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February 9, 2010 |
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| August 01, 2008 |
By: Paola Iuspa-Abbott |
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he marine industry seems to be perpetually fighting for survival on the Miami River.
First came the city of Miami’s illegal rezoning of marinas to make room for high-rise condominiums during a recent housing boom. Then there was the city’s unsuccessful effort to change the document that governs development to encourage mixed-used projects along the river, rather than marine-related uses.
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Now, Miami’s overhaul of its zoning code promises to spark new clashes.
The city wants to limit the hours of operation of cargo cranes, restrict how high cargo can be stacked and put into place new setback standards that would force marine businesses to operate with less space if they need to rebuild their current facilities.
Operators of shipping terminals, container yards, boatyards and marinas on the Miami River say they generate thousands of jobs and pour millions of dollars into the economy. Yet, they complain, their businesses continue to be targeted by the city.
“They don’t care about the jobs we create,” said Fran Bohnsack, executive director of the Miami River Marine Group, a maritime industry trade association. “They view the river as a place for waterfront residential high-rises. We don’t relish this fighting, but we have to protect the marine industry.”
Luciana L. Gonzalez, assistant to the director of the city’s Planning Department, said the city welcomes the jobs and is committed to preserving the marine industry.
“The city’s intent is to have marine-related uses co-exist with other commercial and residential uses,” she wrote in an
e-mail. “We feel that this flexibility is the best tool for the economic development of the Miami River.”
The city is working on a new zoning code, dubbed Miami 21, that would shape development for decades. It wants to condense more than 1,000 residential, commercial and industrial uses into about 380, said Ernest Martin, a member of the city’s Planning Advisory Board who also sits on the Miami River Commission.
To help achieve that goal, the city is proposing to eliminate the waterfront industrial category, known as SD4, and replace it with categories D1 and D2.
The D1 designation would allow a residential unit per lot or nine units per acre. The D2 category would accommodate heavy industrial uses and would not permit residential uses.
The problem: Rules that would make sense in non-waterfront industrial neighborhoods such as Wynwood and Park West could hamper the operation of a shipping terminal and container yard, said Richard Dubin, president of Caribbean Ship Services on the Miami River.
“Operations with container yards work 24 hours,” Dubin said on a recent afternoon as he supervised the unloading of second-hand clothes, shoes, mattresses, tires and bicycles from a truck. All were destined to be loaded onto a cargo vessel and sent to Haiti.
“They have a crane operator and a truck to pick up the containers and put them on a boat.”
The proposed Miami 21’s industrial designation would limit crane operation from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., instead of the 24-hour operation now used, according to the Miami River Commission, a clearinghouse for public policy and projects related to the Miami River.
That timetable doesn’t take into account tide schedules and weather conditions that could impact the departure and arrival times of ships, said Dubin, president of the Miami River Marine Group, a cooperative of cargo carriers and marine-related business.
When dealing with perishables, the ability to move cargo quickly is critical, Bohnsack added.
The proposed zoning would also limit to three the number of cargo containers that can be stacked on top of each other. The current zoning code allows four, according to the Miami River Commission. That height reduction would hurt marine operators with limited space.
“If you need to lay one on the floor, you need more space to do the same work,” Dubin said.
And space is a premium for many businesses along the river. Many operate on narrow lots along the water’s edge. The new zoning designation could worsen the situation because the proposed code requires future buildings on the river to have 20-foot setbacks from a property line. That could eat up a significant portion of the work space if an existing building needs to be torn down and built under the Miami 21 code.
The Miami River Commission recently sent a letter to the city’s planning director asking to exempt properties on the Miami River from the setback requirements. Instead, it proposed expanding a formula that provides setbacks equal to 25 percent of the parcel’s width if the site is less than 200 feet wide.
In the last few weeks, the city considered creating an industrial designation to meet the needs of the marine industry. It temporarily created a D3 to assume all the uses on the current SD4. But Gonzalez of the Planning Department said the D3 will most likely go away when the final Miami 21 is presented to the city commission.
“The D3 classification is still under discussion and was only being considered as a possible classification for marine-related industrial uses,” she said. “However, these properties may be classified as D2 in the final review.”
The city plans to go before the Miami River Commission on Aug. 25 to present the proposed zoning. Miami 21 could go before the Planning Advisory Board in October, then to the City Commission for final consideration.
Bohnsack, Dubin and other members of the marine industry vowed to lobby to keep the current zoning on the river. In the last few years, marine interests have pooled resources and organized a successful opposition front.
Last year, the 3rd District Court of Appeal sided with the industry and ruled against city-approved high-rises on the river in three different cases. The high court said the city’s “piecemeal, haphazard” approach to rezoning waterfront property along the Miami River violated the Miami Comprehensive Neighborhood Plan, the city’s blueprint for future development.
This year, the city tried to amend its Comprehensive Neighborhood Plan to allow more residential projects on the river but the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which regulates growth, objected. The state said the city’s proposed amendment violated Miami’s own land-use laws that call for protecting the marine industry, which contributes close to $466 million to Miami’s economy and creates more than 4,000 jobs.
“The city tries to force its will on the marine industry, and we seem to win all the time,” Bohnsack said.
Paola Iuspa-Abbott can be reached at (305) 347-6657.
Richard Dubin photo by Paola Iuspa-Abbott
Reader's comments
Vexed Taxpayer said:You should provide information on how Miami 21 will make many currently legal structures "non-conforming" and hence illegal. And you should write about how Miami 21 will make many marine oriented lots "non-conforming" and hence illegal. This is a huge potential problem with the Miami 21 scheme. Aug. 1 at 1:40 p.m. |
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