The Miami City Commission will vote Thursday on a sweeping package of development incentives – including significant increases in allowable building height and density — to spur workforce housing construction within proximity to Metrorail stations and along the roadways that connect to them.
The provisions, if approved, would apply to a wide swath of Coconut Grove including much of Grand Avenue, SW 27th Avenue, Bird Road and Douglas Road. Single-family neighborhoods would not be affected.
Perhaps the most sweeping proposed change would allow developers to build twice as many housing units in any given project as current rules permit.
READ MORE: City to consider new rules to supersize development near transit hubs
To facilitate the higher housing densities, maximum building height would increase and restrictions would be removed on the number of stories that can be built within that height limit — a significant departure from the city’s current Miami 21 zoning code. The new rules would also permit “micro” housing units as small as 500 square feet.
Using the industry rule of thumb – 10 feet per story – a property now zoned for five stories could rise to seven; one zoned for eight stories could rise to 12; and a site limited to 12 stories, with a proposed height limit of 240 feet, could reach as high as 24.
The proposal also would reduce parking requirements for new construction by as much as 80% over current rules.
City planners say that the higher densities and parking reductions are the carrots developers need to justify the tighter profit margins of affordable housing when compared to market-rate projects.
Two early-phase affordable housing projects that could benefit from the new rules are 3710 Grove Landing and Grand Bahamas Place, both in West Grove and both slated for five stories and around 50 housing units – a figure that could potentially double.
Thursday’s proposal would create two separate development programs. Though the incentives for each are largely the same, one – the Attainable Workforce Housing Special Benefit Program – would require 25% of the units to be reserved for households earning 60 to 80% of Miami’s area median income (AMI) and the remaining 75 percent for families earning up to 100% of the AMI.
The other program – the Workforce Living Development Housing Program – would require at least half the units to serve households earning at or below 100% AMI. The rest could be sold or rented at market rates.
The area median income for Miami-Dade County in 2025 is $87,200, meaning an individual or family earning 80% of the AMI could afford to pay about $1,750 in monthly rent or pay $209,000 to purchase a condo unit.
For those earning 100% of Miami’s AMI, rental units would be priced at about $2,200 a month and condos would cost around $262,000.
Unlike other city and county transit-linked incentive programs, which are tied to fixed distances from Metrorail or other rail lines, these new proposals are based on more fluid designations: transit corridors, city-defined Transit Oriented Development (TOD) areas, and the location of transit-oriented developments themselves.
Properties can qualify for either program if within a quarter-mile of a transit corridor, which can be any roadway with high-frequency bus or shuttle service.
The Attainable Workforce program is also available to properties that fall within a city-designation TOD area which, according to city planning officials, is a highly variable overlay whose boundaries can extend up to a mile from transit hubs (virtually all of Coconut Grove) depending on current roadway and bike lane conditions.
But under the Workforce Housing program — which allows up to half of the units to be sold or rented at market rates — properties are not required to be located within a TOD area overlay. Instead, they may qualify if they are “within a half-mile of a transit-oriented development” — a term that, under city planning documents, can broadly refer to individual projects rather than designated zoning districts or transit hubs.
Thursday’s proposal is the latest in a flurry of activity by city officials to revamp its zoning code in the face of intense development pressure, brought on by recent county and state laws that preempt the city’s more restrictive planning rules.
Another proposed package of zoning changes – the Transit Station Neighborhood Development (TSND) program – would dramatically increase building height and density for properties within a mile of Metrorail stations. In some instances, under the new law, buildings up to 12 stories tall could be built on properties now limited to no more than five.
Late last month the Miami City Commission gave a preliminary thumbs up to the changes but with the condition that city-designated historic districts and so-called Neighborhood Conservation Districts – including all of Coconut Grove – would be excluded from the program’s development provisions.
A final commission vote on the TSND incentive program, initially scheduled for this Thursday, has been deferred to July 26.
This story was originally published in the Coconut Grove Spotlight, a WLRN News partner.
