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Coral Gables leaders tell neighbors they will negotiate to limit impact of county rapid‑transit zone
Summary
At a neighborhood meeting, Coral Gables officials said they will press a developer to accept a smaller, city‑controlled alternative to Miami‑Dade County’s Rapid Transit Zone after the county added a waterfront parcel to the RTZ; residents raised concerns about height, traffic, the waterway and loss of local impact fees.
City officials told a packed Coral Gables neighborhood meeting that their best option for limiting the scale and local impacts of a proposed redevelopment on the waterfront is negotiation, not litigation, after Miami‑Dade County placed the parcel in the county Rapid Transit Zone (RTZ).
The meeting centered on the MARC/university‑station site that the county added to its RTZ in September. City staff described a proposed Coral Gables overlay that would allow multifamily development while keeping stepped heights, larger setbacks and design review under city control. The county RTZ, officials said, sets a single 150‑foot height with minimal setbacks and no equivalent local design or signage controls.
Why it matters: officials said a project built under the county RTZ would bypass many Coral Gables rules and send impact fees to Miami‑Dade County instead of the city, reducing money available for local parks, police, fire and mobility improvements. Residents said the proposed increases — in some places from the current neighborhood scale up to eight to 11 stories — would harm property values, worsen traffic and alter the character of nearby blocks.
“We will no longer have any…
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