Will South Florida’s sleepy ‘City of Pleasant Living’ become our latest boomtown?

Seven years ago in homey, sleepy South Miami, quirky politics and elected leaders and longtime residents leery of change combined to kill a multi-million-dollar chance to rescue the sliding fortunes of Sunset Drive, the town's signature main street.

The city commission, in a 4-1 vote, spurned a developer's plan to rebuild the failing Sunset Place mall with a high-density mix of high-rise apartments, public spaces and new shopping and dining spots. It was a decision South Miami soon came to regret.

Once a shining star in the suburban Miami firmament, South Miami's cozy and eminently walkable downtown has been paying the price ever since. Shops and restaurants around the nearly deserted mall, which one resident calls "kind of creepy," struggle to stay open amid a dispiriting landscape of vacant storefronts and scant foot traffic.

But it's a new day in South Miami, and it might just see both Sunset Place and the town's city hall complex dramatically transformed.

This month, the town of around 11,000 people and its revamped leadership embraced a pair of major, large-scale redevelopment proposals intended to put South Miami back on the map, including a plan by new owners of Sunset Place that calls for demolishing the obsolete mall and replacing it with, yes, a high-density mix of high-rise apartments, public spaces and new shopping and dining spots.

That plan, approved unanimously by the city planning board, heads to what's expected to be commission approval in October.

The second plan: A $309 million proposal to redevelop the 4.5-acre city property that's home to South Miami's decrepit, moldy city hall and police station, which sit on Sunset across U.S. 1 from the traditional downtown. City officials had been discussing the need for new public facilities since at least 2015 with no concrete action.

The commission voted unanimously on Sept. 17 to pick developer 13th Floor Investments to undertake the project, which envisions a gleaming new city hall and police precinct, a new public library and apartment buildings of between 15 and 18 stories with a total of 670 units and 28,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

A historic coral-rock building built in the 1930s as the town's community center and which now houses city offices, the Sylva Martin Building, would be renovated and once again serve as a public gathering space, maybe with a cafe, forming the centerpiece of a planned green plaza in the middle of what the developers describe as "an urban village."

The grand plans could change

City officials and the developer caution that the selection is just a first step in what is expected to be a complex negotiation to shape a final plan, which could differ significantly from the initial proposed concept. That may not happen for another year, the developer said.

But together, the transformed Sunset Place and the tentatively named Link at SoMi would bookend what elected leaders hope will be an expanded, revitalized town center worthy of the town's new forward-looking course - while at the same time helping to preserve the small-town feel of the traditional Sunset business district and the rest of South Miami, which bills itself "The City of Pleasant Living."

"We need an evolution, not a revolution," said South Miami Mayor Javier Fernandez, who is running for re-election to a second two-year term after winning office on a promise to help fix Sunset Drive and the town's governance. "Nothing that we're doing is an issue that's new under the sun. What's missing is people in the district. We have to let the town center evolve and grow with more residential."

The city hall proposal, which he has spearheaded, aims to help the town finance the new municipal building without burdening taxpayers. It would also bring in new tax revenue and enhance an area with little life in spite of its close proximity to the South Miami Metrorail Station and a major regional employer, South Miami Hospital.

"This would balance out both sides of U.S. 1 and breathe some life into that part of the corridor," Fernandez said.

To be sure, some residents have raised alarms at the considerable increases in height and density the two projects would bring to a town that's long treasured its low-scale look and feel. The Sunset Place redevelopment, for instance, would mean seven buildings rising 12 stories to as much as 33 stories at the busy corner of Red Road and U.S. 1.

That same anti-development animus led to the commission blocking the 2017 plan for the mall's partial demolition and redevelopment. The commission reversed course a little over a year later, approving a revised version of the massive proposal, but it was too late for the developers. Bleeding money as national tenants fled, and facing a depreciating asset, they sold the mall at a $45 million loss.

"They were out of their minds," said then-mayor Philip Stoddard, a vocal supporter of the Sunset Place plan, of the commission's 2017 nay vote. "That was the worst night of my mayorship."

Making things even worse for the mall and the Sunset district, Stoddard noted, was fierce competition for customers from a newly revitalized Coconut Grove and downtown Coral Gables, which ironically had been in a protracted slump while Sunset Place was drawing throngs in the early part of the 2000s.

In both places, Stoddard noted, public officials and developers made concerted and successful efforts to build dense new residential buildings abutting low-scale commercial centers like Miracle Mile and the Grove center village, while revamping commercial spaces and making streets and sidewalks more appealing and pedestrian-friendly. The same owners who unsuccessfully sought to redevelop Sunset Place managed an indisputable hit when they fully remade the Grove's once equally moribund CocoWalk.

"South Miami did not do that and we're suffering the consequences," Stoddard said. "We've got a lovely downtown. But we have a basic problem. And that is, we don't have enough boots and wallets on the street."

A changing population

Since the fateful decision, though, South Miami's demographics have been changing markedly, he said. Many older residents have sold their homes and left, replaced by younger people and families with small children who are not afraid of a little density and crave some urban amenities. Change has come to residential neighborhoods already, as modest, older homes are demolished and replaced with gleaming Modernist castles.

Home prices have as a result skyrocketed, drawing even more affluent residents to homes now worth well upwards of $1 million.

That has meant that South Miami residents are now far more receptive to the idea of redeveloping both Sunset Place and the municipal complex, said Melissa Lesniak, who has lived in South Miami and abutting, unincorporated High Pines since 2005.

