‘Many broken promises.’ Community needs in the spotlight for stalled Poinciana site

William “DC” Clark stood up at a recent town hall in Liberty City to say the 24 acres of vacant land known as Poinciana Park needed to be a job creator for the largely Black neighborhood if the county finally ends up building something there.

“You see people who don’t look like us in jobs on projects that were created for us,” said Clark, a retired paramedic who recently finished third in the Miami-Dade commission race to represent the Poinciana area. “We need to make sure a large portion of our people get the jobs they deserve.”

With Mayor Daniella Levine Cava as the host, the Feb. 6 meeting in the Gwen Cherry Park basketball courts served as the kickoff to the latest effort to revive one of Miami-Dade’s oldest failed projects.

After the riots that followed the 1980 acquittal of white county police officers in the beating death of a Black insurance agent, Arthur McDuffie, businesses on the site burned and the local economy never recovered.

The county purchased the parcels using federal redevelopment funds and launched multiple efforts with private developers and consultants to bring businesses and jobs to the vacant land now called the Poinciana Industrial Park.

“Poinciana is hallowed ground,” said Jason Smith, head of the equity office Levine Cava started after her 2020 election. “It is the site of many broken promises. Some by your county government.”

READ MORE: Neglected for decades, Miami-Dade’s Poinciana site now in a heated development contest

The Levine Cava administration has been in talks with two development groups for a deal to take control of the land and build a mix of housing and commercial operations there.

The site is a patchwork of 16 county-owned parcels in a five-block area south of Northwest 79th Street, between Northwest 27th and 23rd avenues.

At the meeting, the newly elected commissioner whose district includes the Poinciana site, Marleine Bastien, said she wants the process to take the time to determine what neighbors want.

“Whatever we build needs to represent your vision and your expectations,” she said. “This is going to be a dialogue.”

The two teams competing for the land are taking steps to get the upper hand and win the support needed to close the deal with Levine Cava and the 13-member County Commission.

The 79th Street Corridor Initiative is an established nonprofit hoping to land the development deal for the county-owned site. Until December, the 79th Street group had a contract to provide economic development services for the county-funded 79th Street Community Redevelopment Agency, an entity charged with revitalizing the area that includes the Poinciana site.

The group points to its history helping map out an economic-development strategy for the site as evidence it is ready to meet community needs. “Since 1999, we have developed several community-wide planning documents that outlined specific activities that would spur area revitalization,” reads the group’s latest proposal for a mix of commercial and residential projects on the site.

The group’s rival, a partnership headed by developer Michael Swerdlow, is in talks with a foundation headed by a county administrator who runs the Miami-Dade agency dedicated to improving Black prosperity.

William “Bill” Diggs, director of the Miami-Dade Economic Advocacy Trust, confirmed he’s met with Swerdlow about the Foundation for Youth and Economic Development joining the project to serve as a nonprofit housing developer in a project planning about 1,000 affordable-housing apartments. No decision has been made on the foundation’s joining the Swerdlow effort, Diggs said.

“We’ve taken a look at their proposal and we like it,” Diggs said. He called the foundation the charitable arm of the agency he runs, commonly known as MDEAT, and that the nonprofit is seeking revenue sources. “We want to always look at partnerships that make sense.”

The Swerdlow team has also met with Levine Cava’s top political adviser, Christian Ulvert, about hiring him to join the effort, Ulvert confirmed.

The owner of Edge Communications, a Miami political and communications firm, Ulvert served as Levine Cava’s 2020 campaign manager and is running her upcoming election effort for 2024.

Ulvert, who attended the Poinciana town hall, said he was approached about handling communications for Swerdlow and would not have a lobbying role. But he said working for Swerdlow is only a possibility at the moment.

“I have not decided,” Ulvert said this week.

The 79th Street Corridor Initiative has Miami real estate mogul Moishe Mana as a partner. He would build a new facility for a document-storage company he owns, plus develop other parcels with a 49% stake in the venture.

The Urban League of Greater Miami’s real estate arm would be the housing developer on the team, and a Jan. 21 updated proposal shows the 79th Street group increasing its residential component to include 30 townhouses for sale to “provide an opportunity for families in the community to become homeowners.”

The proposal also adds a “manufacturing incubator” to a cargo facility that would go on the site, which it plans to market as the Northside Business and Commerce Center.

Both proposals would create a mix of new industrial, production and office jobs in Liberty City, plus apartments targeting middle-class or low-income residents. Both also have facilities for community use, job-training efforts and requirements for livable wages and local hiring.

At the town hall, Kyle Byron said he wanted the new commercial center to also be a place with job-training opportunities to help residents with little education compete with more affluent people moving into the area.

“I come from a long line of family members who lived in Liberty City,” he said. “If we can train people with eighth-grade educations, and 10th-grade educations, and people who dropped out of college... I feel we could thrive.”

Jacqui Colyer, interim executive director of the Historic Hampton House museum, warned against assuming what developers promise is what will be delivered.

“Everybody talks about community benefits,” she said, “but there is no oversight. If a developer decided they don’t want to do a thing, they don’t. And nobody holds them accountable.”

At the start of the meeting, Levine Cava told audience members she shared their frustration at the county’s letting the Poinciana site sit vacant.

“Almost 43 years have passed since the first promises were made to this community about rebuilding in the aftermath of the 1980 uprising,” she said. “I know that past administrations have not held their end of the bargain.”

This article was updated to add more background information on the 79th Street Corridor Initiative.