TRAINS!

Details are only beginning to emerge about possible plans for expanded train service, but we have to begin somewhere, so here is a primer on trains "West of Aventura."   

Train Set 1: The Florida East Coast Railway, or "FEC"
You may wonder: who was the brilliant city planner who decided to put the freight train tracks through all the densely populated cities, and run the commuter rail line next to the highway, where all the industrial areas are?  The answer is something like "the trains were here first."  I'll explain.


Henry Flagler is known as the "Father of Miami," and mostly due to trains.  Flagler amassed a vast fortune by building (with John D. Rockefeller) the biggest, most prosperous and monopolizing oil empire of the 1800s: Standard Oil.  Flagler then got into the hotel business, beginning with the 540-room Ponce de León Hotel in St. Augustine.  He then faced the challenge of bringing guests to the new hotel, and solved it (in typical billionaire style) by purchasing short line railroads that would later become known as the Florida East Coast Railway.

Flagler originally intended West Palm Beach to be the terminus of his railroad system, but as wikipedia puts it: "in 1894 and 1895, severe freezes hit the area, causing Flagler to rethink his original decision. Sixty miles south, the town today known as Miami was reportedly unharmed by the freeze. To further convince Flagler to continue the railroad to Miami, he was offered land in exchange for laying rail tracks from private landowners, including Julia Tuttle."

"Despite 116 years of active service, FEC hasn’t run a passenger train on its rails since 1968. What was once known as 'America’s Speedway to Sunshine' now carries nothing but freight. A violent strike by the United Transportation Workers prompted FEC officials to discontinue passenger service, which had already become difficult and unprofitable to operate under intense government regulations and growing competition from airlines and automobiles." [source: Cantarella, cited and linked to below]

So you now see that the Florida East Cost Railway, or "FEC" as we know it locally today, is the historical backbone of South Florida.  So we should expect freight trains (currently 15 of them a day) here in "West Aventura" for the foreseeable future.  And with the development of the $1B under-the-bay tunnel to the Port of Miami nearing its May 20, 2014 completion date [more details about the tunnel and it's opening date here], those 11-14 daily trains could GROW, either in number of trains each day, or in length of those (already endless) cargo trains. 

Subtotal: let's say 14 trains a day

Train Set 2: All Aboard Florida
The Biscayne Times did an exhaustive (to read) story on All Aboard Florida ("AAF") and its designs to bring high-speed rail to Florida's East Coast, passing through West Aventura.  The full September 2013 story by Terence Cantarella (caution: it's a long one) is readable here. 

AAF is a new passenger rail service that will connect Miami and Orlando starting in 2015, promising to "run very fast hourly trains on time, with great amenities (wifi, level "stairless" boarding, food for purchase, etc.), from beautifully designed, centrally located stations."  It would be the only privately-funded passenger rail line in the United States.

Only 4 AAF stations are envisioned.  From the AAF website:

All Aboard Florida's station locations will be centered in the downtowns of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, and the planned Intermodal Station at the Orlando International Airport's future South Terminal. All locations will provide access to international airports, seaports, and existing and future transit systems, such as SunRail in Orange County, and Metrorail and Metromover in Miami-Dade County.

So AAF trains will pass by, but not stop here.  If you want to take an AAF train to visit Disney with the kiddies, you would have to go north to FLL to board, or South to Miami.

The Cantarella story contains some good investigative journalism.  About half-way into the story he looks at the complicated corporate ownership of AAF, which is actually overseen by two companies: an Operations branch (which owns the easement right to develop and operate passenger rail service in the existing rail corridor) and a Stations company (which owns much of the land for the stations in downtown Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach).  Both are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Coral Gables-based Florida East Coast Industries (FECI). In turn, FECI, along with the Florida East Coast Railway LLC (FEC), is owned by “investment equity funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group LLC” (a New York City investment-management firm, and the first hedge fund in the U.S. to trade publicly).

