By the Coral Gables Gazette editorial board
For more than 50 years, zoning conditions on a parcel at 520 University Drive have preserved its use as overflow parking for the Coral Gables Branch Library and War Memorial Youth Center. On Tuesday the commission will consider removing those conditions permanently — to make way for a dog park — without having studied whether the parking they protect can be replaced.
The commission identified a legitimate gap. Coral Gables residents who own dogs have a genuine interest in off-leash amenities. The city has existing dog parks, but demand for them is real and the commission is right to take it seriously. The question is whether this parcel — serving this library, adjacent to this neighborhood — is the right place, and whether the commission has done the work to know.
It has not.
The 520 University Drive parcel provides approximately 83 overflow parking spaces during high-attendance events at the library and the Youth Center. An informal count conducted by neighborhood residents over two weeks in February — on days with no announced high-volume events — found parking regularly exceeding capacity at both facilities, with cars spilling onto swales and side streets throughout the corridor. The library hosts between 30 and 40 programs monthly attended by more than 1,000 people. It draws between 16,000 and 25,000 voters during presidential and general election cycles and ranks among the county’s five busiest early voting locations.
The city has never commissioned a formal parking study to assess whether those spaces are needed, what events depend on them, or what replaces them if the parcel is converted. It has never commissioned a traffic study of a corridor that already carries significant commuter volume and serves as a primary approach to Doctors Hospital.
It voted in November 2025 to move forward with the dog park anyway.
When the commission makes a permanent decision to remove zoning conditions that have governed a parcel for more than half a century, the residents affected are entitled to know that decision rested on a complete factual record. That record does not exist here.
Several Planning and Zoning Board members made exactly this point at the May 20 hearing. The board’s ultimate recommendation — passed on a 5-2 vote, on the third motion of the evening, after a motion to defer and a motion to deny both failed — reflected genuine division about whether the commission had enough information to act responsibly. Board members who raised the parking and traffic questions were doing their job.
The issue before the commission is larger than one parcel. It is whether civic process remains a safeguard or becomes a formality once a preferred outcome is already in motion.
The procedural gaps are not merely theoretical. They now sit at the center of active litigation. The University Green Neighbors Association has filed suit to enjoin the city from using the property as a dog park. At the center of that litigation is the reverter clause the Tuesday ordinance would eliminate — a provision requiring the parcel to revert automatically to single-family residential use if no longer needed for overflow parking. The city attorney acknowledged at the May 20 hearing that such a zoning reverter is essentially without precedent in his experience. Advancing the ordinance while that litigation remains unresolved compounds the legal question.
We are asking the commission to complete the factual work this proposal requires before advancing it further. Commission the parking study. Commission the traffic study. Delay the second reading. Give the commission — and the residents who use the library, the Youth Center, and the neighborhood — the factual foundation this decision requires.
The city has been moving toward this dog park for months without that foundation. Neighbors who raised concerns were told the process had already begun. A fifty-year-old zoning ordinance is being amended while litigation over it is pending. And the commission is being asked to advance an ordinance on Tuesday for which the most basic operational questions remain unanswered.
Coral Gables has long measured itself by the quality of its civic process. That standard is upheld when evidence leads and outcomes follow. Tuesday offers the commission an opportunity to reaffirm it by pausing long enough to build the record this decision deserves.
This Post Has 12 Comments
“As part of an ongoing effort to enhance the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of Coral Gables.
The city is Coral Gables is able to maintain it’s title “the city beautiful” with the help of it’s residents.
We appreciate your “cooperation.”
Don’t get in their way.
They’ll bury you.
Just ask Orlando Capote.
(Yes, he is still very relevant).
No one’s safe.
“Coral Gables must remain the standard to which other communities aspire.
We don’t have a lot of flaring, glaring neons in the Gables.
When you drive into Coral Gables, there’s a physical ambience that you notice immediately, and that’s the result of good code enforcement.”
~Paul Furman
“I like to hold it as tight as I can.
I like to think of Coral Gables as an oasis in the desert, because we don’t allow a lot of things that are allowed in the county.”
~Bill Kerdyk, Jr.
