Miami Beach would lift Washington Ave FAR to 4.0, if the hotels go

Miami Beach has two paired ordinances set for first reading Wednesday that would roughly double or triple allowable FAR along Washington Avenue in South Beach. The trade is not money and not affordable units: a developer has to permanently extinguish the short-term-rental income on the site.

Why it matters

Items R5 AI, a Comprehensive Plan amendment, and R5 AJ, the matching land development regulations, cover properties fronting Washington Avenue south of 17th Street and north of 5th Street. Both are sponsored by Commissioners David Suarez and Joseph Magazine. To use the new envelope under section 7.1.11, a project must fully vacate every existing transient use, hotel, apartment hotel, hostel, bed and breakfast and rooming house, surrender all short-term-rental approvals, and put non-transient residential on every floor above level one. It then records a covenant barring any rental shorter than six months and one day, permanently. Releasing that covenant takes a six-sevenths vote of the commission. Historic sites must retain, preserve and restore contributing structures under a certificate of appropriateness. There is no workforce or affordable set-aside in either ordinance.

The numbers

Four sub-overlays. CPS-2 from 5th to 6th and RM-2 from 6th to 7th both go to 4.0 FAR, heights of 75 ft and 100 ft, and 175 units per acre. CD-2 from 6th to 16th reaches 4.0 FAR at 55 ft rising to 75 ft, and 100 ft for non-transient residential, at 100 to 175 units per acre. CD-3 from 16th to 17th gets 3.25 FAR, 150 ft and 150 units per acre. In Comprehensive Plan Table RLU 1.1, CD-2 FAR moves from 1.5 to 4.0 and RM-2, CD-3 and C-PS2 each from 2.0 to 4.0. Minimum lot is 6,500 sq ft; units run 500 to 1,500 sq ft. Parking is capped at 20% of the Tier 1 requirement, no zone-2 on-street permits, mobility fee waived, and at least 30% of the first level must be a micro-mobility station. No variances, and the program excludes properties with a land use board application noticed on or before July 1, 2024.

What’s next

The operative number is the 1,000-unit citywide cap, allocated first-come first-served, with the bonus available only to projects holding a full building permit by September 1, 2033. That converts the rule into a queue. These are first readings only; second reading is set for October 14, and the commission recesses in August, with the next regular meeting September 10. Sibling items on this agenda have been repeatedly not reached at prior meetings, so treat Wednesday as scheduled, not decided. For South Florida sponsors underwriting a Washington Avenue site, the date to hold is October 14.