Cantarella interviews Gilbert B. Norman, a retired Chicago CPA and former senior internal auditor at the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad.  Norman believes that All Aboard Florida was created by Fortress Investment Group to entice the state to buy the FEC rail corridor, which Fortress owns.  Before AAF is developed, Norman predicts that Fortress Investment Group will approach the state about buying the corridor (with AAF disappearing soon after).  Other observers predict that AAF will begin operations, but quickly become unprofitable, resulting in pressure on Florida to buy the operations component of the business. Fortress will pocket an exorbitant sum from the sale while continuing to charge the state to use the corridor and rake in millions from the bustling new train stations.

While the above is (pessimistic) speculation, what we do know is that AAF plans is to run a train every hour from about 6:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. According to AAF, having private tracks, few stops, and the ability to reach 125 mph in some areas will make it possible to travel from Miami to Orlando in a projected three hours.

Amie Goddeau (amie.goddeau@dot.state.fl.us), the "FDOT Future Corridor Coordinator" for District 4 attended the 4/23 HOA meeting.  She confirmed that hourly service from 6am to 8pm would mean 16 daily round-trips.  That means 32 additional trains crossing Ives Dairy Road.


Added to the FEC freight trains from the last section - Subtotal: 46 trains.


Train Set 3: Tri-Rail Coastal Link

Finally we come to the train system that would have the largest impact on our area, because it envisions the construction of a rail station on the vacant lands described in the last post [here].

Tri-Rail Coastal Link ("TRCL") reports are viewable here.  The "Tri-Rail Coastal Link Station Area Opportunities" report on that page is the source of the picture in my February post "Commercial Tax Base West of Aventura," which is worth re-posting again here:

Contrast that image with the one posted in my last post on this Blog:

You will see that already the plan envisioned by TRCL requires modification: the envisioned location of the "192nd Street Station" is already slated for rental-apartment development by LG Aventura LLC (Gables Residential).  This means the more likely location of the station will be on the land indicated with a red border in the above image (owned by the Ben-Shmuel trusts).

Amie Goddeau (Florida Department of Transportation) disclosed the following facts about the TRCL project at the April HOA meeting:

• TRCL is a publicly funded project (All-Aboard Florida is private)
• travel time from "West Aventura" to downtown: estimated 29 minutes
• ticket prices would be 75% subsidized (ie: kept artificially low to encourage ridership)
• pedestrian overpass to Aventura Mall is being discussed with mall owners
• workshops will be held in August
• construction would be from 2018-2020

Some thoughts:

If Aventura Mall wants a pedestrian overpass, I sure hope they are paying the entire cost for the station, since this is just a complete money-making windfall for them.

Goddeau noted that all the transportation people had been in close contact with the owners of Aventura Mall and the City of Aventura concerning these developments.  Without a government of our own, the information has been harder to come by, but with the reporting here and meetings held (and to-be held), we are coming up to speed.

I feel that commuter rail where commuters actually LIVE is a good idea, but I'm sure all of us in "West Aventura" want to ensure that surrounding infrastructure is developed to avoid a quagmire.  For this reason this blog will continue to post updates on any and all 'developments related to development.'  The goal is to avoid the very corruption that the "NO to incorporation" people are most concerned about.

Oh, and by the way, the subtotal?  Still digging for info, but early indications are approximately 50.
The Grand Total: 80-100 trains.  Per day.  Wow.

I'm not saying "there goes the neighborhood," because being able to ride a bike a short distance to catch a train downtown would be a great resource for a city that has a terrible commuting infrastructure.  But I wouldn't be lining up to rent an apartment from Gables Residential if doing so would mean having 100 trains passing by my window every day.

Coming Soon: Coverage of May 1 NE MAC meeting.

Recap of 4/23 HOA Meeting: Development of land just "West of Aventura"

Last night the area Homeowners' Association had a really informative agenda, but only 50 or so residents were interested enough to attend (which is why this blog exists: for the lazy majority). 

The HOA is doing some good work, but it's doing so with only 141 paid members (170 paid last year).  In this writer's opinion the HOA dues should be lowered to $10 (instead of going up this year from $25 to $30).  More members = more mandate, and with over $25,000 in the bank (representing 5 years' worth of accumulated collections), Carl Icahn [activist-investor] would be pounding the table for a special-dividend.  I would agree, recommending (i) a decrease in dues to $10, with current paid members getting a 3-year membership in return for having already paid $30. 

