Javier Baños
Baños is the Editor of Gables Insider
Introduction/Disclaimer:
As Coral Gables endures potentially transformative urban development, this article offers an overview of the various building projects currently under the city government’s consideration. Derived from developer submissions and under the scrutiny of various boards and building authorities, the information presented here serves as a window into the evolving architectural and urban landscape of Coral Gables. It is important to note that Gables Insider maintains an objective stance, neither endorsing nor opposing any specific project detailed herein. This piece is not intended to predict the eventual realization of these proposals, as each is in a unique stage of development and subject to ongoing review and potential alterations. Our aim is to provide a clear, unbiased portrayal of the proposals as they stand, based on the latest data available from the city authorities as provided by the applicants. There are additional projects current under review, the review here is just a few of the currently pending projects.
“The Mark” located at 1250 South Dixie Highway:
The property located at 1250 S. Dixie Hwy, is the current site of the University Shopping Center. The site is approximately 3.2 acres in size and is bounded by U.S. 1, Madruga Avenue, and Mariposa Court. The fourth side abuts property owned by the University of Miami on which there is a high rise (150 ft.+) office building.
The applicant is proposing a mixed-use project that will include retail, restaurant and live work units on the ground floor and multi-family residential apartment units above. The design plans call for two mid-rise buildings housing a total of 396 units connected with a bridge at the 5th floor. The unit sizes will include 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units. Parking and building support services will all be internalized with no parking spaces visible from the exterior of buildings.
The architectural style will be Mediterranean with a landscaped public paseo approximately 19,000 sq. ft. that will separate the buildings of the ground level and provide access for the surrounding neighborhood to the pedestrian bridge over U.S. 1- accessing the University Metrorail Station and the University of Miami.
Front View provided by applicant:
730 Coral Way:
The Property is located South of Coral Way and the Granada Golf Course. The Property is comprised of a lot size consisting of approx. 15,461 square feet. The Applicant is proposing to redevelop the existing 4-story 11-unit condominium building that was originally constructed in 1986 with a new 16-story 14-unit residential project in accordance with the Property’s underlying MF4 Zoning District regulations. The new project will provide enhanced amenity space for its future residents and new landscape areas along Coral Way and throughout the Property with a ground level pedestrian and vehicular plaza.
719 Biltmore Way:
The Property is 11,981.3 square feet in size (.275 acres) and is located mid-block on the north side of Biltmore Way between Cardena Street and Anderson Road. Pursuant to the City’s Zoning Map, the Property is zoned MF4. The proposed project will consist of nine (9) residential units, 29,929 square feet of floor area, 20 parking spaces in an enclosed garage, 2,996 square feet of open space, and a roof deck with a pool area, in a 12 story building with a maximum height of 147.5 feet (the “Project”). No variances are being requested for this Project.
301 Madeira Avenue:
The proposed project referred to as “301-341 Madeira” is a multi-family project with ground floor live/work units and is located in the North Ponce area on Madeira, between Salzedo and Le Jeune Road. The property was occupied by four 1920’s apartment buildings, two mid-century apartment buildings, and vacant land. It consists of twenty-one platted lots, totaling approximately 64,474 square feet (1.43 acres). The proposed building consists of 9 live-work units on the ground level, 135 residential units on upper levels, 227 parking spaces onsite, with a 5,270 sq. ft. public park area located to the side of the building. The proposed building height is 9-stories at 100 feet. This project was already approved by the Commission.
130 Almeria Avenue:
The Property is generally located at the southeast corner of Ponce de Leon Boulevard and Almeria Avenue. The Property consists of approximately 30,767 +/- square feet or 0.706 +/- acres. The Property is currently improved with a two-story commercial building, a one story commercial building, and with surface parking facilities along Almeria Avenue, and a surface parking lot at the northwest corner of Sevilla Avenue and Galiano Street. The Applicant seeks to redevelop the Property with a 13-story mixed use project containing approximately four (4) live/work units and 122 upper-level residential units with a rooftop deck including ancillary amenity space (the “Project”). The Project has been designed to include the redevelopment of a portion of the Property (130, 152 and 160 Almeria Avenue) with ground floor, live/work units to activate the Almeria frontage with neighborhood friendly, commercial uses that complement the existing office and commercial uses along Ponce de Leon Boulevard. The proposed Project also entails the preservation of the three-story building at 2701 Ponce de Leon Boulevard and the creation of an approximately 12,500 square foot public park at 103 Sevilla Avenue. Additionally, the Project includes approximately 187 parking spaces within the proposed parking structure to serve the existing and proposed uses.
