Monday June 18, 2007
The sordid tale of Biscayne Landing. This patch of land between FIU North and Oleta State Park was considered for a zoo, an “international center” with a revolving restaurant atop a tower, an amphitheater, a golf course, and airport . . . well, for most of the 70s it was actually a dump. It was an EPA Superfund site from 1982 to 1999. Now it’s a condo development, last seen promoting itself with ultra-cheesy billboards featuring scantily clad women and silly “too cool for downtown” taglines. Not unsurprisingly, 93 units have been sold, out of a planned 6,000. Also not unsurprisingly, the superfund business is not mentioned on the development’s FAQ. The saddest part is that the city of North Miami gambled with the developers on this, leasing them the land and paying $31 million to clean up the site, hoping for a tax windfall.
Tags: building, development, taxes · Comment feed: RSS, atom
What they also don’t tell potenial buyers is that they will be basically spending the rest of their condo dwelling lives slappin’ mosquitos because of the nearby mangrove preserve.
The mangrove preserve poses a problem. The only winner here is FIU, who from what I understand, sold the land to the developers. What a cash cow.
I’m still not over the sale of the only freakin ice skating rink in this neck of the woods to a car sales lot … it changed my freakin life and ended a sport I participated in. Whoever was the dumbass to make that decision can wonder if an ice skating rink was more attractive to people buying in Biscayne Landing or not.
It really pisses me off that the Herald, (and everyone at CM apparently), has forgotten how important it is to encourage development on brownfield sites. These are the places that need to be encouraged to be developed in the face of dwindling land. Every environmental group in the country encourages development of these kind of sites adjacent to existing infrastr