Archive for the 'Developers' Category

Monday Morning News Flash

Published
by
Gabriel Lopez-Bernal
on April 16, 2007
in Businessweek, Carnival Center, Developers, Development, Jersey City, LRT, Miami, Open Road Tolling, Shaya Boymelgreen, Streetcar, Transit and Transportation
. 0 Comments
  • The Developer Billionaire partnership Leviev Boymelgreen composed by Lev Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen, known in Miami for Marquis and Vitri, have decided to split their partnership, citing a difference of opinions towards future development. Boymelgreen sees a formidable future in the Miami market, opted to stay with the Miami land holdings concentrated around the Carnival center, while Leviev maintained ownership of the NYC properties. Besides the developers’ optimistic stance on Miami’s market, it interesting to note that he is considering developing rental units or workforce housing in the CBD, a stance we have long advocated to help alleviate Miami’s recent housing shortages…
  • Miami is ranked 63 in the top 100 most liveable cities by Business Week, down a notch from last year. In browsing through the list I was compelled to notice that all but one of the top 15 cities have Streetcars, Trams, or LRT running through the city streets. Coincidence? I think not…(Via: Spacing Wire)
  • Open Road tolling is coming to a highway near you…
  • Jersey City is quickly becoming the model of the urban future according to this article in today’s USA Today. I should note, on top of existing transit, the city recently completed a light rail transit line to continue to facilitate transit use for the more than 40% of its residents who ride regularly…
  • Blog Update: I’ve somehow neglected to add a link to Cyburbia to the website. Cyburbia was founded in 1994, and is the Internet’s oldest continuously operating planning-related Web site; it functions today as a portal and busy social networking site for planners and others interested in the built environment. Check it out…

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Take the Money and RUN!!!

Published
by
Gabriel Lopez-Bernal
on July 24, 2006
in Affordable Housing, Carlos Alvarez, Corruption, Developers, Development, Miami, Oscar Rivero, Real Estate and Urban Planning
. 0 Comments
I present an unusual idea on behalf of the citizens of Miami-Dade County: a county-wide class action lawsuit against the developers who stole millions of dollars from all of us when promising to build low-income houses. That’s right, this crack squad more than qualifies to be today’s Maricones; they epitomize the weekly award to begin with. Sure, the developers are just a few of the bad eggs in the rotten Miami-Dade Housing Agency carton, but, they knowingly took advantage of a flawed system and left our neediest citizens out in the cold while they raked in millions either directly or through real-estate dealings.

The Miami-Dade real estate market is rough, heck, we’ve paid out millions and apparently we still couldn’t afford to get a house, let alone enough to give away at a discounted rate to thousands of underprivileged citizens. We’ve given a few politically connected developers they key to accessing millions of mismanaged public dollars, which, if history serves my memory correctly is no different than in years past. Now, I could go into detail on each project and their respective developer, but, I’ll leave the snooping around up to your own personal Google searches and Miami-Dade Property Record browsing. I did my own research and the results weren’t too pleasant, let alone information we would want to publicize about how inept the housing agency controllers really are.

It becomes apparent however, that we have a collective problem when it comes to managing money in this county. The agency has barely been able to build any houses to begin with, yet, they recently completed work on their new $5 Million office headquarters. Apparently they plan on doing some serious work to assist some of the 41,000 families currently lined up to receive some sort of financial aide for housing costs.

It’s because of situations such as this, that Miami fails to gain the positive recognition it could garner. It sickens me to see that so many people are willing and able to essentially steal from tax money earmarked for struggling families. Last time I checked, we didn’t need to create a welfare fund for developers, they should be doing just fine…

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Jorge Perez’s Take on Miami’s Growth

Published
by
Gabriel Lopez-Bernal
on May 8, 2006
in Developers, Development, Jorge Perez and Miami
. 0 Comments
Great Article from the herald by Miami Mega Developer Jorge Perez:

Jorge seems to have some of the same opinions as Miami Transit. Here are some key excerpts as to what our city needs to work on to continue to boom as it has in recent years. We agree with Perez’s assessment of the situation and are glad that the developers realize that they too have to work hand in hand with government officials to make Miami a more accessible place for all of us to live in.

So, what can go wrong when everything seems to be falling in place?

• Despite the huge surge of residential and hotel construction in the past few years, economic development has lagged way behind in attracting medium and large corporations that will lead to an expansion of the downtown office market. And without strong growth in downtown office employment there will be little need for further downtown housing, unless we become a city of second homeowners and tourists.
• We need to seriously invest in our public-transportation systems. It is imperative that we minimize our every-day dependence on the automobile and provide viable linkages between urban nodes. This will again require public-sector vision and strong political will.
• Cities will become the place where the very rich and a few of the very poor will live. Today, we see only condominiums that start at more than $300,000 (and those are fast disappearing). Rental housing in the urban core has almost ceased to exist as it is highly uneconomic to build rental properties, and existing rental buildings are either being torn down or converted into condominiums. With land scarcity and increasing construction costs, housing affordability could become our most pressing problem.

So, while I am very concerned with the oversupply and reduced housing demand that we are experiencing, I believe that urban job growth, transportation and affordable housing are the three issues that will affect our city most over the long run. I hope, as in the recent past, that the private and public sectors can team up to
aggressively address these issues.

-Jorge Perez