Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Okay, welcome to the July 14th South Miami Planning Board meeting. Everyone please stand for the Pledge of the Flag.

Thank you. All right, we'll do a quick roll call starting with up here on the podium or dais. Gus?

Danny Alvarez. All right, sounds good. So we have five people. So we have a quorum, correct, Marcus?

All right. Any administrative matters today? I don't see any.

Yeah, so anybody in the audience that's here for the fourth item, which is the discussion around the property on 62nd Avenue, that is getting deferred until the next meeting. So just FYI. All right. With that said, items 1, 2, and 3 all really relate to the same area, same property, but we're going to take them with item 1 by itself and then possibly tackle 2 and 3 together. Does that make sense?

Well, first of all, is there, before we go to public comment, is there anybody else that wants to speak on this particular topic? Because we totally own it. In other words, is there anybody else that?

Thank you. All right, let's open it up for public comments. If anybody wishes to speak, please come forward, sign in, and then let us know your name and address.

I'm not sure this matters, but are you in the city of South Miami or...

It's more of a curiosity. You're on a three-minute clock, so just wanted to let you know. Understood.

Any other comments from the public in general? Anybody online? All right. You need to be sworn in. He was? He was not. Okay. I mean, he was on the phone, but he did not raise his hand.

That's it. Thank you for your comments. Anyone else wish to speak? If not, I'm going to turn it back to Mark or the applicant for rebuttal, any of the comments that were brought up here.

So what are the height limitations along Bird Road? Just using that as an example, since that's driving this bus.

But for this case, it's two. Before we go to more questions, is the applicant on the next two, do you want to make some comments about this or not?

So thank you. So it would lead to at least my first real question, which is, Why tackle this as a change of our overall policy as opposed to a variance for this particular need?

So this is necessities changing the rule. Yeah. Got it. OK. All right. Let's open up for questions to Mark.

Let me just before add to this. I mean, I've driven around this and looked at it reasonably carefully, I think. And one of the reasons probably there seems to be some tolerance for it is because CVS and Wells Fargo both have put their parking lots behind their properties towards 41st Street, right? So it's not a daunting wall of a building right there. But does anything in this prohibit somebody from taking these properties and in other places and building commercial all the way to what's allowed on the other half of the block, if you will, even if it's just the two stories? I mean, technicall

I mean, really the issue is whether you have to tackle 1.1.4 each time somebody wants to go against it, do something outside of it, right? We can't.

So we're saying that we have a, I mean, it's sort of the same issue, though. It's saying we're gonna have a general tolerance within our 1.14, whatever. To consider the changes, but you're saying because that's not an absolute commitment to the changes, we would be just as strong a footing looking at the next application that has to put this building up, let's say, with the building flush against 41st Street, using that example.

OK. Other questions? I'm sorry. Did you want to?

Well, the second two items are dead if we don't pass this, correct? I mean...

To me, if we turn down number one, Number two and three, if I was the applicant, I'd pull them. Because I don't know you're going to be better off going to the commission.

It's conjecture. Let's just say, hypothetically, this gets strongly turned down. Anyway, we'll take it as it comes. Let's not cross that bridge. Mark, are there other properties besides these five here? that you're showing us that are impacted by this same thing? Or are these selected because you think they're the ones most likely to be impacted, but there are other zoning within the city that could also be setting bad precedent?

So we would be, if we were to try to, I think Danny's comment or whatever, if we were to try to tackle some way to limit the encroachment within the longer blocks, so that they couldn't go beyond the front third. I mean, I don't know what the distance of those blocks are, if that's standard. But, you know, somehow or another make it so, because I agree, the people that are just behind the longer blocks, if we let them go all the way back out there, that is a quality of life change.

Mr. Gara, sunset and red road to the south would be. I think Danny Gara is trying to chime in.

Thank you, Chair. I think that this is an interesting conversation because it's taking into account a lot of different locations in the city. and it's kind of hard to have this conversation at a broad stroke. I will say that I think the applicant, which is confusing because we're talking about a change and there's an applicant in the same conversation, mentioned that they were proffering to put a covenant that would not allow live local, which some of these properties, even as they stand, already do allow live local and they could find a way to gerrymander that. into functioning, even on a sma

Thanks, Mr. Guerra. Any other comments from the committee members?

All right. Any other comments from committee members? If not, do we have a motion?

Any further discussion? If not, let's go ahead and put it to a vote.

I think it's when we think we can have the information ready to roll.

So just to be clear, what was put in front of us today didn't cause us to move forward, right? So we're deferring it until... The city thinks that they have a package to put in front of the planning board. Yes. I would leave that up to Marcus and all the people involved in the city planning and zoning. We're not going to legislate it.

Well, no, as long as they decide before the next notice and they have it correct.

If we vote for a date certain and we need to defer again, we do have that option, yes?

Yeah, and if we don't, we don't have that luxury. Correct. Got it. Okay, to the next meeting. Okay. That's a friendly amendment. Mark, you can get that done.

Well, we can say it right now. August 18th, I believe. August 11th. 11th.

I don't need to make a presentation Okay, do we want to just do we need to put well, that's fun. Let's make a vote, please Yeah, the next to the next meeting.

Thank you, board. All right, I think anything else to discuss? Minutes. Oh, yeah, we have minutes back in the back. You're welcome. Thank you for coming out. We appreciate it. All right, so minutes from June 2nd.

We have a second. Second. Any questions or comments? If not, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. I think I saw Danny Alvarez mouth aye.

Yeah, okay. All right. With no further issues, we'll see everybody on August 11th. Meeting adjourned. Thanks.

Sometimes it's kind of fun to use that thing.