GENTRIFICATION OF WEST GROVE
Redevelopment comes to West Grove, but not everyone's cheering
Residents of the historic but decayed West Grove neighborhood fear a planned redevelopment will enrich a lucky few but force them to abandon their roots.
BY ANDRES VIGLUCCI
AVIGLUCCI@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Years of decline and stalled redevelopment schemes have turned Grand Avenue, the once-bustling heart of the old West Grove Bahamian enclave, into a drab landscape of vacant lots, empty storefronts and aging concrete apartment blocks.
Now Grand Avenue could be at long last on the verge of a transformation, but not everyone in the West Grove is celebrating.
Some longtime residents fear a massive redevelopment project could wipe out much of what's left of Miami's longest-settled black neighborhood.
The private project, in the works for three years, would almost entirely clear six large blocks along Grand and rebuild them with a mix of multistory apartments and townhomes, shops, offices and -- according to city officials -- a new Publix supermarket.
Developer Pointe Group/Advisors, some residents and elected officials, led by Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, whose district includes the West Grove, say the project will provide jobs and a sorely needed economic boost for a neighborhood that has experienced a steep population loss and nosediving property values.
But while the idea of bringing new commerce and people to Grand seems to enjoy broad local acceptance, the project's scope and potential impact on the surrounding community -- one of the poorest in the city -- have raised fears of displacement and gentrification, sharply dividing West Grove residents.
Some fear that, absent ironclad guarantees for the inclusion of affordable housing, the project could spell the end of the West Grove as a place where generations of Bahamian and African American families forged a stable, tight-knit neighborhood with a unique identity.
``I`ve heard much talk from the developer about maintaining the Bahamian vernacular architecture, but not the Bahamians,'' said Jihad S. Rashid, president of the Coconut Grove Collaborative, a community group that recently threw its support behind the project after the initially resistant developer agreed to include at least 40 units of affordable housing -- though details remain far from set.
``We've cried for investment for decades. We want the development. We don't mind the new diversity -- with the caveat that some of the historical community can remain, so that we're around to enjoy it,'' Rashid said.
INITIAL APPROVAL
Some with deep roots in the West Grove support the project, saying it's well thought out, sensitive to the neighborhood, and simply the best hope of reversing what one called ``obsolescence and decay'' on Grand Avenue.
``This project is the most gentle breaking of eggs that is possible,'' Dr. George Simpson, a member of the pioneering Stirrup family who owns rental properties on the blocks to be redeveloped, told city commissioners recently at a public hearing.
The commission on Thursday unanimously gave the nod to a package of land-use changes sought by the developer to permit commercial development on properties now limited to residential uses. The developers must still undergo extensive review and further hearings before obtaining necessary zoning changes and development permits, a process that could take months.
The Grove Village on Grand, to be built in phases, would occupy three contiguous blocks on both the north and south sides of Grand, extending all the way to the single-family residential streets running parallel to the avenue to the north and south.
The blueprint is in flux, but calls for 240 rental units, including some homes and townhomes, ground-floor retail space, offices, a possible hotel, public green space and squares, and a grocery store (although Sarnoff announced it would be a Publix, neither the company nor Gardner would comment). The buildings, limited to five stories, would be a mix of contemporary and traditional, Bahamas-inspired architecture.
``It's an area that needs change, and we like to think we're going to enhance it,'' said Pointe Group's Peter Gardner, a Coconut Grove native.
But some activists say Gardner's blueprint, which would remove the last remaining cheap rental apartments on Grand, is too glitzy for the area.
``Development on Grand Avenue is good, but we don't want Grand Avenue to be Mayfair,'' said West Grove activist Williams Armbrister, referring to the upscale retail and office complex in the adjoining, more affluent Coconut Grove.
DEEP ROOTS
There is little doubt that the project would represent a significant turning point for a neighborhood that traces its roots to the 1880s, when the first Bahamian families came to Coconut Grove to work at the Peacock Inn, Miami's first hotel.
Bolstered by black settlers from Georgia and the Carolinas, the enclave grew through the years of legally enforced segregation into the 1960s, becoming an economically diverse, self-contained community that included business people, teachers, police officers, doctors and lawyers, while always retaining a Bahamian character.
Those professionals built homes to the north and south of Grand, the main commercial strip that also housed poorer residents in concrete apartment buildings and duplexes. Some of the single-family homes are now occupied by second and third generations of the original West Grove families, many of them now elderly.
