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West Miami hires Corradino planner to lead comprehensive-plan rewrite, zoning updates
Summary
The City of West Miami retained Mark Albers of the Corradino Group to lead an EAR-based comprehensive-plan update and concurrent zoning-code revisions; staff and the consultant said the process will include public meetings and could take about a year.
The City of West Miami Planning and Zoning Board on March 26 introduced Mark Albers of the Corradino Group, a planning consultant the city has retained to lead rewrite work on the municipal comprehensive plan and targeted zoning-code updates.
City Manager Ed Silva said the consultant was hired to help bring the city’s comprehensive plan into compliance with state requirements and to address recurring code issues that generate frequent variances before the board. “We’ve retained the firm that he works for to help us rewrite the comprehensive plan and our zoning plan,” Silva said.
Mark Albers told the board the work will include EAR-based amendments — the Evaluation and Appraisal Report process the city must use to address state compliance — and that updating the comprehensive plan could take about a year. “We will be working on the comprehensive plan, which will be the larger scope of what I’ll be working with…[and] some of the zoning-code updates we can do before doing the comprehensive-plan amendments and some that will have to wait,” Albers said.
Albers said the consultant team will review corridor sections including Ludlow Road, Red Road and Eighth Street for possible mixed-use designation, and examine transition areas behind those corridors for townhouses or similar housing types to provide a gradation into single-family neighborhoods. He also flagged state preemption as a constraint staff will track while drafting local regulations. “One of the things I look at very carefully when we get to that is when we land use trying not to take away residential land and converted to mixed use,” Albers said.
Silva and Albers said the project will be public-facing: they expect public meetings and workshops where residents can review draft changes. Albers also said the team will propose targeted code edits intended to reduce the number of routine variances and to help the city “cure” recurring noncompliant uses that currently come before the board.
The board welcomed the announcement and said it looks forward to public outreach as the consultant and staff develop proposed amendments.
The consultant engagement was informational only; no formal vote was required at the meeting.