Crystal Project:
110 Phoenetia Avenue
The project is a 9-story mixed-use building consisting of 177 residential units, 16 ground floor live-work units, 5,500 square feet of educational space for the Crystal Academy, 340 internalized parking spaces and a rooftop amenities deck. Units will come in one-, two-, and three-bedroom floor plans ranging between 825 and 1,249 square feet; the duplex live-work units will span 1,468 square feet.
The development site is located in the Douglas Section of the City, positioned along East Ponce de Leon Boulevard, bound by Phoenetia Avenue on the North, Antilla Avenue on the South and Galiano Street on the East. The 1.47-acre property is comprised of 10 lots spanning approximately 64,337 square feet, currently designated for Religious/Institutional land use.
Side view of the Crystal Project:
3808-3850 SW 8th St:
The Property is located South of SW 8th Street. The Property contains approximately 36,000 +/- square feet or .8264 +/- acres of land and is currently improved with two (2) 1-story commercial buildings and a surface parking lot. The Property is currently designated Commercial, High-Rise Intensity pursuant to the City’s Future Land Use Map with a corresponding Mixed Use 3 (MX3) zoning designation. The Applicant seeks the approval of an 11-story, mixed use development containing approximately 11,530 +/- square feet of ground floor commercial space, 7,241 +/- square feet of office use and 103 upper level residential units.
Current view of the Property:
VICE LAGO and all his “pals” must be voted out. Let’s not allow him to destroy our city while he fulls his endless pockets. Please citizens of CG go vote in the next elections, let’s get rid of the corruption in our city beautiful before it’s too late.
Let’s get real. Coral Gables is no longer “The City Beautiful”. It’s really “The City of Over-Developers.” How did this happen? Sad to say, you and I are to blame, sitting on the side-lines, watching it all happen, only complaining, doing nothing.
I was born in Coral Gables in 1946. That makes me 77 years old. My Grandfather, a Carpenter extraordinaire, worked with George Merrick, et al. I still live in the house where I was born and where we used to sleep in safety with only screened windows that were always kept open, weather permitting. It was a lovely childhood. Needless to say, I have seen all of the changes since then in Coral Gables, for better and for worse. Now is worse.
Virtually every comment herein is in the negative. Gables residents rightly DO NOT WANT this high rise monster to win the day, but as is ever the case, small voices are ignored while as 1 Timothy tells us: the lovers of mammon will put it ahead of their hearts and “pierce themselves with many griefs”. Well, not all of them will and that’s for sure, but as the admirably polite Mr. Baños observes, the rest of us must “endure this potentially transformative urban development”. Emphasis on “endure”. As former NBC News personality Linda Ellerby used to say at the end of her nightly broadcasts: “And so it goes”. How right she was. I wish us well but short of the miraculous I see no end to it, which I likely won’t be here to see, being now on the older side of life. I’m not sad about it.
We’ll become the next Brickell Avenue🤬
I oppose the zoning change to 110 Phoenetia, to put a high rise condo on the lovely Garden of Our Lord. The gables are being ruined by big money developers and it’s taking away the character and charm that have kept our city frozen in time for so long. Please do not make the City Beautiful fade away into the box-building ugliness that is taking over Miami. This has gone too far. Please do not approve these zoning variances Commissioners!!!
A glaring example of how money eventually overpowers the will of the people. In the end, it’s the same story, isn’t it? Real estate developers swoop in with their bags of money, buy their way into commissioners AND MAYOR’S favor and proceed to destroy the skylines, turning them into JUSTANOTHERCITY, USA.
My faith that people ever want to become elected officials to serve the public and represent their constituency is all but lost. The hard truth is that it’s simply for just one word: money.
Bye, Gables…it was nice while it lasted.
Money wins, we lose.
Simply REPEAL the MED BONUSES, but NOW! The last time I saw an episode of Miami Vice, I almost cried looking at the Miami & Brickell skylines. Miami skyline was destroyed. Gables is next.
Three commission votes is all that is needed to reject the 9-story project at 110 Phoenetia. Let’s not forget that the parcel at 110 Phoenetia [where The Garden of Our Lord
sits] still remains designated as Religious/Institutional land until a zoning change is approved. COMMISSIONERS MUST NOT APPROVE THESE ZONING VARIANCES.
Of the 10-block parcel where the Crystal project is proposed, two parcels make up The Garden. That area sits on consecrated ground should not only be respected but revered. It is an eden in the midst of our garden city. It is a memorial garden, and also a meditative space–a place to mourn and remember. A sacred ground.
Seventy plus years ago, The Garden of Our Lord was one of only three biblical gardens in the United States, created as a sanctuary for prayer and meditation. Grieving families carved out a garden as a place of spiritual comfort. It is fitting it should stand in perpetuity not fall to indifference or a multi-story condo.
Miracles do happen. It only takes three votes.
