SMART GROWTH COMES TO HIALEAH Part 1

SMART GROWTH COMES TO HIALEAH, FLA

Hialeah is not the kind of place one thinks of when ticking off Florida’s prime examples of Smart Growth and New Urbanism. It doesn’t have the New Town appeal of the famed Panhandle city of Seaside or the Manhattan-like mixed-use urbanism of a Miami Beach.

For most of its eight-decade existence, Hialeah’s claim to fame has been its gorgeous thoroughbred racetrack and endless tangle of factories and blue-collar subdivisions.

The tens of thousands of working class Cuban-Americans who populate it coined a phrase to describe Hialeah: “agua, fango y factorias” – “water, mud and factories.”

So how could it possibly be that this industry-lined city of drained swampland be a hotbed of Smart Growth in two forms? How could Hialeah be leading the way toward walkable, mixed-use communities in both its revitalized downtown and a newly annexed area that will supply at least 4,000 residences to the built-out city?

Part of the answer lies in one Raul Martinez. Martinez, who served for nearly a quarter of a century as one of the few strong mayors in a South Florida region dominated by the city manager-weak mayor form of government.

Martinez, forceful, bombastic, brilliant and controversial, spearheaded both urban infill and greenfield smart growth in his beloved Hialeah.

“The problem with so many charettes, with so many planning sessions is you end up only with plans on the shelf. I like action, I like results. I made up my mind we were going to get a plan and then build it,” said Martinez, who was termed out of office in 2005.

“As soon as we had a master plan for downtown, a young developer built 300 townhouses. He took a risk, but he made some money on it, too,” he recalled.