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For Suburban Developers, Hope For A New 836 Extension Moves Closer To Reality

Pedro Portal
/
Miami Herald
A southbound view of Southwest 157th Avenue running next to the Bird Basin Park. The Miami-Dade Expressway Authority has proposed extending the Dolphin Expressway south through the basin farther west.

When a group of developers wanted to build a new industrial complex on rural land just beyond Miami’s western suburbs in 2015, their zoning application to the county cited the prospect of traffic relief from a historic expansion of State Road 836 by the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority.

“MDX’s initial studies have identified a number of locations for the ‘southwest’ extension of SR 836,” read the proposal by the Neighborhood Planning Company, a partnership that owns the land where the 60-acre warehouse and office complex would go. All “options being studied would bring any extension to within no more than 40 blocks of the Property.”

Miami-Dade rejected Neighborhood Planning’s application, but three years later that hypothetical extension of the Dolphin Expressway into Kendall is getting closer to becoming reality — with an alignment that would go through the developer’s land holdings along what would be 172nd Avenue. Miami-Dade commissioners are scheduled to take a final vote at a 9:30 a.m. meeting Thursday on the land-plan changes needed to approve the 13-mile “Kendall Expressway,” an MDX proposal that has won support from developers and western commuters and drawn opposition from environmentalists and slow-growth advocates.

Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald

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