BAL HARBOUR, Fla. – Amid an affordability crisis in South Florida, lawyers for Bal Harbour Shops claim that officials in the posh island community are illegally trying to roadblock plans to add workforce housing to the upscale mall.
Attorneys for the upscale shopping center filed suit in Miami-Dade County court against the village of Bal Harbour on Tuesday.
The litigation claims that village leaders’ opposition to the plan violates Florida’s recently-passed Live Local Act, designed to address skyrocketing housing prices in the Sunshine State. It’s drawn the ire of some local officials in South Florida and beyond, however.
As Local 10 News reported on Jan. 10, owners Whitman Family Development would add 600 “high-end residential units,” 40% of them designated as workforce housing, under the Live Local Act, which allows developers to bypass local zoning regulations if they meet that threshold. The legislation was designed to boost Florida’s affordable housing supply.
The plan would also include a 70-room upscale hotel and 45,700 square feet of additional retail space, its news release states.
Bal Harbour village officials, including its mayor, are pushing back strongly against the proposal. Mayor Jeffrey Freimark called the proposal a “surprise attack.”
The lawsuit claims officials are adopting a “not in my backyard” — or NIMBY — stance, and violating the Live Local Act by stonewalling the plan. It could be the first suit of its kind under the law.
“Instead of properly reviewing the Application for administrative approval, the Village leadership published comments pre-judging the Application, creating their own exemptions, constraints and limitations found nowhere in the text of the Act, and communicating their position to a Building Official who is required to make decisions free of political influence,” the suit reads.
The Shops claim Freimark is attempting to nullify the law and claims the village has a long history of discriminatory zoning and housing practices.
Its lawsuit says leaders in Bal Harbour are illegally considering moratorium on development in the village, rather than complying with the law and approving the application.
Read the lawsuit:
Freimark declined to speak with Local 10 News on Wednesday, but was quite candid about the project during a village council meeting the week prior.
“Bal Harbour Shops has not only disrespected me, but everyone within Bal Harbour Village,” he said from the dais. “I am angry, both personally and on behalf of Bal Harbour Village, by what appears to be a perversion of the Live Local Act and circumvention of an executed development agreement that will cause significant damage to our community.”
Lawyers for the mall claim that the agreement, however, “expressly reserved the right to develop additional density, intensity and height on the (Bal Harbour Shops) Property if subsequently enacted laws and regulations permitted additional development capacity.”
The new project would be five times taller than what’s currently at the site and voters already shot down a referendum to increase height on the property.
At the village council meeting, Freimark claimed the Live Local Act “is designed to address affordable housing needs, not those earning six-figures or more and enriching the owners of the Bal Harbour Shops with workforce housing.”
“There is a difference,” he said.
In a statement to Local 10 News on Jan. 10, Freimark also questioned whether a barrier island is an appropriate place to site such a development and said it “will have a material, negative impact on traffic in the area, which is already very problematic.”
Attorneys for the mall say the development presents “the only prospect for affordable housing development within (Bal Harbour)” under the Live Local Act.
“The Village is home to thousands of service and hospitality workers who commute into the community every day because they cannot afford to live close by,” Bal Harbour Shops attorney John Shubin said in a statement. “By opposing the creation of attainable housing at the Bal Harbour Shops site, the Village of Bal Harbour’s leadership is undermining the spirit and letter of the Live Local Act and doing its part to ensure South Florida’s affordability crisis is here to stay.”
According to Miami-Dade court records, no hearings had been scheduled in the case as of Wednesday.