Remaking Grand Avenue: What’s the deal on development?

About two years ago, a group of West Grove leaders viewed sketches of an 800,000-plus square foot shopping center touted by developers as “nothing short of spectacular”.

That project, the “Grove Village on Grand,” was proposed by Pointe Group Advisors, a real estate asset management company based out of Plantation.

“They presented a beautiful plan and a group of us walked with them to see where it would be placed. It looked really nice,” said Lottie Person, a recently retired member of the Coconut Grove Village Council.

“And most of the community was excited about one project,” Person said, referring to a Publix supermarket that developers wanted to build on Grand Avenue.

And then the community waited. For months residents thought it was not going to happen. Many complained that they did not know where the project stood.

“I don’t know what’s going on with Grand Avenue,” Person told a Grand Ave. News reporter in October.

“I’m just as confused as anyone,” Martin Zilber, former chairman of the Coconut Grove Village Council, also said at the time, attributing inaction in part to the downturn in the economy. “I would be surprised if anything in the next three to five years goes up just because of the economy.”

Residents long have been concerned that Grand Avenue was just a street for other South Florida residents and tourists to drive through on their way to CocoWalk and to other shops, restaurants and nightclubs in the Central Grove.

“The West Grove has been that way for some time,” said Sebastian Galvez, a West Grove resident who owns SoFlo Skate Shop on Grand Avenue. “The sidewalks don’t get cleaned; homeless people are still around; and there is still a ton of drug activity. Saturdays are great when they liven it up for the farmer’s market, but when they leave, they always leave it a mess. It looks like nobody takes care of the city.”

First signs of a spruce up for the thoroughfare began in 2005.

A $4.2 million facelift included the addition of benches on sidewalks and a narrowing of the roadway from four lanes to two and planting of trees in the median. Two years before that, Coral Gables attorney Julio C. Marrero purchased low-rise apartment buildings with plans of replacing them with mid-rise condominium complexes where units would start at $325,000.

But the beautification efforts and the demolition of buildings on the avenue brought cries of concern from longtime homeowners and renters who were afraid they would be adversely impacted with the influx of new, but not affordable, units. Neighbors who only pay $400 a month in rent in the affordable housing units said they were told that they might have to pack up and find a new place to live on little notice.

The buildings were leveled, leaving lots on six city blocks on Grand Avenue sitting empty, littered with “for sale” signs.

“Three years ago, everything kind of stopped,” said Galvez, who rents his store from Marrero.

“The whole idea has changed,” lamented Thelma Gibson, president emeritus of the Thelma Gibson Health Initiative, which is a subsidiary of the Theodore R. Gibson Memorial Fund Inc. The Rev. Theodore R. Gibson was a local civil rights pioneer who helped improve socio-economic conditions for Miami’s black community

Thelma Gibson had plans to build an educational center in her late husband’s name have been put on the back burner. Also a longtime civic and community leader from the West Grove, she applied for loans with two banks, but never got a response from one and was put on hold by another.

“It would mean everything to me to leave a legacy in my husband’s memory, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon,” she also said late last year. “Everything has come to a standstill.”

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