Miami officials, developer reach compromise to save part of key prehistoric Brickell site

Miami’s historic preservation board late Tuesday set the wheels in motion towards designation of a big piece of a major prehistoric archaeological site in Brickell as a protected landmark, but in a compromise with the property owners, the Related Group, held back on action on a portion where the prominent developer plans to build a pair of skyscrapers.

The two 8-0 votes by the preservation board came after a confusing and sometimes heated five-hour hearing that one archaeologist who helped city staff draw up a proposal for historic designation of the Related property, University of Miami professor William Pestle, described as “chaos.”

The votes appeared to provide the city preservation board something that residents, activists and independent experts had been clamoring for: greater and more direct authority over what Related does at the site of what’s quickly come to be considered the most significant local archaeological discovery since the Miami Circle in 1998.

The votes also remove, at least for now, the suggested threat from Related founder and Chairman Jorge Perez of what one preservation board member, Luis Prieto y Munoz, called “protracted litigation” against the city had it effectively delayed the company’s development plans by moving ahead with a proposal to designate the entire property.

The discoveries at the site have prompted intensive public interest, with more than 50 people lining up to speak at the hearing, most of them in support of historically significant designation. An overflow crowd filled the commission chambers at Miami City Hall and a tent set up outside the building entrance.

Related and Perez also had supporters at the hearing, including several other developers and building industry officials who touted the developers’ sense of responsibility and quality of work.

One archaeologist said the ongoing excavation at the site, which has uncovered extensive evidence of indigenous occupation going back thousands of years, is the largest in Florida history. Independent experts say stone projectile points found at the site that are around 7,000 years old suggest the site has seen human occupation for that long, although Related’s chief consulting archaeologist, Robert Carr, disputed that conclusion at Tuesday’s hearing. Carr speculated the stone artifacts were collected by people who occupied the spot much later.

What every expert agreed on is that most of the thousands of artifacts and animal and human remains on the site represent an unusually rich and well-preserved trove dating to the peak of occupation by a substantial Tequesta indigenous town some 2,500 years ago.

But how far the city board’s authority will reach and what tangible preservation results will come from its actions on Tuesday remains far from settled.

Several board members said their goal was to pave the way for a broad and legally enforceable agreement with Related that could entail preservation of some portions of the site, ensure public exhibit of archaeological finds and help fund research into the discoveries.

The board opted to move ahead with formal consideration of designation as a protected archaeological site for a parcel at 444 Brickell, where an office building that houses the Capital Grille restaurants and 10 stories of offices still stands. Related plans to eventually demolish the building and erect a tower on the parcel, which archaeologists say is likely to uncover a rich trove of ancient indigenous artifacts and relics.

The Tuesday vote means historic preservation staffers will now prepare an in-depth analysis of the merits of legal protection for that portion of the site for a second and final board vote around July. Designation would give the preservation board authority to review, approve or modify Related’s development plans for that parcel to protect or highlight its archaeological and historical importance.

Because its development plans for the parcel are not imminent, Related did not raise immediate or substantial objections to the designation process on that site.

But Related, Perez and their attorneys from Greenberg Traurig claimed that initiating designation consideration for the second parcel, the former site of a demolished federal complex at 777 SE Fifth Street, would entail permitting and construction delays and cause problems with financial partners, investors and lenders that could cost the developer “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Perez also said that 18 months of painstaking archaeological work on the site has cost Related $20 million to date.

Related has building permits for the first phase, an apartment tower, for which the company has taken out a $164 million construction loan. Crews have begun foundation work on a portion of the 777 parcel, where archaeological excavation has been finished. Excavation continues on the north half of the parcel on the Miami River where Related plans to build an ultra-luxury condo called Baccarat Residences.

The board agreed to withdraw a proposal for designation of the 777 property, but as a condition of doing so required Related to submit a “preservation action plan” for review within six months of completion of archaeological work on the tract. It’s unclear what the plan would contain, but Related representatives suggested it could range from on-site exhibition of artifacts and other historic elements in the buildings and along a planned riverwalk and other open spaces.

“Doing the right thing for this community remains my highest priority,” Perez told the board, even as he complained testily that “misinformed or malintended individuals” had been making unfounded claims about the firm’s handling of the archaeological project.

The board condition requires Related to consult “stakeholders” such as Native American tribes and independent archaeologists on its action plan.

The developers’ already approved master plan for the properties also includes a planned walkway that would link the site to the Miami Circle National Historic Landmark at the mouth of the river under the Brickell Avenue bridge.

At the hearing, a presentation prepared by independent archaeologists and the city preservation office concluded the entire site meets several of the legal criteria for designation as a protected historic and archaeological landmark, not least because of its antiquity.

Given the financial and political stakes involved, the board was never likely to stop all development on the site, which sits just west of the Brickell Bridge and which Related bought for $104 million in 2013.

But several Native Americans at the hearing called both the development and archaeological excavation, which unearthed partial human remains, a “desecration” of an ancient burial ground and demanded all work stop. Under state law, human remains at archaeological sites are removed and reburied under supervision of designated Florida tribes, including the Seminoles.

Related has been largely silent on the findings and the massive excavation that’s been in progress for about a year and a half, and has consistently declined requests from Miami Herald reporters for comment or interviews. But the company has complied with all state and local regulations requiring archaeological excavation, preservation and documentation of findings, city officials say.

The excavation has been going on under the public radar. Neither Related nor the city of Miami’s preservation program, which oversees the excavation, sought to publicize the dramatic discoveries at the site. Because it’s long been designated as an archaeological zone, Related was required by law to investigate the site and hire archaeologists to conduct a methodical excavation once evidence of prehistoric settlement was found.