West Grove residents say they’re out of the loop on development

Comments flew in the last seven minutes of the Coconut Grove Village West Homeowners & Tenants Association meeting Monday with leaders urging residents to become more informed and involved on housing issues in the community.

“We need to be good Groveites when issues concerning housing areas arise,” said Jihad Rashid, the association’s vice president.

Rashid was referring to an Oct. 6 public hearing of Miami’s Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board where two petitions before the board seek to change seven West Grove properties from single-family residential to restricted commercial. Six of the properties are on Thomas Avenue and one property is on Florida Avenue.

Although the hearing notice does not name the developers requesting the land use changes, Ron Nelson, an aide to City Commission Chairman Marc Sarnoff, said the developers probably are the Pointe Group Advisors. In a phone call to their offices on Thursday, a Pointe Group representative told a Grand Avenue News reporter that they are the developers.

West Grove residents had been complaining for more than a year that they did not know what was happening with Pointe Group’s redevelopment plans.

The West Grove is located on a half-square-mile in the south section of the Coconut Grove community. Its 65 blocks house about 3,000 people, most of whom are African American and descendants of the area’s earliest Bahamian settlers. Once a thriving residential and commercial hub, the area deteriorated with scores of abandoned buildings and vacant lots.

HOATA president Pierre Sands said developers in some way contributed to the area’s blight. After buying a number of rundown properties, they boarded them up or tore them down.

“Go down Grand Avenue and tell me what you see?” Sands said at the group’s Sept. 27 meeting held at the Frankie S. Rolle Community Center. “What you see now are holes in the community.”

Pointe Group, however, is coming back on the scene. Over the summer, the developer gained unanimous approval from Miami commissioners to go ahead with the first phase of the  “Grove Village on Grand,” a $300 million, six-block development that would bring condominiums, offices and shops with underground parking to the West Grove.

However, this phase of the project does not address HOATA’s and other community leaders’ insistence that redevelopment plans include affordable housing.

“We know that development is beneficial, but we want to see it benefit everyone,” said HOATA president Pierre Sands, adding that developers need to work more with the residents who live in the community they want to redevelop.  “We tried to work with the developers and told them, ‘Let’s include some affordable housing.’”

Renita Ross Samuels-Dixon, a Coconut Grove Village Councilwoman who attended the HOATA meeting, also said developers should be respectful of the community’s concerns and should meet with the Village Council before seeking zoning changes from the city.

Since the next Village Council and HOATA meetings will occur on Oct. 26, three weeks after the Oct. 6 zoning hearing, Samuels-Dixon said HOATA and other members of the community should show up in numbers at the rezoning hearing.

“We need to take action because this is affecting our lives,” said Rashid, who also is president and CEO of the Coconut Grove Collaborative. Rahsid is also seeking to bring affordable housing to the area with a project that would provide 60 apartments for about 180 tenants. His project, the “Gibson Community and Educational Center”, is a partnership with the Theodore R. Gibson Memorial Fund, the Coconut Grove Collaborative, Pinnacle Housing Group and the University of Miami.

The project is in competition with the Pointe Group Advisors for half of the $10 million in government obligation bonds allocated to Miami-Dade County District 7 Commissioner Carlos Gimenez.  Pointe Group Advisors also has submitted a proposal to use $9.4 million for 32 units of housing. That’s $293,750 per unit.

Homer Whittaker, an aide to the commissioner, said Gimenez has not yet made a decision on the allocation.

“All proposals have been presented to county experts,” Whittaker said in a follow-up telephone interview. The commissioner is not favoring one group over the other, Whittaker said. He is going to choose “whatever gives the most return on the dollar.”