County selling 17 acres it needs to Costco at big discount

A split Miami-Dade commission last week voted to sell water and sewer land to developer Michael Swerdlow to build a Costco at far below appraised value and without a viable alternative to fill county needs.

The county didn’t seek to sell, but Mr. Swerdlow made unsolicited offers, $4.5 million last year and about $9 million last week as the deal evolved.

Under the 8-5 vote, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava will decide whether to accept the cash from a Swerdlow firm and try to buy a suitable replacement or accept land outside the Urban Development Boundary that Swerdlow would offer in lieu of cash.

Swerdlow is buying the land at Southwest 190th Street and 108th Avenue to build a site to lease to Costco. Questioned by Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez, Mr. Swerdlow said Costco would need the entire 17.3 acres, with no room for more uses.

Commissioners cited three objections.

First, the commission in 2021 set a policy that the county could not sell water and sewer sites without getting equal or better property for its needs. Water and Sewer Director Roy Coley told commissioners the site Swerdlow offered is inferior.

Second, the location Mr. Swerdlow offered is beyond the Urban Development Boundary, where county policy prohibits such uses. But commission Chair Oliver Gilbert III, who voted for the deal, said it is wrong to invoke that policy only when it is convenient.

Third, Mr. Swerdlow offered the county cash or property value of $9 million, far less than the $31 million the site’s appraisal. “The proposal is based on the rent Costco can pay, period,” he said. “It is not based on what any appraiser says this property is worth.”

Not mentioned before the vote was a concern about selling the needed land that Chief Operations Officer Jimmy Morales raised in April when a divided committee sent the deal to the full commission for a final vote.

“This is a property purchased by a proprietary fund, water and sewer, subject to consent decrees” from the federal and state governments because of environmental shortfalls in water and sewer operations, he said, “so people are watching what we do with the resources of this department… It is important to make sure that fund is made whole one way or another.”

Commissioner Kionne McGhee, representing the Perrine area in which the site sits and for more than a year the key proponent of the sale to Swerdlow, positioned Costco as an economic development spark to eliminate slum and blight and the best way to energize the community, citing area homicides and an employment depression there and calling the region a “food desert.”

Mr. McGhee said he had vetted the deal for the county and found it strong based on a “leading economist.” It will, he said, take the Perrine area “to a whole new level.”

Mr. Swerdlow cited 400 new jobs and said of the county’s $31 million appraisals that “the comparables make no sense…. If it was appraised as a pipe storage and truck storage property it would be a vastly different number.”

Both Commissioner McGhee and Mr. Swerdlow said the county land had been wasted for 20 years, and Mr. McGhee said a sale to Swerdlow would put it on the tax rolls after five years to bring his area those taxes.

Mr. Morales saw it differently, saying the county had carefully planned when it bought the land for $2 million for future needs. “There is no obvious easy other alternative [for county needs], which is why they bought this site.”