FL: Miami adds incentives for high-rises up to 1 mile from rail stations. What to know

A new zoning program in the city of Miami will allow for denser developments in a radius of up to a mile around existing and planned Metrorail and commuter rail stations, including Brightline stations, inside city boundaries.

Within those zones, developers can apply to build high-rise residential and commercial projects with considerably more units and height than the old local rules allowed, a strategy intended to sharply increase housing supply and affordability while boosting transit use.

The city’s current rules under the Miami 21 code’s “transitional zoning” strictly limits the height of new buildings abutting low-scale residential areas. But the new Transit Station Neighborhood Developments could erase those protections, planning board member Paula De Carolis told city planners in a June hearing before she voted against the measure.

At the hearing, residents and board members also questioned the size of the designated transit zones, which can range from a half-mile to a full mile from a station. Transit-oriented development, a well-established approach across the country, typically extends to a half-mile reach — a comfortable walk for a pedestrian.

But going out one mile, a distance that few in Miami will travel on foot to a station, undermines the premise that development at that distance could be reasonably linked to transit, while potentially blanketing too much of the city in high-rise, high-density new construction, critics say.

“I think the one mile is going to create a lot of problems,” planning board member Paul Mann said. “I think it’s going to change this city very dramatically.”

Kim Hogan, a Coconut Grove resident, said expecting people to walk a mile to reach a transit station is “insane.”

“You start sweating if you walk outside, let alone walking a mile to a station,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

A reluctant 6-3 planning board majority, after an intense two-hour public meeting, recommended that the City Commission approve the legislation. The Miami City Commission gave its final approval on July 24.

In a lengthy interview with the Miami Herald, city planning director David Snow and assistant planning director Sevanne Steiner said they instead expect the city’s new program to produce a measured, gradual process of densification around stations, with most of the new height and density close by. The rules and incentives are designed to encourage lower heights and density past the half-mile radius, they said.

The approval process sets out a complicated procedure that first requires a land-use change under the city’s comprehensive plan, which guides where, how much and what kind of development is allowed. Under the new program, the city must first approve a new “transit-node” designation for a property that depends on how much the area can reasonably accommodate.

Then, a developer can elect to submit a Transit Station Neighborhood Development plan under two categories — general or enhanced — that specify what can be built, how dense and how tall a project can be, to what distance from a station it can be, and what public benefits must be provided.

The enhanced category has extensive requirements that range from building or improving an existing rail station and development of a master plan that details how the project will be laid out, including new or improved streets and pedestrian connections.

A developer looking to build out one mile must provide new pedestrian and bike paths or a transit circulator shuttle.

The extensive requirements mean that only a relatively short list of ambitious and well-financed developers with the capacity to plan and build an entire urban neighborhood are likely to apply for the most intensive “enhanced” category. It also means there may be limited areas in the city where the most intensive developments would be feasible or even possible.