Bal Harbour is choosing to fight it out in court instead of settling its battle with the developers planning a controversial mixed-use project.
The village council on Monday unanimously voted against a settlement with Whitman Family Development, even though the agreement would have meant a scaled down project at Whitman’s luxury Bal Harbour Shops, CBS News Miami reported. This means the two-year litigation over the development presses on.
The council’s decision mirrors the general sentiment expressed by residents at a packed meeting at the Sea View Hotel, where boos sometimes erupted and attendees aired their concerns over more density and traffic in the village.
Miami Beach-based Whitman Family Development, which first filed to expand its Bal Harbour Shops under the Live Local Act, previously planned three 275-foot tall buildings, including one with 239,400 square feet of offices and the others with hotel keys and roughly 500 residential units. The state’s Live Local Act allows developers to bypass public hearings and build bigger as long as 40 percent of their units are apartments restricted for households earning no more than 120 percent of the area median income.
The proposal touched off a firestorm, with Whitman Family Development suing the village, alleging that instead of processing the application, it promised its residents a moratorium.
Under the lawsuit settlement, the project would have been pared down to one 297-foot tall building and a pair of 225-foot tall buildings, according to the South Florida Business Journal reported. The number of residential units would have been cut to 180, with 10 percent of them –– or 18 –– at below-market levels, meaning the project would no longer qualify as Live Local.
The project prompted mudslinging, with the developer and its legal team previously accusing Bal Harbour officials of trying to prevent affordable and workforce housing in the affluent coastal village. The village argued the developer isn’t doing this in a bid to ease Miami-Dade County’s affordability crisis but is using Live Local to build a larger project.
The recent vote to reject the settlement comes on the heels of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the lawsuit backing Whitman Family Development. Whitman CEO Matthew Whitman Lazenby called it a “significant and unusual” move, adding that Bal Harbour’s isn’t fighting the development firm but it’s “picking a fight with the state of Florida.” — Lidia Dinkova
