Wynwood property owners and developers, looking to turn the
industrial-district-turned-hipster-mecca into a real, honest-to-goodness
neighborhood, have banded together to do something almost unheard of in
Miami: Voluntarily control development.
Working through the
auspices of a city-chartered business improvement district, the group
has crafted a comprehensive zoning plan that its members say will
encourage preservation of Wynwood’s characteristic warehouses and funky
vibe, foster development of small-scale retail, creative enterprises and
affordable housing for its youthful
habitues, and improve the
street experience by widening sidewalks and introducing greenery where
now there’s cracked concrete and asphalt.
The proposed Wynwood
Neighborhood Revitalization District, which goes to the city commission
for initial review on Thursday, would allow warehouse owners to sell
unused development rights to other local property owners in exchange for
preserving the structures, and would create a design-review board to
ensure new development is compatible with the artsy neighborhood
aesthetic.
It also contains a novel approach to parking — a
bedeveling issue since the district became one of Miami’s hottest
redevelopment zones. Instead of requiring a set parking minimum for
every new development, the plan would allow developers to reduce the
number of required slots by paying into a special fund. The BID, which
represents the district’s 200 property owners, could then use that
pooled money to fund construction of centralized parking.
The
reduced requirements, the plan’s authors say, would lower housing costs
and encourage development suited to Wynwood’s small industrial lots,
many of which can’t accommodate lots of parking, instead of the typical
Miami redevelopment model of lot assemblages that often leads to
overscaled development. Think New York City’s traditional mid-scale
neighborhoods and not maxed-out Brickell, they say.
“We’re trying
to discourage developers from building up to the maximum height,” said
David Polinsky, a BID board member and developer who’s building
Wynwood’s first new residential project in years, a small 11-unit condo
next to Panther Coffee. “We want human scale.”
The linchpin of the
plan, drawn up for the BID by Miami firm PlusUrbia: Increasing but
strictly capping housing density to bring full-time residents to the
sparsely populated warehouse district, whose outdated light-industrial
zoning now makes new residential development largely unfeasible. The
plan would also create a true, walkable urban environment of the type
that attracts the millenial generation already flocking to Wynwood’s art
galleries, bars and restaurants and its growing number of creative
businesses.
The plan also would allow the creation of Miami's first
woonerf
— a Dutch-inspired curbless street design in which slow-moving cars and
pedestrians share the right of way — to help bring a semblance of
landscaped public space to a neighborhood with a severe shortage of it.
Three side streets have been designated as possible
woonerfs, which could beclosed for special events.
“This
is the planning document that takes us to Wynwood 2.0,” said Joe Furst,
BID chairman and managing director at Goldman Properties, the firm that
helped launch the Wynwood renaissance when it commissioned graffiti
artists to spray-paint murals on a set of old warehouses. “It’s time to
create a place that people can call home. This is the most comprehensive
way of thinking about a neighborhood.”
The plan’s backers say
they believe reductions in parking and the density increase could result
in relatively affordable apartments as small as 650 square feet.
The
plan, in the works for more than a year, was developed in conjunction
with Miami’s planning department and recently won the unanimous
endorsement of the city planning board. It applies only to the
industrial zone south of 29th Street, and not to the mostly residential,
working-class portions of Wynwood north of that.
The plan would, among other features:
▪ Increase overall
housing density and allow buildings up to 12 stories along North Miami
Avenue and up to eight stories on Northwest Second and Fifth avenues,
with the rest of the neighborhood at five stories.
▪ Discourage
warehouse teardowns by allowing owners looking to preserve the
structures — which are too modest to qualify for protection as historic
buildings — to sell their unused air rights to developers who want to
build up to the caps on the main avenues.
▪ Establish
a design-review board made up of local stakeholders to advise the city
planning department on the compatibility of new development.
▪ Mandate
expansion of sidewalks from the current five feet to 10 feet and
require that the district’s long blocks be broken up with “paseos,” or
public cut-throughs from one block to another, in new developments.
Some developers are already designing projects according to the new
rules. Jonathon Yormak, principal of a New York firm that has bought
several properties in Wynwood, said its architects have laid out plans
for 250 apartments and 35,000 square feet of retail on a large property
across from Polinsky’s 250 Wynwood condo.
The new building would
rise on the site once slated for Wynwood Central, a scrapped mixed-use
project that would have had just 69 large rental apartments under the
existing zoning. The new rules would permit smaller, more affordable
units that appeal to Wynwood’s young millenial professionals and
creative types, Yormak said.
“There is no question it’s better for Wynwood” he said.
“Under
the existing zoning code, if you wanted to build housing and cater to
millenials, people who can’t really afford luxury, there was no way to
build that at all.
“We want young, smart knowledge-based workers
in all industries to be able to afford and live in an urban environment
where there is food and art and culture, and to be able to walk
everywhere. It needs to be a 24-7 environment, and not just Thursday
night partying and Sunday brunch.”
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