Making some progress
On Thursday City Commissioners unanimously voted to study whether Village West should become Miami's next historic district. How about all of Coconut Grove? How old do you have to be historic in Miami? We're old. We're historic.
As developers start to devour the Grove, things need to move fast in order to save what is left. Developers are a spiteful bunch, time is of the essence. Neighbors who are not always willing to get on board with historic designation are often the cause for delays, they feel it will cost them more to upkeep their houses and that there are too many rules.
As for the tree removal. The issue on the agenda was about the property at 3140 Day Avenue. The City Commission made it clear that the owners of the property must follow 10 of the 11 tree mitigation conditions previously agreed upon. To help prevent trees being torn down without the neighbors' knowledge, a new layer of notification will be enacted; written notification must be sent to all abutting neighbors, giving them a better chance of seeing the notifications and giving them time to appeal any tree removal. This covers all of Coconut Grove.
As developers start to devour the Grove, things need to move fast in order to save what is left. Developers are a spiteful bunch, time is of the essence. Neighbors who are not always willing to get on board with historic designation are often the cause for delays, they feel it will cost them more to upkeep their houses and that there are too many rules.
As for the tree removal. The issue on the agenda was about the property at 3140 Day Avenue. The City Commission made it clear that the owners of the property must follow 10 of the 11 tree mitigation conditions previously agreed upon. To help prevent trees being torn down without the neighbors' knowledge, a new layer of notification will be enacted; written notification must be sent to all abutting neighbors, giving them a better chance of seeing the notifications and giving them time to appeal any tree removal. This covers all of Coconut Grove.
posted by Tom Falco at 10:00 AM
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4 Comments:
How convenient, make the Village West historic, the only part of the Grove that does need a shot in the arm and coincidentally, the area with the least resources to fight governmental restrictions. Let's satisfy our "greenspace" requirements by not letting West Grove build while the neighbors Mr. Russell has endeared himself to continue building "white" boxes.
Has this policy REALLY been thought through? I wonder how the West Grove homeowners feel about the historic designation. It seems like the designation is designed to make overly-paternalistic outsiders in the Grove and beyond feel warm and fuzzy and believe that they are helping the West Grove community. In fact, I am willing to bet that many owners of some of the homes that will be subject to designation have been looking forward to cashing in on their homes and leaving valuable assets to their heirs. The designation is going to cause these individuals' home values to plummet big time. In reality, knowing that this potential restriction is in the pike will only encourage the homeowners that will be subjected to these restrictions to raze their properties before the policy comes into play so that they can sell their property with no strings attached. I hope that whatever passes does not deprive West Grove homeowners of their lucrative assets. This is an example of a well-intentioned, but poorly thought out policy.
Let's consider the tax rolls for a minute. My house is a 2 bedroom one bath in the south grove. I pay mucho taxes and it would take a couple hundred thousand to do all the upgrades it needs. The land is my retirement. If the city doesn't allow the old house to be torn down, I would have a problem selling it when I'm ready. I would also immediately call my lawyer and have my taxes reflect the loss of value in my home. The city would actually lose money instead of getting the increase it gains from a property that could be worth over $2 million. Multiply the lower taxes by all the properties that new laws would affect, and the city and county would lose a bit of money. I love the Grove, but I'm not sure people should have the right to make me poor in my retirement years. I'm sure a lawyer would love to sue the city for the loss of value to our properties.
Fully agree with previous comment. For most family's, their home is their most important asset and by placing all sorts of regulatory constraints on those assets, all we're doing is reducing how much they are worth.
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