Other than some once-annual printing costs (which could probably be minimized if mailings were coordinated with e-mails and Nextdoor), the cost of refreshments at meetings (unnecessary - bottled water is evil!), there should be no cost to operating an HOA - the venues are donated without charge, and the membership and board are volunteers, so why the cash hoard?  Maybe some of that money could be put toward beautification: "Lower the fees and plant some trees!"

But I digress.  On to the substantive aspects of the meeting:

1. Interstate highway 95 construction goes on.  After lobbying by residents (myself included) for years, the southbound off-ramp to Ives Dairy will (at last) be expanded from the 1-lane bottleneck in a few short weeks.  Another lane is being added all the way from Ives Dairy to Hallandale Beach Blvd. (this will take longer), and in about one year (May 2015) a new "express lane" will be added, similar to the "pay lane" you see when driving south to Miami.  Good news for drivers of hybrid and electric cars (who ride free), and good news for people with money.

2.  Development
The most important information coming from the meeting concerned land development in our area.  The most important concerned passenger rail and the potential for a new station.  That is such a large topic it needs a separate post (to come). 

Today's post examines the vacant parcels as they are today with a little history, and a little investigative journalism.  To begin, let's take a look at the land, which is SOUTH of Ives Dairy, EAST of NE 26th Ave, West of West Dixie Highway, and NORTH of 195th Street:

The above image has been labelled to show who owns what.  The northern-most labelled parcel is the future site of the Beacon Tower (see this earlier post for more details - in fact go and read that post right now).

Proceeding southward, the largest parcel follows, owned by "LG Aventura, LLC."  This parcel is owned by Gables Residential, who were represented at the HOA meeting last night by Sheldon Powell, who explained that a rental community composed of townhomes and several hundred apartments are basically a done-deal as far as approvals from the County (no approval needed from local residents however, given that we are not a "city" with a "government"). 

South of that large parcel is where things get interesting, beginning with 19800 West Dixie Highway, a 122,068 sf parcel owned by “Eliahu Ben Shmuel Trust, and Daniel Mims Ben Shmuel Trust.”  The owner address is an address in Tennessee, but Eliahu Ben-Shmuel is a businessman in his 70s living in Golden Beach, who previously founded Swiss Watch International (a Florida-based company that “designs and makes timepieces worldwide,” including counterfeiting Seiko and Pulsar watches, according to this 2002 case).  The most amazing thing about the case is that you can make any money counterfeiting a crappy Pulsar watch! SWI was started by Eliahu (“Eli”) in 1995, but was later run by his 3 sons Izac (42), Lior (40) and Shlomi (36) [source], before being sold in late 2012.  Hey: who needs to be in the watch business when owning real estate can be so lucrative!  

This parcel was purchased (together with the others described below) for $3.4M in December 2012.  With the potential to sell the land for mega bucks for use as a commuter rail station (hey!  I told you to go and read this earlier post for more details already!), the Ben-Shmuels may well be the future Soffers of "West Aventura"! [the Soffers are the family that brought you the soon-to-be second largest mall in America - see earlier post here for more details].

19790 WDH is owned by March Property Acquisitions LLC.  The 37,684sf parcel was bought in September 2013 for $1.25M.  The uninformative name of the company suggests it is a limited-liability vehicle for another larger company to operate secretly - possibly one of the 2 hotels (yes, hotels) that are rumored to have development plans in the area (Hampton Inn or Holiday Inn Express).

Next to the south is 19770 owned, again, but the Ben-Shmuel trusts.  This 54,014sf parcel was purchased (together with other parcels) for $3.4M in December 2012.

Last comes 19680, a 49,223 sf parcel also owned by the Ben-Shmuel trusts, and part of the $3.4M deal in December 2012.

The parcels South of the above-described land have already been developed. If you haven't driven by recently, you will be surprised to see several residential buildings that will be occupied very soon.

So now you have some idea of the parcels, their sizes, possible uses and ownership.  So much has happened in this area already without any oversight or input, which is really a shame, and one of the reasons why this blog, nextdoor.com, and the HOA are necessary.  So please keep reading, join Nextdoor [use this link], and join the HOA (complaining about the cost when you do).

