Luxury Apartments Look Great, Still Lack Parking

We recently had the opportunity to get a tour of the new apartments at One Curtiss Parkway aka the Miami Springs Town Center Project.  The apartments are undergoing final touches, but its clear these apartments do provide an upscale living experience, even if they lack sufficient parking.

From the outside, you can see the large corner windows.  Well, those windows provide an impressive view of some of Miami Springs’ most iconic landmarks:  The Vertical Lift Bridge and the Warren Pony Swing Bridge that cross the Miami River Canal.

In addition to the views, the apartments feature modern kitchen cabinetry with gorgeous countertops.

The open layout and floor to ceiling windows allows someone in the kitchen the ability to entertain guests in the living room while enjoying views outside.

Some apartments are bigger than others providing additional space for bigger families.

And if you enjoy sunrises in the morning, some of eastward facing apartments are sure to grant the occupants some gorgeous morning views.

Naturally, each apartment has different views and different layouts.  That means early renters will get the most options.  Note: A good portion of the apartments will only get a view of the parking garage.

The bathrooms are also tastefully designed with modern cabinetry, countertops, and walk-in showers.

We are happy to see the clean looks and modern design of these apartments.  This will help to fetch above average rental rates.  These apartments provide modern amenities with easy access to all that greater Miami has to offer within the residential green oasis known as Miami Springs.

This will attract renters from Brickell who may want to start a family in our beautiful and quiet neighborhood.  And it’ll also attract renters from Doral who are tired of the daily traffic grind getting in and out of our western neighbor.

As we all know, the demand to live in Miami-Dade County has gone through the roof.  The lack of an income tax in Florida has drawn well to do residents from places like New York and California.

And Miami has never stopped attracting immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America.  Heck, Miami is considered the Capital of Latin America.

Well, as all these people continue to move to Miami, it’s created a housing crisis.  More demand than supply.  Now, everyone wants affordable housing, but the typical single family detached house in Miami Springs is now fetching in excess of $600, $700, and $800k.  The most basic small fixer upper is going for over half a million dollars.  A quick view of the MLS shows that there are ten homes for sale in Miami Springs with an asking price of One Million Dollars or higher.  Two homes are asking for over Two Million Dollars.

Plus, with higher interest rates, the dream of owning a home in Miami Springs has become a privilege for wealthier buyers.  Blue collar workers will find it increasingly more difficult to buy a detached single family home in Miami Springs.  So being able to move into Miami Springs may mean moving into an apartment.

The good news is that these apartments will provide a luxury option for residents interested in living in our beautiful community.

Now, we have been very critical of the prior City Management and how it allowed the developer to build this project with insufficient on-premise parking and for not establishing a parking fee for the street parking.  Let’s just say there was a combination of shenanigans, looking the other way, and sheer incompetence by the prior city management (and others) in order to get to the parking fiasco this project has created.

Parking Issues Remain

These apartments feature either two bedrooms or three bedrooms.  Now, I’m sure there will be a single person that uses the spare bedroom as a gym or an office and only has one car.  There’s always an exception.  But the majority of renters of a two bedroom apartment will be a couple that either has kids or wants kids.  And chances are they’ll have two cars if not more.  And for the three bedroom apartments, they undoubtedly have kids and/or extended family living with them.  For sure they’ll need at least two vehicles.  And if they have adult children, they may have more than just two drivers.

Now the new apartments have 70 residential parking spaces in the garage for 51 apartments.  Everyone agrees that 70 residential parking spaces is not enough parking for 51 apartments which is why Miami Springs Town Center advertises “Garage / Street Parking.”  In other words, many of the renters will be parking their cars in whatever public parking space they can find along Canal Street, Curtiss Parkway, Hook Square, or the Circle.

• 51 Apartments
• 15 Retail Units
• 70 residential parking spaces
• 28 retail parking spaces
• 98 parking spaces total

The good news is that we have a new City Manager, Juan Carlos Jimenez, that will be officially starting after Labor Day.  Plus, the former City Planner was fired right before William Alonso resigned as City Manager.

Council Selects JC Jimenez as New City Manager

In other words, with the exception of the Law Firm that architected the Gateway Overlay District, the politicians and city administrators associated with this mess are no longer part of City Hall.

Now, how can we learn from these mistakes and make the best of what we have?

What can we do to ensure there’s sufficient parking for the existing businesses in the Gateway Overlay District?

Do we need to establish a zone with no overnight parking?

Do we establish a parking placard program to allow overnight parking if you pay the city a parking fee?

Do we need to setup parking fines and/or a tow away zones?

We need to start brainstorming options because the parking problems we all saw coming years ago is about to become a reality real soon.