Miami-Dade colleges leaders promoting a downtown car parking zone to Miami Seaside developer.

The Miami-Dade School Board building located in downtown Miami.

The Miami-Dade School Board building located in downtown Miami.

For the Miami Herald

On his way out the door, Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho inked a deal to sell a parking lot next to the downtown Miami school district headquarters to a Miami Beach developer for $25 million, the first step in an ambitious but tentative plan to redevelop public property in the old Omni neighborhood.

On Wednesday, the Miami-Dade County School Board was expected to ratify the sale of a roughly one-acre lot across Northeast Second Avenue from the Adrienne Arsht Center’s ballet and opera house to developer Russell Galbut’s Crescent Heights, which already owns an adjacent one- acre parking lot.

Galbut hopes to build a 43-story tower with 1,100 apartments on the joined lots that would include new offices and an auditorium for the School Board, which has been looking to move out of its outdated 1968 headquarters a block north.

Under the complex sale agreement, the tower would also provide 600 parking spaces for the School Board to share with the Arsht, which lacks its own garage. Parking has long been an issue for the center, whose visitors have depended on surface lots in the area which are gradually being redeveloped. Though the School Board wouldn’t have to foot the cost of the new facilities, the Crescent Heights project would require a substantial injection of public dollars from a city of Miami agency, though the amount hasn’t been set.

CrescentHeights-06-PAC-Cam02-04.jpg A rendering displays a proposed 43-story tower, designed by star architect Rafael Vinoly, that would include new offices and an auditorium for the Miami-Dade County School Board and administration, as well as shared parking for schools officials and the adjacent Adrienne Arsht Center . In the foreground is the nearby Frost Museum of Science, the signature I-395 bridge that’s now under construction, and the Arsht’s ballet and opera house. Crescent Heights

The parking lot sale has been in the works since 2018, when Crescent Heights won a public bid for the property.

But much else has to happen before the sale closes, the Crescent Heights tower is built, or the School Board can move out to new digs.

The parking lot sale, under negotiation for about five years, is a key element in a far-reaching redevelopment strategy worked out between the School Board, Crescent Heights and the city of Miami’s Omni Community Redevelopment Agency, which uses a portion of taxes from new development in the neighborhood to combat blight and poverty.

The strategy would allow the School Board to sell or redevelop its existing headquarters building, the adjacent studios for WLRN radio and TV, and other lots and parking garages it owns in the vicinity, as well as the building housing iPrep Academy, a magnet program Carvalho — who accepted a new job as superintendent of Los Angeles public schools — founded and which he directed as principal. All that land, about 10 acres in total, is now untaxed.

Taxes from new development, including the planned Crescent Heights tower, could provide subsidies for potentially hundreds of apartments in the neighborhood for teachers, cafeteria workers, students and low-income families, as well as a new building nearby for iPrep, CRA officials say.

The sale and the broader vision is contingent on the city extending the life of the Omni CRA, now set to expire in 2030, for an additional 15 years. However, the city commission, which also serves as the governing board for the CRA, has for three years repeatedly deferred voting on the extension. Although the extension is on the agenda for Thursday’s commission meeting, the CRA expects it again will be deferred.

If the agency’s life is prolonged, schools administrators and the CRA would then also have to work out a detailed agreement for disposition of the school district properties, development of housing and the new iPrep school and other elements of the plan.

To make it financially feasible for Crescent Heights to provide the School Board offices, auditorium and parking, the CRA would put tax revenue from the project back into it as a subsidy. It would also own 600 of the tower’s planned 1,100 parking spaces so they can be dedicated for Arsht and School Board use.

Miami-Dade schools administrators put the value of the proposed new facilities and the parking at $60 million, money that would not have to come out of the schools budget.

If the broader vision is realized, it could unlock hundreds of millions of dollars for low-income, affordable and workforce housing, CRA officials say.

“This is really a huge opportunity for everyone,” said Adam Old, the CRA’s director of planning and policy.

The school system’s chief facilities officer, Raul Perez, said in an interview that the lot sale would open the door to a deal that could bring substantial savings to the district by reducing maintenance costs for an aging, outdated headquarters building, as well as potentially substantial revenue through the sale or leasing of its properties for development.

“This is the first piece of a major puzzle,” Perez said.

The CRA collects a portion of property taxes from new development in the area, formerly known as the Omni neighborhood after the mall of the same name, to finance improvements within the taxing district’s boundaries, which also includes a significant slice of northwestern Overtown. After construction of the Arsht, the city rechristened the neighborhood as the Arts and Entertainment District.

Although the area has seen substantial new development since the agency was formed, including the Arsht and a spade of new apartment towers, much of it remains blighted and impoverished. The School Board’s fortress-like headquarters and its extensive, fenced parking lots and aging three-story parking garage, none of which provide property tax revenue for the city or county, have long been seen as contributing to the area’s blight. But the properties are increasingly valuable and could generate significant tax revenue if put into private hands.

After discarding earlier designs for the project, Crescent Heights released renderings by controversial star architect Rafael Vinoly for an S-shaped tower.

The architect acknowledged making “a lot of mistakes” in his glass-sheathed “walkie-talkie” tower in London, which focused so much concentrated sunlight that it melted a Jaguar parked on the street below in 2013. Vinoly also admitted to “a couple of screw ups” in designing a residential tower, the tallest in the Western Hemisphere, on Park Avenue in Manhattan. That tower’s condo board sued the developers for $125 million, alleging hundreds of design and construction defects; one of the developers later countersued.

This story was originally published February 9, 2022 7:58 PM.

Profile Image of Andres Viglucci

Andres Viglucci covers urban affairs for the Miami Herald. He joined the Herald in 1983.

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