Next up: Aventura's "Grand Central Station" with a pedestrian overpass to the Mall ... on OUR property?  How nice for Aventura!

Mitigation: the "Poison Pill to Incorporating," Explored

The strongest argument for incorporation (forming a new city) is that it will allow us to put money we spend on taxes to work here, and not elsewhere in the county.  The amount of money involved has been described as $974,872 [MAC 2003-2004 report], $1,307,643 [MAC 2011-2012 report] and "77 cents for each $1.00 we pay on the assessed value of our homes" [Sky High News, January 2014].

So the logic is: form a new city, and we keep that money at work here, doing things like funding public safety, beautification, stormwater and road improvements, traffic enhancements, park improvements and code enforcement.

But what if there was a law that said that an area "declaring independence" from the county had to keep on paying a surplus to the county?   Well, take a look at this, from the Miami Dade County Code:

Sec. 20-26. - Future Municipalities' Obligations to the County.

(d) The fiscal impact of an incorporation on the remainder of the unincorporated area shall be revenue neutral; provided, however, any municipality which does not meet the foregoing requirement, as a condition of incorporation pursuant to Article V of the Miami-Dade County Home Rule Charter, shall agree to make an annual mitigation payment to the County's Municipal Services Trust Fund in the Unincorporated Municipal Service Area Budget, the amount of which shall be determined by the Board of County Commissioners, in the event of a negative fiscal impact of the municipality's incorporation on the unincorporated area. For purposes of this subsection, "a revenue neutral municipality" is defined as an area that previously, as part of the unincorporated municipal service area, generated revenues equal to or less than the cost of services provided to the area by the County. Any annual mitigation amount determined by the Board of County Commissioners pursuant to the provisions of this paragraph shall be established so as not to trigger "most-favored-nation-status" clauses which are contained in any municipal charter.

The point is constantly made that we are a "donor community" which means that we are NOT "revenue neutral" to the county; if we leave, the County loses money.  The county needs that money to keep doing whatever it is doing now (spending it elsewhere, it seems).  The county simply can't afford having a bunch of "donor communities" leave, because it would produce a budget crisis (letting Aventura secede, for instance, was a huge mistake for the county, in retrospect).  And that is why 20-26(d) exists: to protect the county.

How might 20-26(d) be applied in our “new city”?  We don’t really have to guess – when the NE MAC recommended back in 2004-2005 to form a new city, the next step was a hearing by the county Planning Advisory Board (the “PAB”) held on August 8, 2005 at the Jewish Community Center.  Here is what the PAB decided:

“NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOVED BY THE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY PLANNING ADVISORY BOARD, that it recommends approval of the Northeast Dade Incorporation, after reviewing staff’s report and analysis of the fiscal viability of the proposed new city including staff’s recommended mitigation payment of 1.0 mill from the assessed 2003 tax rolls”

Recall from the earlier post “Your Taxes Will go Up” that a “mill” is a unit of taxation equal to one-thousandth of the assessed value of a property.  Recall also that the current millage rate in our area is 1.9283 (which means $192 in taxes for every $100,000 in property value).

The first line on the MAC budget says that the “revised real property assessment,” that all the calculations are based on, is $1,041,716,358.  One-thousandth of that amount is over ONE MILLION DOLLARS!  $1,041,716.36, to be exact.  So if the PAB decision on August 8, 2005 stood, today our “new city” would still be paying the county over $1M each year! That's right: it's not a one-time deal, it's forever.

If the NE MAC objective is to keep the taxes from going up (I don't know that this even is an objective, but I've heard that said at the meetings), and the current “target” is 1.9283 mills, then the “new city” would either have to give over half of its tax revenues to the county (1 mill from every 1.9283 collected: 1.9283 - 1.000 = 0.9283), or it has to face the reality that the target is an illusion.

This is why the mitigation issue is so central to the discussion of Incorporation, and it had largely been ignored so far in the hopes that the county (at its 2/27/2014 meeting) would take up the Mayor’s recommendation (supported by the Annexation and Incorporation Task Force) to repeal the “poison pill”.  Now we know that the issue hasn’t been addressed, and that a “consultant” will study the issue and give recommendations “some day.”

