Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava blocked an industrial project planned on 245 acres outside the Urban Development Boundary, citing concerns over wetlands and other issues.
On Monday, Levine Cava vetoed the commission’s approval of the project, igniting what will likely be yet another showdown between the mayor and commissioners over expansion of the UDB.
County commissioners, sitting as the comprehensive development master plan and zoning board, greenlit a text amendment on Jan. 22 that would have allowed heavy equipment company Kelly Tractor to build its headquarters, where it would sell, store and repair machinery, on land outside the UDB, including on more than 160 acres of wetlands. The site is west of Sweetwater.
A supermajority vote by county commissioners is required to override the veto. Commissioners will take up the item on Feb. 18.
Kelly Tractor, a Florida-based firm since the 1930s that supplies equipment such as hydraulic drills for excavators, is based in Doral and has said it needs a bigger headquarters to support county infrastructure projects, such as highways and airports, South Florida NPR affiliate WLRN reported.
The county board approved the text amendment, despite Miami-Dade staff members recommending denial, claiming that the county has plenty of land for industrial development within the UDB and that Kelly Tractor’s application failed to show how it will mitigate wetlands that the project would pave over.
Miami-Dade is generally a developer-friendly county, with elected officials often helping the private sector score approval for projects, as real estate is a major economic driver in the county. But building outside the UDB, an invisible boundary meant to stop suburban sprawl onto farmland, wetlands and the Everglades, is one of the most controversial proposals a developer can make, with few projects scoring approval and, often, those that do face other challenges.
In a Sunday memo, Levine Cava said she vetoed the project because it didn’t sufficiently address impacts on wetlands of exceptional environmental value and because the approval was for a text amendment, circumventing the traditional application process for development outside the UDB. County staff had previously said in records the wetlands on the Kelly Tractor site are top tier.
At the Jan. 22 meeting, Kelly Tractor agreed to commissioners’ request that any portion of the 60 acres of wetlands not mitigated on the site be mitigated elsewhere within Miami-Dade. But Kelly Tractor didn’t commit to county staff’s request to prioritize mitigation in the North Trail Basin, Levine Cava said in her memo.
Wetlands have multiple purposes, including flood protection and filtration of water before it reaches Miami-Dade’s drinking water aquifer, she said. They also are a habitat for wildlife.
Proposals for projects outside the UDB have to go through an amendment process, but text amendment applications lack the “robust growth analysis and planning procedures” that a traditional UDB expansion process would require, Levine Cava said in her memo. .
“The presentation of a text change in this case enabled substantially less specificity and commitment on the future development than an application that followed a UDB amendment process,” Levine Cava wrote in the memo.
Chris Kelly, president of Kelly Tractor, declined to comment on the veto. He pointed The Real Deal to a 2017 study prepared by engineering firm CH2M for Miami-Dade, looking at several potential sites for a new county wastewater treatment plant, determining Kelly Tractor’s property outside the UDB is the most suitable location. That project never panned out.
The last time county commissioners approved a massive project outside the UDB was in 2022 when they greenlit the South Dade Logistics & Technology District on 379 acres. It took developers Stephen Blumenthal and Jose Hevia five public hearings to get the approval, with the pair giving concessions along the way, including cutting the project size by about half.
Levine Cava vetoed that project, too, and commissioners subsequently overrode her veto.
South Dade Logistics fizzled out in court in 2024.
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