"I've seen the total decline of the mall. It's definitely an eyesore," said Lesniak, who serves as a volunteer on the town's citizen budget advisory committee and now lives with her family near South Miami Park in a home they purchased in 2018. " It's getting to the point where it's kind of creepy.

"There is a lot of push and pull on change in South Miami. But people I talk to would love to see something happening there. It seems like a great idea of building up along U.S. 1 and Metrorail. I definitely think some of that higher density is good. A lot of younger people are looking for that kind of thing."

The municipal complex is also underused, Lesniak said. The public library, a branch of the sprawling Miami-Dade County library system, is old and cramped and badly in need of modernizing, she said. Few of her friends and acquaintances are even aware it's there, and instead use newly renovated public libraries in neighboring Coral Gables and Pinecrest, Lesniak said.

Built in the 1950s, the South Miami city hall and police buildings are meanwhile both badly outdated and so dilapidated they're likely unsalvageable, municipal officials concluded a decade ago. City hall was built over an underground river and is so humid as a result that managers are constantly fighting mold that has crept into the walls. There is no elevator to the second floor, which violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Moreover, Stoddard, Fernandez and developer 13th Floor agree, the way the buildings are laid out, well off Sunset Drive and surrounding by parking lots, wastes space and is uninviting to the public, creating a dead space on the town's principal corridor.

The city previously considered selling the property and erecting new municipal buildings elsewhere with the proceeds, but residents balked at the idea.

The commission, with a new pro-development majority installed by voters, elected instead to solicit proposals from developers who could put up residential and commercial construction, with revenue from the deal paying for new "state-of-the-art" public facilities, boosting municipal finances, and easing taxes on homeowners.

Two developers, including a California firm, submitted proposals, but only 13th Floor's submission met all requirements.

Grove-based 13th Floor has a significant track record on projects with local government. With partners and on its own, it has developed high-rise apartment buildings at Metrorail stations at Douglas Road and Dadeland North.

The Link at Douglas Road includes two completed towers and a Milam's supermarket, with two more towers on track to break ground early next year, said managing principal Arnaud Karsenti. The project also entailed extensive improvements to the train and bus stations.

'This is our backyard'

Karsenti and his partners grew up and live in and around South Miami and have been seeking the chance to tackle the city hall projects since the city began considering redevelopment. He said they have found a receptivity that was previously missing.

"This is our backyard," Karsenti said. "I do feel like South Miami is about to hit a major stride. South Miami is due in my opinion. The leadership has been much more progressive. It's in my opinion a much healthier governing body."

A town evaluation committee recommended the commission approve 13th Floor's selection, with several caveats outlined in an analysis.

Among other concerns, the analysis concludes that the $30 million earmarked by 13th Floor for the new city hall and police station will be insufficient to cover the cost of constructing and outfitting the new building, and that a construction timeline of 24 months seems overly optimistic.

Under the conceptual plan drawn up by 13th Floor and Corwil Architects Inc. of Coral Gables, the contemplated glass-sheathed city hall building would be placed front and center on Sunset, with a three-story tall entryway to frame and showcase the Sylva Martin building behind it."

"We thought, why don't we celebrate the city hall of South Miami instead of hiding it?" Karsenti said. "It can be a beacon for South Miami rather than an eyesore. And let's showcase the historic building as well."

The abutting Jean Willis Park could make way for one of two residential buildings, but a new plaza and green park would replace it around the historic building, to be converted by prominent preservation architect Richard Heisenbottle.

That one residential tower, an accompanying parking garage and the new public buildings would be built first, so that the city can continue operating in the existing complex. The complex would then be fully demolished to make way for a second phase of development, which includes the second tower and garage.

The county library system, which is a tenant on the city property, has also agreed to the plan, which would provide a new branch building following requirements laid out by the county.

The apartment towers will set aside 67 units as workforce housing, defined as having rents affordable to people making up to 120 percent of the county's median household income. Under current figures, that means monthly rents would range from $2,385 for one-bedroom units to $3,541 for three-bedroom apartments.

Karsenti said South Miami badly needs the apartments as home prices rise, pricing many out, including hospital workers and University of Miami employees.

"Projects like this provide a real alternative to live in this area if you can't afford a multi-million-dollar home," he said. "We would like to create an efficient, affordable place to live and give it design appeal.

The developers also say they will create a direct connection to the Underline, the 10-mile linear park and bike path that's under construction beneath the elevated Metrorail tracks that run along the municipal property's edge along U.S. 1.

Both Fernandez and Commissioner Brian Corey said that's a key consideration for them.

"Of all the things we are doing in South Miami, this could end up being one of our more memorable spaces, and a lot of that is going to come from that interaction with the Underline," Corey said at the Sept. 17 hearing.

That detail is yet to come, the developers said, and will be developed fully as the plan is refined in negotiations with the city. One thing made clear at the hearing is that nothing in the developers' submission is final and much could change.

"All of this is conceptual," 13th Floor chief operating officers Rey Melendi told commissioners. "This is very preliminary, but it works."

Fernandez, in an interview after the hearing, expressed reservations about some of the financial terms and noted that the buildings could become smaller in exchange for more green space, for instance.

"I certainly am trying to calibrate," he said. "We're at step one in this process."

Karsenti said in an interview that his firm has the necessary flexibility and experience to make it work.

"You really become partners with the city," he said. "My partners are very good at finding the mousetrap that works for all parties."