County sets industry day for 20-acre downtown Miami project

Miami-Dade staff is still crafting a bid solicitation to be out in late July to redevelop over 20 acres of county-owned properties downtown, a spokesperson for the county’s District 5 confirmed to Miami Today.

The procurement the county is soon to publish includes affordable and workforce housing, market-rate housing, parks, office space, a new library, a new historical museum, and a downtown intermodal terminal to provide bays for all buses terminating in the Government Center area.

The $35 million bus terminal is part of the People’s Transportation Plan (PTP) FY 2022-2026, approved by county commissioners Feb. 2. County staffers expect it to take 10 to 15 years to completely redevelop all the properties.

“One of the things that will be in the RFP is some kind of educational component,” said District 5 Commissioner Eileen Higgins. “Downtown doesn’t have elementary, middle, or high schools.”

Several county departments have been working on necessary improvements to county properties prior to the solicitation. These include a water and sewer capacity analysis, stormwater and drainage improvement, electrical capacity analysis, the conductivity of streets, goals for resiliency, and a consultant working on the specifications for a transit terminal.

Commissioner Higgins, who has been advocating and working with county staff on putting together the project, previously told Miami Today that the aim is to use county-owned lands better and meet community needs.

“County land is actually the people’s land, so we should be giving it the best use for things like museums, parks, and affordable housing,” she said. “It’s exciting to create a new neighborhood centered on affordability, centered on transit.”

The Office of Resiliency is proposing to include as a requirement LEED certification of buildings’ water usage specifications, and green spaces, Ms. Higgins said for a previous article. Her staff confirmed that no other elements had been included as of July 14.

“We’re going to be creating a hub downtown to live, work, and learn,” Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in an April interview.

As Miami Today previously reported, efforts to redevelop the downtown Government Center area date to 2014 when commissioners directed the mayor to report a plan to develop and maintain county-owned property downtown.

In 2017 former Mayor Carlos Giménez presented the report. Since then, the county has been adopting rezoning ordinances to place the Government Center area in Transit Oriented Development (TOD) zoning.