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Desperate Developers

Wakefield

Desperate Developers

Scenes From a Miami Zoning Hearing in Which a Proposal to Build Three Towers Near Vizcaya Sure Did Inspire a Lot of Talk

Battleground Mercy Hospital.

By Rebecca Wakefield The Miami Herald’s Mike Vasquez is quite the trooper. This past Tuesday, Vasquez, all cherub cheeks and hair gel, sat gamely through nine hours of a hearing at Miami City Hall at which nothing happened.
	Battleground Mercy Hospital.

The matter up for consideration was whether to allow the Related Group and its affiliates to build three very tall luxury condo towers next to Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove.

Related Group chairman/CEO Jorge Perez, looking very moguly in his tailored suit and orange power tie, sat patiently, but with growing annoyance, in the third row. The dozen or so highly paid minions (plus maybe another dozen employees) arguing his case before the commission occasionally dropped back a few paces to kneel at his side and whisper reassurances.

After about three or four hours, my brain began to bleed and I was unable to absorb any more nonsense.

Led by the impressive and ubiquitous Greenberg Traurig development attorney Lucia Dougherty, Team Related made a hell of a pitch, with renderings, artistic theories on traffic, experts galore, and the distracting sight of a deeply tanned young assistant of some sort in a tight leather skirt and pearl-colored satin top who looked like she was on loan from the set of Desperate Housewives. It was just perfect.

I’ve always thought that someone should make a reality series out of the Related Group — something that has the dramatic pace of a doctor, lawyer, or cop show, but that captures the craziness of the boom and bust development cycles, the insane amounts of money, the political deal-making, and the attendant personality disorders that go along with it all. Now that’s Miami, way more than homicide detectives, models or tattoo artists.

Anyway, in the audience, besides Mercy Hospital president and CEO John Matuska and other Mercy employees, there were a group of mostly elderly or infirm people in yellow T-shirts with slogans such as “Yes Grove Bay, Improve Mercy” and “Control Growth, Minimize Traffic.”

Lobbyist Rosario Kennedy walked around making sure all the yellow T-shirts had signed up to speak. Around dinnertime, when it became clear the public would not be speaking for quite a while, a Mercy van came around to the front of City Hall and picked up most of this group, hopefully to feed them.

On the other side of the philosophical divide, there was a brief union of wealthy and generally content Miamians with the often discontented activists who tend to disapprove of much of the development that has assailed them in recent years.

Well-coifed women with chunky, expensive necklaces and sweater sets perched attentively on their chairs, a tasteful pale blue sticker above their hearts exhorting the commission to “Support Vizcaya.” This was the issue that had joined the two groups to oppose the luxury development.

I’ve always thought that someone should make a reality series out of the Related Group.

Normally, this crowd might be on the other side because Mercy Hospital officials say the $96 million sale of its property to the developer will allow it to renovate aging facilities. But Vizcaya, the beautiful, historic estate of former industrialist James Deering, is a national treasure. The board of Vizcaya believes that these towers (even after Perez offered to shave off a few stories) would spoil the natural beauty of the place by essentially having glass and steel eyesores rising from just beyond the gardens.

Other opponents are afraid that if the city allows the government/institutional land use of the Mercy property to be rezoned for high-density residential development, it will trigger the Brickellization of the Grove. Still others just don’t like the idea of yet another high-rise for the idle rich stealing the sunlight and jacking up their property taxes.

After about three or four hours, my brain began to bleed and I was unable to absorb any more nonsense. Clearly Commissioners Marc Sarnoff and Tomas Regalado were going to vote no. Most likely Angel Gonzalez and Michelle Spence-Jones would vote yes. Probably Joe Sanchez was the swing vote. Could we not settle this with a yacht race? A poker game? Donate one of the cheaper units ($3 million) to house the poor?

I started roaming the halls and picking up random snippets of conversation. Attorneys for Related were griping about Sarnoff’s extensive grilling of their experts. “Oh he’s biased,” muttered one. “He’s lost it.”

“God, these are all tricks he’s pulling,” complained another. “He knows better than this.”

“Let’s get everyone liquored!” joked one woman (nearly the only sensible thing I heard the whole time).

Jack Luft, a former city planner brought in to argue the finer points of city zoning codes, fumed after his turn on the coals. “People love to say ‘Hell with the law, I have a different opinion,’” he told a colleague. “If this goes to court, and it probably will, I will hammer this point.”

Down the hall, Jorge Perez told Channel 10 reporter Glenna Milberg that his project was not going to be disruptive to the neighborhood. “You always have some naysayers and that’s what we have,” he opined.

Regalado quipped to me in passing that the last time the commission heard this issue, it seemed to be all about health care. This time it was all about Vizcaya. He grinned, impishly.

The Herald’s Vasquez wandered over to Israel Kreps, an amiable public relations rep for Mercy Hospital, and asked him how long he thought the meeting would last. Kreps shrugged helplessly.

“I thought it might be over by 6,” Vasquez said, a little sadly. “I’m always optimistic and I’m always wrong.”

Boy, was he wrong. By about five hours.

Around the corner, a lawyer remarked to a colleague that “everyone wants development, but no one wants to die,” which seemed to me, at the end of the affair, the perfect assessment of Commissioner Sanchez’s state of mind when he convinced the rest of the commission to defer a decision until he’d had time to study the issue.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com

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