(This article originally appeard in the Miami Herald, 1990)
PUSHING THE URBAN BOUNDARY PROPOSALS THREATEN DADE'S RURAL LAND
BLANCA MESA Herald Real Estate Writer
PUBLICATION: Miami Herald, The (FL)
SECTION: HOME & DESIGN
DATE: June 17, 1990
EDITION: FINAL
Page: 1J
Though most people wouldn't know the difference between a Sunny tomato and a Duke, they do know that vegetables are cheaper in South Florida in the wintertime, that peppers and strawberries fill the U-pick fields along empty country roads, that beyond that urban gridlock there's farmland.
But less than a year after Dade signed an agreement designed to protect farmland, the County Commission has opened up 350 acres to development. At risk, say farm interests, is the future of agriculture in Dade.
State planners, expressing outrage at the March 27
commission vote, view the matter as a test of state authority over local government promises to control urban sprawl.
The Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA) has rejected the Dade land-use amendments, which could open the farmland to development, and will litigate the matter before an administrative judge. No hearing date has been set.
"I don't know whether they'll be a big showdown or not," said Bob Nave, chief planner with the DCA. "But we're prepared to go as far as we have to take it. There has to be a disincentive to build outside the boundary."
The dispute could ultimately be decided by the governor and Cabinet, who have the power to force Dade to restore the original boundaries. In addition, the state can withhold state
funds designated for county roads, bridges or water and sewer systems.
Agriculture is one of Dade's largest industries, encompassing 84,000 acres. The Dade County Farm Bureau estimates Dade's annual cash crop at $400 million.
Dade is the country's winter food basket, leading the state in the production of sweet corn, potatoes, snap beans, okra, squash and tomatoes. And, Dade is the nation's largest producer of tropical vegetables such as malanga, calabaza and boniato.
Part of the state's goal in controlling growth, planners said, is to establish clear lines between urban and rural uses. But South Dade, like other rural lands throughout the state, is a good source of cheap land, making it especially vulnerable to development pressures.
Extending Dade's urban development boundary is "unjustified and in violation of the spirit" of the settlement agreement, the DCA stated in a letter sent last month to Metro Mayor Steve Clark.
"I'm not taking back any vote," Clark said last week. "Let them fight it."
DCA planners said the state caved in to Dade's pleas and agreed to permit more congested roadways within the development boundary. But, in exchange, Nave said, the county agreed to adhere to a strong policy controlling urban sprawl outside the boundary, which includes rural areas in South Dade.
Nave said the Dade commission's amendments violate that agreement and will cause more sprawl and tax overburdened services.
The issue turns on whom elected officials believe: county planners, who say there's plenty of land within the development boundary, or developers, who cite their own studies showing land is running out in places where people want to live.
Caught in this big stakes development battle are the folks down south, who have watched their rural life style erode over the years. Folks like Georgia Neill Watts, 77, who came downtown in late March to talk to commissioners about the "old home place" -- a family farm in the Redland that's celebrating seven decades in a land of pole beans and sweet corn and squash.
Watts was there to speak against Amendment 47. It could
allow 2.5 homes per acre on 160 acres in deep South Dade, including her 10-acre farm, adjoining land and 80 acres submitted by the developer for a land-use change. Watts opposed this first step in a process that could change the zoning on her farm and adjoining land.
"Sir, we've been farmers for many generations and I just cannot see that 80 acres being put into homes," Watts told Clark. The 80-acre parcel is owned by a group that includes Miami developer Manny Medina. Watts turned in a 342-signature petition asking the commission to reject the land-use changes.
But it didn't work. She walked away with the farmland designated for estate land.
Clark defends the commission vote, saying the land is needed for housing. "Where are we going to put people, on top of each other?"
"People are deciding to go south, not west," said Larry Suchman, vice president of Shane-Suchman Real Estate Corp., which obtained residential, industrial and office designation for 190 acres of agricultural land just west of Arvida's Country Walk development near Metrozoo with Amendment 40.
"Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant," Suchman said. "People like the area."
But folks like Martin Motes, a leader of the Redland Defense Committee, which is fighting urban encroachment, said the housing comes with a public price: increased burdens on police, fire, roads and schools. Setting boundaries is unrealistic and unfair, said Tom Carlos, the attorney representing Shane-Suchman. "Where do we go instead?"
"Infill would only be able to meet a small fraction of housing needs," he said. Sealing the urban boundary, he said, would force builders to look for in-fill sites in the suburbs and perhaps the virtually abandoned inner cities.
"Is that really a desirable pattern?" Carlos said. "to tell people where we want them to live and in the kind of housing? That isn't going to do the job."
The Dade County Planning Department told the commission that adding the 350 acres of rural land to the development boundary would be premature. Planners estimate there's enough land within the boundary for housing needs through 2005 in South Kendall; in the Redland, through 2010.
Developers disagree. Regulation of development in the Bird Drive basin and increasing gridlock on Kendall roads makes the less-congested land in southwest Dade more attractive.
Suchman promised to build the county's first traditional neighborhood development -- patterned after the idealized small towns where work, housing and play are all close by. But, that little town would be built on what is now the westernmost edge of urban Dade. The urban boundary line may be an invisible barrier, but the rural world is clearly demarcated at Southwest 152nd Street, which is not paved beyond the edge of Suchman's property.
Rusty yellow tractors and fertilizer trucks line either side of the dusty lane. Rotting tomatoes dangle from abandoned vines in the planting fields.
On June 5, Commissioner Charles Dusseau, with a second from Commissioner Harvey Ruvin (who was absent on the day the amendments were passed), tried to get his colleagues to reconsider their approval of the two amendments in the agricultural region.
No one budged. "There's a lack of recognition of reality," Dusseau said of his fellow commissioners. "The new master planning process and land-use act is going to require some changes in attitude."
"The important thing about this is that we're into a new era of political activity," said Motes. "For the first time, basically corrupt decisions by county commissioners are being carried to the state to referee."
But Commissioner Barry Schreiber, who moved to approve both amendments, said "it's irrelevant what the state says," adding that he's willing to fight the decision to the governor's office. "Sometimes, we're proved right."
"That's the gist of the whole thing -- them telling us what to do," Clark said of state officials. If the amendments are upheld, it's unknown what immediate impact the move will have on Dade's agricultural industry, already threatened by high labor costs and government regulations, said Kristin Oak, executive vice president of the Dade County Farm Bureau. Dusseau said small intrusions into the farm region, like these amendments, start the land-use domino game which may topple the industry. "At some point there will not be enough land to support the agriculture industry in South Dade. At that point, it will be too late."
Developers and community groups are gearing up for battle. An army of statisticians, market analysts, lawyers and grass- roots organizers are readying to march to every hearing, meeting, and political gathering to muster support for their needs.
But Redland residents have mobilized. Since the March 27 decision, Motes said his group has collected 1,500 signatures of people opposed to the amendment.
Watts said she felt the County Commission didn't understand what was at stake when it agreed to allow houses. "We came down here . . . fought rattlesnakes, hurricanes and floods. I'm not (fighting) it for meanness. I'm doing because it's my right."
Developer Suchman is equally persistent. "We've owned the land for 20 years thinking that one day -- knowing the nature of real estate -- it would be time," Suchman said. "If not this time, it will be another round . . . The boundary has always moved."