricultural specialists concur with these criticisms and lifted quite a few of their personal.

County commissioners ought to reject this ask for to upend longstanding guidelines essential to guarantee the foreseeable future overall health and prosperity of south Miami-Dade for a flawed land-use plan. The economic and environmental claims are vacant.

Richard Grosso is an environmental land-use attorney with 30 many years of experience in South Florida. Katy Sorenson served on the Miami-Dade County Fee, symbolizing District 8, from 1994-2010.

This tale was originally printed Could 16, 2022 3:43 PM.