Can a traffic circle ruin historic road? Residents sue Miami-Dade over Old Cutler plan

In a 13th floor courtroom in downtown Miami, lawyer Jeffrey Shalek tried to convince a judge it was a bad idea to let Miami-Dade County widen historic Old Cutler Road to create a four-lane roundabout and street lights where Pinecrest meets Palmetto Bay.

“It’s going to make it easier for people to get in and out of Palmetto Bay by destroying the historic nature” of Old Cutler, Shalek told Judge Charles Johnson during the Nov. 30 hearing in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. “This road is pitch black. This is the charm of the road.”

The argument against dramatic changes around the intersection of Old Cutler and Southwest 67th Avenue is part of a year-long court fight by neighbors set to lose trees and grassy buffers on public land outside their suburban homes if Miami-Dade succeeds in building a traffic circle nearby. They’re fighting to make Miami-Dade adhere to historic preservation protections for Old Cutler enshrined in the county code, which bars widening the former 19th Century trail for anything other than safety reasons.

In May 2020, county commissioners unanimously approved spending $4.5 million to create four new circles on Cutler, waiving historic preservation restrictions for the 19th Century road by citing the need for safety improvements. The legislation was sponsored by the current county mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, who at the time represented the Palmetto Bay area as a Miami-Dade commissioner. A spokesperson said that, as commissioner, Levine Cava succeeded in having the county agree to relocate some of the larger trees needed to be cleared for the project.

“Throughout the years, development in the southern area of Miami-Dade County has caused Old Cutler Road to become extremely congested, with many residents east of US-1 preferring to utilize this winding country-style roadway,” reads a 2020 county memo recommending the project to commissioners.

Work is already underway for the project, which plans to put traffic circles on Cutler at the intersections of four southwest roadways: 67th Avenue, 136th Street, 152nd Street and 184th Street. The one at Southwest 67th Avenue — with Pinecrest homes on one side of the intersection and Palmetto Bay homes on the other — is the subject of the litigation. Lead plaintiff Dean Warhaft argues the widening of Cutler violates the county’s own code protecting Old Cutler and the venerable trees that line the 19th Century roadway.

“The canopy is what everybody lives for,” Warhaft, a real estate developer and lawyer who used to work for the company that built Miami’s Panorama Tower, said in a recent interview. “This really sets a precedent for the county to continue to destroy the heritage of our community.”

The May 5, 2020 county memo said the Old Cutler intersections targeted for circles average at least one crash a month. With traffic circles slowing intersection travel to 25 mph or less, federal statistics show the roundabouts typically reduce serious collisions by 80 percent, according to the memo.

“The proposed circles provide not only a benefit to traffic flow by improving the functionality of the intersections, but also a provide a significantly safer intersection,” the memo read.

A hearing in the case is set for Monday, Jan. 8, when the plaintiffs hope Judge Johnson will grant them the injunction needed to save the Cutler intersection at 67th Avenue. Time isn’t on their side: county crews are already installing the traffic circle that’s about 500 feet away at Southwest 136th Street.

Named after a farming community called Cutler championed by a Dr. William Cutler from Massachusetts in the late 1880s, Old Cutler Road started as a walking path cut north and east through pine rocklands and hammocks to connect with Coconut Grove (then spelled Cocoanut Grove). It followed a limestone ridge along Biscayne Bay, and eventually was widened enough to allow wagons to move through, according to information posted on Florida’s compendium of historic markers.

The Cutler community faded — it was a bit northeast of current namesake Cutler Bay — but Cutler Road endured.

The Florida Legislature declared Old Cutler an historic highway in 1974, with an altered path linking the Grove with what’s now Cutler Bay. Two years earlier, what was then Dade County adopted an ordinance prohibiting the expansion of Old Cutler Road “from its present character as a country road.” The Dade ordinance also bars widening Old Cutler, but does allow “the limited expansion of intersections” by the county commission “for the purpose of assuring safe travel on Old Cutler Road.”

That language is at the heart of the legal dispute, with plaintiffs claiming there’s no safety issue at stake for the widening that will bring asphalt closer to their homes in the approach to the new traffic circle. In fact, they contend their own engineer has discovered safety flaws in the county’s design that will make the intersection at 67th Avenue more dangerous.

“If you’re going to pave paradise, at least engineer it right,” said Betsy Wise, a co-plaintiff who owns Wise Branding Group, a marketing firm.

She said the county’s plan to widen Old Cutler and remove trees outside her home will leave her much closer to traffic than she ever expected when, according to county records, she paid $1.1 million for the 1926 home in 2019. “I’ve driven Old Cutler my entire life and always dreamed of owning a home on the street.”

Shalek, the lawyer, said some of the trees on public land outside Wise’s home started growing in the early 1800s. “They are proposing to remove a tree that has been there since James Monroe was president of the United States,” he said.

A third plaintiff, John Hammel, owns a property that was once part of the World War I-era Chapman airfield complex, and says in court papers he gave land to Miami-Dade so the county could install sidewalks outside. “Now the County wants to use the identical right of way gifted to it by Hammel to destroy the property’s charm,” reads the motion for the injunction.

The legal battle against the county’s roundabout plan has its own critics from residents who say they’re looking forward to seeing the traffic lights go.

Michelle Craven said she noticed an improvement when Cutler Bay added a traffic circle at Old Cutler and Southwest 87th Avenue under a 2009 joint agreement with Miami-Dade. Craven, a teacher in the public school system, said she’s ready for to see the modernization effort continue as more drivers clog the roads.

“I remember what that was like as a traffic light. This works better as a circle,” she said of the 87th Avenue roundabout. “I can’t even imagine what the intersection would be like with all of the new people driving through.”

For now, Miami-Dade’s roundabout project continues as Warhaft and the other plaintiffs await Judge Johnson’s ruling on their request for an injunction to halt the work. Part of their legal argument centers on the public notice requirements for the roadwork. In court filings, they contend Miami-Dade administrators minimized the amount of land needed for a modest roundabout, leading to panic when they saw county notices about pending removal of trees to make way for a wider road.

Bruce Libhaber, an assistant county attorney overseeing the case, responded that the county followed the rules by holding an online public hearing during the May 2020 meeting when commissioners approved the Old Cutler project. The meeting was held virtually as the COVID-19 pandemic entered its third month of disrupting government proceedings. Libhaber said the plaintiffs are wrongly claiming Miami-Dade kept the project’s details under wraps because some final details, such as engineering drawings, weren’t yet completed.

Libhaber also suggested no amount of detailed renderings or minor tweaks of the county’s plans would satisfy the residents.

“It is abundantly clear,” Libhaber said told the judge, “they just don’t want a circle.”

This article was updated to correct the purchase price, purchase date and year of construction for Betsy Wise’s home.