The problem is: the NE MAC doesn’t have time to wait for that report, or for resolution of the mitigation issue: the MAC only exists until February 2015.  So it was noted at the 3/27/14 meeting of the MAC that the budget should reflect the mitigation payment to the county, which kind of throws a cold bucket of water on the whole process. 

So if you attend a MAC meeting, and you hear the word “mitigation”: pay attention, because mitigation is the difference between: (A) having a ‘surplus’ $974,872/$1,307,643/"77 cents for each $1.00 we pay " and (B) having a deficit.  In other words, it makes all the difference in the world.

None of this is an argument against incorporating, but it is a call for the NE MAC to not make its decisions in a vacuum: if the mitigation payment is going to be implemented, it needs to be acknowledged (budgeted for) and negotiated with the County BEFORE a vote on incorporation takes place. 

NE MAC meeting March 27 (recap)

Not many blog posts lately due to lack of activity "West of Aventura." 

There were developments in crime and safety, with robbers fleeing police helicopter chase after a home invasion in Oak Forest (s. of 203rd street and West of 24th Ave), and the arrest of a paroled thief who returned to the scene of his former crimes in Highland Oaks: back on the job breaking into unlocked cars.  So lots of development in crime and punishment, not so much on self-determination.

The MAC, which itself only has 2 years to consider the issue of incorporation, cancelled meeting in February because it was expecting ground-breaking progress from the County that would give the MAC direction on several key issues.  As discussed in the prior posts, that direction did not come.

So the MAC found itself, in a way, starting over again, with a discussion of procedure, the boundaries being considered, and its timeline for consideration: not very substantive issues given the age of the MAC.

Timeline: it was confirmed that the NE MAC first met (in its present form) held its first meeting in late February 2013.  The county code Section 20-29(E) provides that the MAC must complete its study within 24 months.  This means the MAC must "wrap it up" in 11 months.  The county representative was asked if incorporation could possibly be on the ballot in the November general election (when people actually vote).  He answered that since it takes the county government about 120 days to set an election, that the vote would likely be no sooner than mid-2015.  One of the most-asked questions about incorporation is "when is the vote", so there's your answer: 2015.

Boundaries:  The county staff were challenged on a statement they had made previously: that the boundaries being considered by the NE MAC could not be changed to exclude the [vocal anti-incorporation] condos in the SW part of the study area.  The challenge was twofold: (i) there is NOT a prohibition against an incorporation that creates an "enclave" (county representative Jorge Fernandez said the opposite at a meeting in 2013), and (ii) there may be no such "enclave" anyway, because the condos would be "attached" to the unincorporated area to the west of I-95.  There was some friction here: Jorge Fernandez didn't want to pursue a change to the boundaries, and some members of the MAC wouldn't be shrugged off so easily (again), so it was decided that the county attorney would be consulted for an opinion on the matter. 

County Meeting Update:  The county representative (Fernandez) glossed over the [disappointing] February 27 meeting of county commissioners, where the "tough" issues on both incorporation and annexation were basically deferred.  The county is going to hire a "consultant" to study the issue and make recommendations (again), and the consultant hasn't even been selected yet, so there is no help on the critical issue of mitigation (below), and likely won't be during the MAC's 2-year lifespan.

Budget Discussion:  Since the county gave no direction on Mitigation, there is a big issue facing the MAC.  Recall that "Mitigation" is the idea that if a "donor community" such as ours incorporates (forms a new city), the County would lose money on the deal, and nobody likes losing money.  So the county has a "poison pill" in the county laws that says 'if a donor community incorporates, we want to keep getting paid.'  See how that might be a little devastating to a new city that had hoped to "keep those tax dollars at work locally and not spent elsewhere in the county?"  Jorge Fernandez suggested that in other recent incorporations (in Miami Lakes, Doral and Palmetto Bay) the law had been enforced loosely, but that's not very comforting coming from a guy who was caught in a lie about the boundaries (see 2 paragraphs up). It was decided that the budget for the "new city" would have to account for mitigation payments to the county, until the county stops dragging its feet and addresses the issue (very unlikely to happen before the MAC wraps up in February 2015).

Mitigation is such a critical issue to incorporation that it deserves it's own post, coming up next.