The Miami-Dade County Commission gave 65,340 square feet of waterfront land to a nonprofit affiliated with the developers of the $300 million River Landing so that it can be turned into a 50-foot-wide linear park.
The land transfer occurred around midnight on June 30 following a busy day at the Stephen P. Clark Center that dealt with sheltering downtown Miami’s homeless, making marijuana possession a misdemeanor offense, cab drivers protesting Uber, and an appeal over the historic designation of the circa-1958 Bay Harbor Continental.
Located at 1280 Northwest 11th Street, the land given to the River Landing project, now used as a parking lot, has been appraised as high as $4.9 million, according to a county memo. But for the transfer to be final, River Landing’s developers, Andrew Hellinger and Coralee Penabad, must invest $4 million within three years on greenway and seawall improvements. River Landing’s lobbyist, Brian May, said his clients also will be prohibited from developing the donated land.
“It can only be used as a park,” May promised. “There can be no building, no Starbucks, no nothing. This is meant to be a riverwalk.”
When completed, River Landing will include include 426,000-square-feet of retail, 475 apartments and more than 2,200 parking spaces. The project had already received $7.5 million from the county’s Economic Development Fund on March 4.