Reject industrial facility in South Miami-Dade. It needs agriculture and a healthy bay, instead | Opinion
The proposed South Dade Logistics District — hailed by its investors as a job-creating savior for south Miami-Dade County — is instead destructive and unnecessary industrial development.
The long-term health and prosperity of south Miami-Dade County depends not only on jobs, but on a healthy Biscayne Bay, clean water, protection of the Everglades and a viable agriculture industry. That’s why we’re calling on the Miami-Dade County Commission to follow staff’s recommendation and vote No on May 19.
Jobs? Similar large developments already proposed or under way in South Dade — in locations where industrial use is currently allowed — offer the potential for at least 6,400 additional jobs, according to the county’s professional staff. In fact, previously approved warehouse-style development projects remain largely unbuilt, due to waning demand. Why would the Miami-Dade County Commission convert 800 acres of productive agricultural land providing long-term jobs in South Dade to allow more warehouses?
In its 1,400-page analysis of the project, the county determined the investors behind this land-use change, Aligned Real Estate Holdings and South Dade Industrial Partners, have not substantiated their inflated jobs numbers, which assume a full build-out of the 800-acre site. And there’s not even an actual development plan for the majority of the 800 acres, which the applicants do not actually own.
The developers argue that a new major employment center to attract jobs is desperately needed for South Dade, and that there isn’t enough available land in South Dade to support those jobs. This is verifiably false. The county report concludes: “Given that South Tier’s current industrial land supply currently has the capacity to sustain industrial growth beyond the year 2040, increasing the acreage more than twofold . . . as proposed in the application, runs contrary to the policy objectives of prioritising the use of existing sites currently inside the [Urban Development Boundary.]
“Additionally, the application does not demonstrate why available industrial parcels within the UDB are not adequate for the proposed industrial development.”
What’s more, local farmers and state agricultural experts contradict the applicant’s claims that the land is not agriculturally useful and point out that the project will eliminate agricultural production and jobs.
If this application is approved, it will result in a windfall for investors — a substantial increase in property values and more entitlements for the use of the land. What it will not do is provide an economic boon to the region’s residents. And it will come at the expense of county taxpayers who will be on the hook for long-term maintenance of new public infrastructure needed for this massive development — which is in an area proven prone to flooding.
Then there’s Biscayne Bay. The project would do damage to decades of planning to protect and restore Biscayne Bay and the surrounding environment. The applicants’ claims that their project will protect the bay and related ecosystems are absurd. They have been refuted by every local, state and federal environmental agency that has reviewed its plans.
Those agencies, as well as a group of well-respected independent scientific, technical and economic experts, have made clear that building an industrial facility on top of 800 acres of unique farmland and open space — strategically located for restoring freshwater flows into Biscayne Bay and its surrounding wetlands — threatens to compromise ongoing Everglades restoration projects needed to restore the Bay. In a technical analysis, these experts rejected the applicant’s suspect claims that an industrial facility will be better for the bay than the current farming uses.
County rules preclude putting new urban infrastructure on this low-lying land that is vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal storms. The developer portrays the project’s major environmental problems as somehow a fiction created by “some environmental groups.”
The reality is that the county’s environmental and planning staff have issued two damning reports and rebuttals of the applicant’s claims — relative to almost every aspect of the project. State environmental and agricultural experts agree with those criticisms and raised many of their own.
County commissioners should reject this request to upend longstanding rules needed to ensure the future health and prosperity of south Miami-Dade for a flawed land-use scheme. The economic and environmental promises are empty.
Richard Grosso is an environmental land-use attorney with 30 years of experience in South Florida. Katy Sorenson served on the Miami-Dade County Commission, representing District 8, from 1994-2010.
