MIAMI – Under construction in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood is a new school site and workforce housing that Miami-Dade County Public Schools hopes will be a model for all future redevelopment projects.
“What you are looking at here is a very unique collaboration between Miami-Dade County, public housing and community development, and the school district,” said Raul Perez, the chief facilities, design and construction officer for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. “They had this particular piece of property, allowing us to build the expansion of middle school grades 6-8 of Southside Preparatory Academy, along with workforce housing.”
The aim of the multi-million dollar school expansion and housing for educators project is to tackle three issues at the same time: a teacher shortage, the need for more school seats and access to workforce housing.
Local 10 News’ Christina Vazquez went on a hard hat tour of the site on Monday and heard from Perez on several topics.
Perez on school enrollment: “This will open additional enrollment at Southside for the entire school since middle school grades here, opening 6-8 here, and now-former K-8 campus, just elementary opening seats there, a critical expansion need for families in area.”
Student areas: “This the dining room area and if you look back there, it looks like large stairs, it is for students to meet and collaborate and work together — like a coffee shop — an innovative idea we started bringing to high schools and now bringing to middle schools. The media center is on the third floor overlooking the dining area.
“Each floor features classrooms with natural light filtering through windows with spectacular views. The corner is the “lantern” corner window architecture design element that will be visible from I-95.
“The facility is seven stories. The PE area is on the rooftop, to include a basketball court, weight room, dance room, lockers and a running track. This is a district first. Most of our schools are one to three stories. This is the first school we ever built in an urban setting where need to build up.”
Residential areas: “On the second and the third floor, those are the residential units. Roughly 600 square feet, one-bedroom apartments and above that you have the school itself. They have separate entrances.”
Vazquez asked Perez, “Is that the idea that those who live here work for the district?”
“Yes, it’s part of recruitment and retention for our employees, especially our teachers,” he said. “As you know, there’s a teacher shortage nationwide, and the South Florida real estate rental market is extremely expensive, and so this is a unique way in allowing some of our employees an opportunity, especially our new incoming employees, to come into one of these units and others in the future and get started.”
Future plans: “In the future, we have a property, a school at the border of Overtown and Wynwood, Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, and so that one is going to be redeveloped and there is going to be workforce housing, much larger than what we have here, along with a brand new redeveloped school.”
“We are the largest landowner in the county, we are working with other municipalities, public-public partnerships, public-private partnerships, to see how we can bring this type of model to those cities.”
Statement from Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins:
“Miami-Dade’s collaboration with Miami-Dade Public Schools is not only important for our community, it’s recognized nationally as an innovative approach to addressing multiple community needs in a comprehensive manner.
“Brickell is a growing neighborhood where we don’t have enough school seats for all the young families that now live there. We also know we need more teacher housing, more affordable housing, and more workforce housing. This project is using one piece of County-owned land to address all four of these issues. It’s even better because the hundreds of new housing units are located within walking distance to Metrorail and Metromover, saving families the expenses of owning a car.”
According to Higgins, the tower will have 465 units, 45% of which will be affordable housing or workforce priced units.
The building’s parking will be shared by the school and the tower units.
For more information on the project and to view renderings, check out the PDF below or visit the district’s website.