Grove 2030 to review, revamp NCDs

Many thanks to the Grapevine for sharing with readers the highlights of the recent Grove 2030 Governance Forum. The event, moderated by former county commissioner Katy Sorenson, featured a panel of speakers offering suggestions on how our community might achieve this goal: By 2030 Coconut Grove will govern its own municipal affairs. Roughly 100 people attended.

To some, the key takeaway may have been the improbability – in the short term, at least -- of Coconut Grove’s municipal independence. The process of de-annexation from the City of Miami is purposely Byzantine, and politically untenable. Thus, to many others in attendance the event’s real highlight was the awareness that Coconut Grove can indeed achieve a measure of “self governance” by working within the City’s existing legislative framework. Our panelists expounded the benefits of Historic Districts, Historic Corridors, Special Taxing Districts, Neighborhood Improvement Districts, and other administrative approaches, or “pathways,” to community-level governance.

One such pathway rests in Coconut Grove’s Neighborhood Conservation District (NCD) zoning overlays adopted in 2008. We’re lucky to have them. Veterans of Grove secession campaigns (there’s been plenty since our annexation in 1925) say the NCDs were something of a olive branch – a City effort to mollify the independence minded Grovites by extending an added layer of protection from the development pressures that threaten village character.

Whatever the intent, the NCDs offer us a powerful tool to chart our own path forward. To hear it from former City officials, the NCDs were drafted as templates upon which to expand. They are not static, unbending. So what kind of additions, modifications or clarifications would you like to see in Coconut Grove’s Neighborhoods Conservation District zoning overlays?  Let us know. Grove 2030, along with the Coconut Grove Village Council, has convened an NCD Working Group to present recommendations for a stronger, more protective, and more civically empowering document.  

The end product, of course, will be our recommendations and nothing more. To approve them, making them law, our elected officials must give their blessing. And if they become law, they must be enforced – something the City has routinely failed to do. Is there another way? Email us your ideas at info@grove2030.org.

Regards,
Dave Villano
Grove 2030