MIAMI – A major project designed to help ease congestion is now open in Miami.
It’s the first of its kind and could be the future of housing.
The project, which is actually two projects, is where Coral Gables meets Coconut Grove at the Douglas Road Metrorail station along U.S. 1.
The projects exemplify the county’s plan to encourage density along the county’s transit corridor.
The shimmering 10th floor pool deck of Cascade is part of phase one of a public-private partnership with 13th Floor Investments and Adler Group.
The sound of Metrorail trains rumbling by represents a shift toward transit-oriented development in the county.
“We need to get people out of their cars,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “This is really part of our public policy for Miami-Dade County.”
Added Miami-Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado: “It reminds us that we have all these options, scooters, bicycles, trollies, buses, it’s the Metrorail.”
Said Arnaud Karsenti, Managing Principal for 13th Floor Investments: “For Miami-Dade, it is quite new. There has been other developments around transit but nothing quite to this scale where we are literally building on top of a Metrorail station and literally building entirely around it, and we are incorporating all that transit in the project so here you have Metrorail, bus, you have trolley, not the underline, and of course all of the Uber and Lyft drop-offs. If you include pedestrian and bike transportation, you have six modes of transportation all coming.”
“We want to encourage density along transit corridors,” said Levine Cava. “We can’t continue to sprawl suburbia into our protected agriculture open spaces, it is not a sustainable strategy. We need to rely on public transit, we need to get people to build and live along public transit.”
On county-owned land, as part of the lease agreement, the developer is spending $17 million to improve public facilities, including a public plaza and train station beautification.
“A portion of all the rents that are collected in revenue goes back to Miami-Dade County, also back to the taxpayers,” added Karsenti.
When the project is complete, a spokesperson for the developer said upwards of 15 percent of all units will be workforce housing.
And on the west Coconut Grove side of U.S. 1, another public-private high-density development is rising. That developer said 40% of units there will be affordable.
Taken together, the developments, connected by the Douglas Road Metrorail station, are an example of the county’s strategy to address the affordable housing crisis and incentivize private investment in public infrastructure improvements while testing the idea of easing traffic congestion by getting residents off the road and onto public transportation.
“This is really part of our public policy for Miami-Dade County,” said Levine Cava.
Added Karsenti: Shifting the paradigm from a car-centric way of living to more of a public transportation way of living.”
Local 10 News did ask the mayor about concerns from some residents that these high density projects will only add more cars to an already congested U.S. 1 given that, for most people, their entire civic and social life, such as work, school, day care or their physician, can’t be found on the extremely limited stops along the Metrorail.
“All of our bus lines are aligned to these rapid coordinators. We also are hard at work on a very improved bus system and we are gearing up with more bus operators which we need to be able to active a better bus network,” Levine Cava said.
The developer said more than half of the residents who have moved in so far do not have their own cars.
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