13th Floor's South Miami City Hall Plan Fuels Park Relocation Fight
A private developer is asking South Miami to give up a park to build on the city's own land.
South Miami residents are pushing back on 13th Floor Investments’ plan to move a public park to make way for its $309 million redevelopment of the city’s own City Hall site, with commissioners set to take up the project’s ground leases at Tuesday’s meeting.
Why it matters
This is a private developer building on land the public already owns, and the price of that deal is Jean Willis Park. The Link at SoMi would relocate the park a few hundred feet toward U.S. 1 and the Underline to make room for two 15-story residential towers, and neighbors argue the new site puts the park’s mature tree canopy next to highway traffic, noise and fumes. The objection is specific enough that it already forced South Miami to defer the plan’s first reading once, on Sept. 8. Track how South Florida governments are trading public land for private towers at the South Florida hub.
The numbers
13th Floor’s plan calls for 670 apartments across two phases, including 67 units of workforce housing, plus 10,000 to 30,000 square feet of retail and 910 parking spaces across two garages. In exchange, the city would get a new 54,700-square-foot city hall and public safety building, including a 12,700-square-foot library, built into a $41.7 million civic-improvements budget. The developer’s ground-lease payments include $500,000 in initial rent per phase, $3.3 million when construction starts, and annual rent set at the greater of $600,000, with capped CPI increases, or 4.25 percent of gross project revenue. The Real Deal has previously put the total project cost at $309 million.
What’s next
Commissioners take up the franchise and two ground leases on first reading Tuesday, Sept. 22, with the city attorney’s office still negotiating the lease language beforehand. Because the deal requires an ordinance, it needs a second reading before it is final, expected alongside the project’s other major agreements. If approved, 13th Floor would have three years to start construction on phase one, with the second phase due to begin within a year of the first phase’s substantial completion.