Overtown, Miami Looks to Partnership for Proper Growth not Gentrification...

Activist Fights Overtown Development Project, Wants More Benefits for Local Residents

By Trevor Bach Mon., Oct. 13 2014 at 8:00 AM

7 Comments

Categories: Business

A rendering of the Plaza at Lyric, part of the redevelopment project

For years , a Miami city agency has sought to secure $60 million for a massive project in chronically impoverished Overtown. But now that the project is finally close to breaking ground, a local activist is claiming the Southeast Overtown/Park West Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) illegally failed to hire any local contractors.

"If you're going to take these properties and make hundreds of millions of dollars, you've got to give something back to the community," says Edduard Prince, the activist.

The project will amount to a substantial overhaul for struggling Overtown: four new affordable-housing developments, three of which will also include retail spaces, as well as comprehensive refurbishment of existing housing units.

"These new developments will help to... drive the demand for goods and services," said CRA Executive Director Clarence Woods. "Small businesses and retailers will create an environment where more jobs will now be available in the community."

Woods's proclamation came after the agency closed on a $60 million loan with Wells Fargo on August 22. But that announcement came only after months of squabbling: In late 2013, county officials argued that an existing law capped its financial commitment to the city for the project, and for months the funding was delayed while the city and county sparred over commitments.

Prince filed a complaint against Woods and the CRA in July, alleging a breach of fiduciary duty because the agency contracted outside developers for the project. A magistrate recommended it be dismissed earlier this month, but Prince tells Riptide he plans on appealing. Prince isn't opposed to improvements, he says, but he thinks the new developments will lead to gentrification and higher rent prices. And he's concerned current Overtown residents will end up getting squeezed out.

"The face of Overtown is going to change, which is progress," he says. "But you have to give something back to these people that you're pushing out."

Prince doesn't expect any legal victories; his real motivation is to stir more conversation about how the project could better benefit current Overtown residents. "The purpose of these lawsuits," he says, "is for the community to have some type of benefit." Woods did not respond to a request for comment by Riptide.

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frankd412 days ago

...............CABRINI GREEN

many years ago we used to burn or freeze people OUT and a lot of old people got caught up in our slums so we invented the section 8 housing voucher that BLACK communities have lived by for decades now without getting any residual legacy value on the area ................so the land comes cheap and our construction project operations yield a significant profit and there you have it - G E N T R I F I C A T I O N - period

as long as BLACKs never have an equity stake in the neighborhood property itself,  things can get as bad crime-wise as they will, we don't really care, because sooner rather than later we will come in with our bulldozers and level the area

so what was once a slum can soon become luxury high rise residences with retail and restaurants and many other WHITE amenities and OVERtown will become a great success story of MIAMI despite ANY lawsuit - it's simply how it works

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Anthonyvop113 days ago

Lets skip over the fact that these people our fighting over money that was taken from others by force.

Can you tell me what retailers are going to be successful with "affordable Housing" overhead?

Well it is a Government project to develop housing and business so we all know it will fail miserably 

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SEFTA13 days ago

Corporations buy properties, either let them languish or demolish them. A few years later it is designated impoverished. Then like saviors, the same developers come in and are given carte blanche. We are told how lucky we are that they are interested in developing in this neighborhood, like it wasn't the plan all along. Developers have raped Miami with the help of OUR representatives. Then we are told some radical wants to halt progress. There was a deal that these developers were to hire a certain amount of local people and they didn't. WAKE UP MIAMI!

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James G. Camp from FacebookOct 13, 2014

Maybe the local contractors weren't competitive, not only that may not be the most reputable ?

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Jonny Erik Martinez from FacebookOct 13, 2014

What a great way to get a project cancelled!!!

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WhyNotNowOct 13, 2014

Mr. Prince sounds like the perfect person to take on Keon "Hardly Around" Hardemon in the next election.

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M Lenny Erdie from FacebookOct 13, 2014

Going after a CRA is a rabbit's hole of a lawsuit. Looking at the face of his argument from this article he doesn't even have standing to sue, and a just as tenuous good faith basis for his suit. Its good to incite some discussion, but it seems he's just wasting even more taxpayer money by forcing the CRA to defend this suit. The bigger problem is the largely renting population of Overtown will probably be pushed out as the ad valorem rate in the area increases. Miami needs to structure some sort of rent-control or rental property ad valorem taxation control for economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

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Is Louis Farrakhan about to let Whites into the Nation of Islam?????????????

Founding Fathers

At 9:02 am on April 19, 1995 a 7,000 pound truck bomb constructed of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nitromethane racing fuel packed into 13 plastic barrels ripped through the heart of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. This was the first act of the PATRIOT MOVEMENT. 109 acts of terror up into the June 8, 2014 attack by Jerad Miller and his wife Amanda signaled the end. Now we have entered into what is being called the CORONATION CHARTER MOVEMENT.

The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that "when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government". In short the people have the right to change a Government when it abuses their rights.

"By a Faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".

------- James Madison

Louis Farrakhan

Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr. born Louis Eugene Wolcott; May 11, 1933. In 1955 Emmett Louis Till an African American teenager was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after speaking to a white woman. The early 1900's was a dangerous time for African Americans much like today. A call went out for African Americans to stand strong and raise their level of consciousness. Louis Wolcott answered that call and would later go on to become Louis Farrakhan. Some say the call was initiated by a man with white skin, Master Fard Muhammad. 

That bring us to today.  Now that African Americans have raised their level of consciousness, stood strong, and excelled in different arenas of life, are African American men prepared to stand with other men of similar passions? What would it mean for Minister Farrakhan to accept fair skin soldiers? 

Is this what the founding fathers were thinking about when they envision a future for their children?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"                                     

          ---------- Thomas Jefferson