“Could it be time to pause, and take a holistic approach to redevelopment? Examine all of the overarching impacts to infrastructure, public safety, recreation and quality of life and quantify the cumulative effects of proposed development projects rather than a piecemeal review of each individual plan. The pressure on our Public Works Department to maintain water and sanitation systems, town-wide beautification and trash removal, is mounting.”
[The above opinion from Palm Beach residents about their town and its active growth in the last few years has a parallel similarity to issues we face in our own town of Coral Gables.] It is time to pause, plan, and protect our quality of life.
The exclusivity that Coral Gables has always been known for is the limitation of the number of stories
For buildings so that it does not look like the concrete jungle that Brickell has.
We need to maintain the charm and avoid unnecessary congestion.
Money is what is motivating this kind of high rise overdevelopment. Commissioners must be getting money too in order to allow this. Digging up graves to build concrete structures with no grace or warmth. I hope the developers are haunted by the ghosts!
This is ridiculous. New elected commissioners were elected to represent Coral Gables residents opposed to overdevelopments. Still, it continues the same. We do not want another Brickell area. And we want the Mediterranean architecture. Precisely it’s what make C. Gables so special.
We were asking for the beautification of Biltmore Way for years and “Nothing happened. “Also there are many streets and alleys that need repair, long time ago, and ‘Nothing happened”
???????
First this is NOT what the residents want. You are turning this into a concrete jungle. We elected new people to stop this, but apparently they are not supporting the residents either. To the comment of having our kids live close, they can not afford these developments. Forget Kendall. They are past Homestead. The HOA, rents, insurance, interest rates are for the wealthy. I am 200% against the University Center development. It is atrocious like the Lifetime development and US1 is at its maximum capacity. Adding 300+ units without infrastructure increases is worse than bad planning. Lastly mixed use is a joke. There are so many empty storefronts, it will be more blight looking empty areas. We have lost Coral Gables for all the greed.
The development proposed for the University Center is massive and right up to the edge of US 1.
Not good!
The Crystal project is controversial!! It used to be a Lutheran Church. The developer will build a condo on its gardens: here there was a cemetery for veterans of World War II. These bodies were disinterred, and the bones given back to their families. So therein lies the problem! Would you live in a place that used to be a cemetery, and where the dead where take out of the ground for profit? Think about it.
Great article. It highlights the need for comprehensive traffic studies and planning that includes the vehicle intensity created by these projects plus ones recently completed. How much is too much on top of the traffic congestion we have now?
Many people have voiced that we do need the housing to live within or close to the city BUT who can afford the type of housing that is going up? My kids certainly would not be able to afford the type of housing being proposed so the many people who have said they would rather have their kids in the city instead of Kendall are having a pipe dream.
I wish that upcoming developments would encourage home ownership rather than transitional rental housing. The more we create these rental environments, the further we get from pride and care of our community. These projects are not catering to the Miami housing crisis because they are not priced for Miami residents on Miami salaries. They are priced for New Yorkers, Californians, and any other out-of-state professional who are moving down and bringing their huge salaries to our communities, while our Miamians are getting displaced West, North and South. Additionally, there is a huge lack of publicly accessible open green spaces and plazas in all of the projects, which will have a huge [negative] impact on the scale and feel of the city. We should strive for better architecture.
thank you, Javier for the thoughtful compilation. no one else (least of all our elected officials) have endeavored to educate us in this way. your reporting is appreciated.
to those bemoaning the growth: I’ve lived in the Miami area 62 yrs. What made you think growth in SouFL was going to stop? It’s too pretty and too dynamic here to avoid it or escape it. Is no different (and maybe worse) in Atlanta, Charlotte, Phoenix, Austin, Dallas. not so much in SFO, DC, Baltimore or Boston. Clear patterns emerge. look up the #s, get on a plane. through it all, I’d still rather be in CG than DC.
To all the NIMBYs here who want to gatekeep who call live in the City: don’t you want your kids to be close to you instead of living out in West Kendall?
This city has become Gotham City the home town feel is long gone I don’t think this was the founders of coral gables vision to see such massive growth.
Great article. Thanks. As the parent of two young adults, I’m very much aware of the lack of housing in our city. I’m glad that demand is being addressed by the increased supply reported on in this article.
WHY DO WE ALLOW THIS??!!! CALL ALL COMMISSIONERS!
It’s sad to digest the transformation of City Beautiful to just another busy city with additional crimes, traffic, etc.
On our way from heaven to hell!
Omitted from this informative article is mention of the planned massive high rise luxury condominium at the corner of US 1 and South Alhambra Circle.
More people, more cars, more traffic.
Your publication is appreciated. Please provide updates so readers can help to STOP development of the Mobility Hub. Many Thanks.