The Miami Herald

Oct. 9, 2008

Ambitious Miami building project now a public nuisance

By FRED GRIMM
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com

Robert Shelley moved here . . . when? Maybe a year ago. He's not sure. The calendar has a way of eluding him. But 850 LeJuene Rd. was a definite step up from a less prestigious address beneath Interstate 95.

Sure, the I-95 underpass was drier. But Shelley likes the breeze here and the better class of itinerants who roam the busy stretch of Miami roadway just south of the airport.

Five men have spread their bedrolls under the 25-foot-high portico of an abandoned real estate sales office. Their meager belongings -- blankets, two pairs of shoes, a small mattress, two pairs of reading glasses, a battered green suitcase -- were arranged with surprising orderliness.

Shelley, 53, a slight, affable fellow with a South Carolina accent and hair, beard and mustache the color of Dijon mustard, opened the first of a six-pack of Natural Lite. He took a drink and allowed how he ``wasn't exactly who they had in mind living here.''

Not quite. Two years ago, Century Homebuilders wrangled approval from both the city and county to convert this old bank address into a 396,096-square-foot development -- a four-story project with retail, parking garage and 324 town houses.

PERSUASIVE POWERS

The project seemed utterly out of whack with zoning rules for residential projects so close (nine-tenths of a mile) to Miami International Airport, but the city and county commissions both said yes. Zoning approval for Century Plaza was seen as yet another sign of the formidable influence wielded hereabouts by developer Sergio Pino. His persuasive powers were such that local politicians would allow him to venture into heretofore forbidden tracts near airports or even beyond the Urban Development Boundary. But lately, Century Plaza is more a tattered sign of the brutal downturn in the local housing industry. Shelley and his companions can peer through the plate-glass windows into the abandoned project sales office and see a scale model of the stillborn development.

A tiny gray pup, Mikey, chased after my foot while I talked to Shelley and Emilio Rodriguez, 56, a kidney patient, who resides under the Century Plaza portico while he awaits word of either a donor kidney or public housing. He rolled up his sleeves to show me gruesome malformations rendered by his kidney disease. ''It
's not so bad here,'' he said. ``It's close to my clinic.''

AN UNINTENDED PURPOSE

Century Plaza has devolved into affordable housing of the unintended kind. The ambitious project, once deemed controversial because of a developer's unseemly political power, has descended into a more ordinary ignominy -- a public nuisance. The lot, bordering a busy steak restaurant, is a litter of discarded half-pint rum and vodka bottles, empty prescription drug vials, Styrofoam food containers and the other detritus of a homeless way station.

A notice taped to the door announces the big project's next appointment down at City Hall -- a code violation hearing on Oct. 21. Shelley, the human manifestation of a city code violation, figures he'll be checked out of Century Plaza by then. ''Me and Mikey are headed to Marathon,'' he said, ``soon as my money comes through.''

A lot of South Florida developers find themselves in the same boat as Shelley. Yeah, they've got big plans. Just as soon as that elusive financing comes through.