Developers want permission to destroy historic buildings on Miami Beach. Florida Senate said, OK! | Opinion

If you listen to the sponsors of legislation to make it easier to demolish historic buildings, their proposal is about making coastal construction more resilient to storms and flooding. It’s about putting people’s safety before buildings.

Lawmakers are sold on that idea. The Senate on Friday passed Senate Bill 1346 with bipartisan support by a 33-6 vote.

But, make no mistake, the real winners would be developers who would bypass local governments and potentially build bigger, taller oceanfront buildings in place of older ones with historic value.

It’s as if the legislation were written to overrule Miami Beach’s Historic Preservation Board and efforts to preserve the Art Deco buildings that are the backbone of a profitable tourism industry. On Friday, sponsor Sen. Bryan Avila of Northwest Miami-Dade County amended the legislation to create a carve-out that seems to protect St. Augustine’s historic downtown. Miami Beach didn’t get so lucky, even though the scope of the bill became smaller after outcry from across the state.

Within days of the legislation being filed in March, real estate company 13th Floor Investments gave $10,000 to each of the political committees run by Avila and the bill’s House sponsor, the Herald reported. The company owns a beachfront Art Deco building on Collins Avenue that it plans to develop along with an adjacent property. A company spokesperson told the Herald the donations are unrelated to the legislation.

Development has long been a contentious issue in Miami Beach given its limited vacant land and an engaged constituency who balks at attempts to turn the Beach into anything resembling Brickell. Blocked by local opposition, it’s easier for developers if the Legislature passes blanket state laws preempting local authority.

Banning local rule

SB 1346 prohibits local governments from blocking the demolition of any building — with some exceptions — that are at least in part “seaward of the coastal construction control line” (essentially, properties close to the ocean). Those structures must also sit in certain flood zones outlined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and not meet new federal construction standards.

Virtually no historic building, by definition, meets those standards. Most of Miami Beach lies in the flood zones listed in the bill, City Commissioner Alex Fernandez wrote in a letter to Avila. The legislation makes exceptions for single-family homes and properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places, on which Miami Beach has only seven, Fernandez wrote. It also exempts towns of fewer than 10,000 residents and communities that have at least three buildings over 200 years old — in other words, St. Augustine. Another exemption was created for “areas of critical state concern,” a designation under which the Key West’s Old Town falls.

A previous version of the bill banned local governments from restricting demolitions in areas within half a mile from the coast. That would have exposed 2,600 buildings protected by Miami Beach historic preservation regulations to demolition.

The bill has been scaled down but would still cover properties along the iconic Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue — the heart of Miami Beach’s Art Deco architecture. It guarantees that 13th Floor Investments can demolish at least one of the properties it wants to develop, the shuttered Patrician Hotel on Collins Avenue, without going through the city’s Historic Preservation Board, Fernandez said.

The legislation also allows property owners anywhere in the state, not just on the coast, to tear down a building — historic or not — that has been deemed unsafe or ordered to be demolished by a local government. This could easily turn into an incentive for developers to purchase historic properties and let them become derelict. Think of the impact on gentrifying historic neighborhoods such as Little Havana and Coconut Grove.

Once those buildings are razed to the ground, municipalities and counties would be banned from having any say on the scale of the replacement construction or requiring that features of the original structure be preserved. Developers could build as high and as big as local zoning rules allow.

Avila told a Senate committee his bill is “very narrowly tailored,” intended to only do away with unsafe buildings. But he misrepresented his bill by suggesting only structures deemed unsafe could be torn down. A simple reading of the bill proves otherwise. Any property that falls in the areas designated in the bill could be demolished, no matter the state they are in.

Avila said historic protections can go too far and get in the way of replacing outdated structures.

“Not everything can be historic,” Avila said. “If everything is deemed historic, you devalue what’s really historic.”

Avila might have a point that local governments can be too zealous. But, as Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo, of Hollywood, said on the Senate floor Friday, Avila is using “a hammer on a bug.” For Miami Beach, his bill is anything but narrow.