But West Coconut Grove -- so called to distinguish it from the mostly white Coconut Grove to the east and south -- has been losing population for the past 30 years as young people left, older generations died off, poverty and crime rates rose, and the housing stock deteriorated.
The West Grove's plight only worsened during the real-estate boom, when speculators descended on the area, buying out some longtime homeowners and flipping properties before the market crashed. The neighborhood has suffered some of the highest declines in property values in the city, in part because of pervasive phony appraisals that artificially inflated them, Sarnoff says.
``When I moved back after years of being away, it was complete deterioration,'' recalls West Grove native Renita Samuels-Dixon, an elected member of the advisory Coconut Grove Village Council. ``The community was completely eroded.''
Like other community activists, Samuels-Dixon fears Pointe Group's project will only accelerate an exodus that saw the population drop from a high of as many as 12,000 people at the neighborhood's peak, to 2,900 in the 2000 Census. The population is likely lower than that today.
The developers, who already outright own or have contracts to buy the lion's share of the seven blocks, have torn down four small, dilapidated apartment buildings that provided cheap housing for some of the West Grove's poorest residents, though only 13 units were occupied, Pointe Group said.
Several more buildings, which according to Pointe Group contain a total of 112 ``habitable'' but mostly vacant units, would be demolished to make way for new development.
GRAND AND HIBISCUS
Some residents say they won't miss the apartment buildings, which they say are rundown and attract drug dealers.
``I'd be glad when those apartments are gone,'' said Alberta Johnson, 50, a lifelong West Grove resident whose rented clapboard house abuts the redevelopment area, pointing to a concrete structure on the corner of Grand and Hibiscus Street. ``We don't know where some of these young people come from, but they're not from around here.''
Some activists say the 40 affordable units pledged by Pointe Group, however, are an insufficient replacement.
``What they are telling us is we can't afford to have poor people in this development,'' said Pierre Sands, president of the West Grove's main homeowners and tenants group. ``But poor people need a place to live as well. Tenants are a critical part of this community.''
Some homeowners whose houses would face the project fear their values would plunge further or, alternatively, that property taxes they can now barely afford would rise. Others, whose homes sit inside the proposed redevelopment blocks, say they won't budge.
``I'm not selling my house,'' said an angry Ida Adkins, 75, who has occupied a Florida Avenue home for 30 years with her husband, retired schoolteacher Ugene Adkins, 80. ``I worked too hard for it, and I have nowhere else to go. But all around me, everything will be gone.''
Pointe Group and city officials say no homeowners will be forced out. Gardner said the project will be designed to go around several holdouts who have declined to sell, with appropriate buffers such as green space. Wherever the project faces houses, the developer said he will build similar homes.
But many residents remain fearful and ill-informed, said Samuels-Dixon.
``We all know Coconut Grove village west has been in need of a facelift for years. My concern is for the seniors who were born and raised here and thought they could live here in peace,'' she said. ``Now they are in upheaval because they don't know what's going on. That group of people had been left out of the dialogue.''
Some area activists are urging that the city demand a legally enforceable contract with the developer, called a community benefits agreement, that spells out in detail what the firm pledges to do for the area. Such agreements are increasingly being used across the country to soften the gentrifying effects of inner-city redevelopment projects, said Anthony Alfieri, a University of Miami law professor and a director of the Coconut Grove Ministerial Alliance, which groups the West Grove's numerous churches.
``Without a community benefits agreement, it will be very difficult to ensure compliance with the commitments,'' Alfieri said, noting that Gardner is a longtime friend and seems open to the idea.
``There is a recognition that development is inevitable, but that it should go forward in a way that treats the historic stakeholders as equal participants in a good process, while recognizing the needs of a private developer.''
WILLING TO TALK
Gardner pledges his company would manage the buildings and emphasize local hiring, he said. He added he's held about 100 meetings with local groups and residents and remains ``willing to communicate with anyone.''
Rashid, who contends Pointe Group initially adopted a ``paternalistic'' attitude toward community concerns, seems to have come around -- though he believes the developer could do still more to accommodate and protect low-income residents.
``I want to be reasonable. This project would be a welcome change,'' he said. ``But if it's a vessel to prosperity, our names were not on the manifest. And that's the concern.''
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/30/v-fullstory/1900553/redevelopment-comes-to-west-grove.html#ixzz142V4x8Ub
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