Coconut Grove is about 'green' - not greed
Remember the house on South Bayshore Drive, across from Mercy Hospital, where the lady wanted to put in the Montessori school? Well, you should see it now. They sold the land and one of these same developers who tried to scam the City Commission last week, has put in over-sized white boxes, with zero lot lines, that come out and cover every portion of that large property.
Above is the before picture, and below the after. I don't know how this is legal. But they managed to do this.
This map shows where the property is, check it out next time you drive by, imagine if every house in that area went from being a single family house, on a large lot, to this. It would be wall-to-wall big white box houses.
posted by Tom Falco at 5:00 AM
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5 Comments:
So glad you mentioned this property. I hope Commissioner Russell adds this property to his investigation of the city attorney. I drive by this property daily and have always suspected the developers had inside help to get this single family residence divided into three lots, clearly against Miami 21.
Friends tried to educate me beginning about 20 years ago concerning over development. I simply didn't have the knowledge about what this would do. Now our back streets & thoroughfares are clogged. There's fewer families walking their dogs and pushing baby carriages. There's less kids riding their bikes 1/2 block of their parents as they venture out ahead learning about independence, the laughter is gone. There's fewer children & parents walking to schools. This kind of activity has just about disappeared and a loss of quality of life. However, I feel the rules/laws appear to replace the trees and plants and the Grove appears to be just as green. Jobie Steppe
Some of the new boxy houses in Coconut Grove look like World War 2 German bomb shelters. Google Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair)
The three completed homes are 1617, 1619, and 1621 S. Bayshore, (Lots 45, 46, 47). The fourth home, Lot 44 at 1623 S. Bayshore is under construction by Bayshore Estates.
If this was one lot subdivided into four it would be very interesting to find out when they replatted it. If it was before the NCD then it would have been permitted. But not afterward, not without noticing the affected neighbors. Unless the site had a metes and bound legal description at that time. This is the loophole that Battersea Woods used to get permits; the lot was not platted, it has a metes and bounds legal description. The NCD waiver or warrant says that you have to notify the neighbors if the lot is platted and it wasn't. Thankfully they lost in the end anyway. I think that was sneaky.
The sad part too is that few are designing around the trees, if a tree is in the way they just bulldoze it down.
The houses are being built legally in most cases, all you need is a minimum lot of 5,000 SF, 50' frontage on a roadway, 25' setback in front, 10' in back, and 5' per side.
Also, the City appears to be handing out permits for tree removal to developers like candy and the fines for no tree removal permit are way too low. I think with the new commissioner we will be heard but we have to keep fighting.
All this new development relates to land values in the Grove which average close to $100 PSF; a 5,000 SF lot will run about half a million, so the owners want to max out their investment by building a one million home for a total investment of $1.5. If the land were cheaper maybe it would curtail the maximum development, but if the land were cheaper that would mean our neighborhood would not be in demand and we would have average houses with average values.
The only solution I see is that we need a design committee consisting of architects similar to what Coral Gables has if you want to build. They have to approve the design and the requirements are strict.
This was one property. One house sat over two lots. They carved out three lots. Neighbors were not informed. Almost all the trees were decimated. The previous owner was the lady who tried to build a Montissori school there. She bought it from an older woman whose mother had owned it. A very old cottage sat there for decades. Though 1619 S. Bayshore was sold by the developer, no one actually lives there. They finally sold 1621 S. Bayshore, supposedly to Birdman. That's the word on the street. #1623 is under construction. It's been going on for more than six years. The City was aware that the developers were chopping down trees and illegally splitting lots but did nothing about it.
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