“Move, get a petition, sue ’em.”
~Chip Withers
Yeah.
Here is the perfect example on how Lago and his puppets Anderson and Lara not only disrespect the citizens of CG, but how they are running an autocratic government. They are arrogant, do not understand that they work for us, self-serving, and incompetent in most of their actions. No study, no caring about the library activities and no respect for the area homeowners. Never in our history have we had such an awful Mayor and commissioners. Who is paying your PACS to get a dog park? Just like the PAC payment to Lago and Lara from the Chicago developer who wants to destroy the Garden? We have spoken and you should respect that. NO DOG PARK IN THIS RESIDENTAL AREA !!! NO MORE CONSTRUCTON !!! NO DESTRUCTION OF THE GARDEN !!! And now the next disregard to our City, LEAVE FRITZ FRANZ ALONE !!! It is one thing after another with these 3 terrible administrators. You also need to keep OUR money in the bank instead of a mural in a parking garage, redesigning the Circle, dog park building and maintenance and other expenditures because DeSantis is going to take part of your cash flow away with the decrease in property taxes. You know what is coming and you need long term fiscal planning. More raising of garbage charges so you can waste money on your pet projects? Stop spending, support what the residents of our City wants, and stop acting like a king with his court of minions.
Agree 100%
HAVE NEVER HEARD OF OR SEEN A DOG PARK, IN CORAL GABLES, BEHIND A RESIDENT’S BACKYARD! WTH are these Commissioners thinking??!!!
Based on what I read, does this mean the city can build a parking lot on the parcel if it is used for overflow parking? Not sure what’s better to be honest if that’s the case.
Carlos E, you’ve misunderstood the situation.
The open green space is currently used for overflow parking, and has been used for overflow parking without any problems for the past 54 years. As the ordinance requires, it cannot be paved.
Prior to 1972 it was zoned for single-family housing, and that is what the reverter clause on the ordinance requires, if it were no longer needed for overflow parking. The zoning would simply revert back to the original zoning, which is what the surrounding properties are also zoned, single-family homes.
That reverter clause protects the property and the neighborhood from being used for incompatible development, which a dog park being placed abutting homes would most certainly be…absolutely incompatible!
A quiet open green space which everyone in the community can enjoy when it’s not used for overflow parking, is most definitely more desirable than a fenced, smelly area requiring constant maintenance, with loud barking dogs, being placed adjacent to the existing homes on that property. That would be a nightmare.
I’m sorry but I dont understand. There was a two week survey conducted by the neighbors that “found parking regularly exceeding capacity at both facilities, with cars spilling onto swales and side streets throughout the corridor.” Doesn’t that advocate more use of those lots for overflow parking? Doesn’t that give the city a justification to OPENLY PROMOTE access to those lots so that cars don’t park in swales and side streets? It sounds like an invitation of “Hey, dont park in the swales, park in these lots instead”. Apparently, you cant prevent the city from doing that.
The residents who are mostly affected by this proposed “bark park”, should have the last word on whether this goes forward or not, not those who live blocks or miles away. Let’s begin to use our common sense for a change….
I’m sorry but I dont understand. There was a two week survey conducted by the neighbors that “found parking regularly exceeding capacity at both facilities, with cars spilling onto swales and side streets throughout the corridor.” Doesn’t that advocate more use of those lots for overflow parking? Doesn’t that give the city a justification to OPENLY PROMOTE access to those lots so that cars don’t park in swales and side streets? It sounds like an invitation of “Hey, dont park in the swales, park in these lots instead”. Apparently, you cant prevent the city from doing that.
We would LOVE for the city to openly promote access to those lots so we don’t have the illegal parking in the swales and the side streets.
The city isn’t doing that. They are claiming there isn’t a need for the overflow parking, although it’s clearly evident to anyone who actually takes an objective look at the inadequate parking situation around the library and youth center.
And putting a dog park on the property will only add to the parking problem. It would remove the available overflow parking area and bring more cars to the already congested neighborhood…and where will those cars park?
There is absolutely no logic to this ill-advised boondoggle.
Boondoggle: (noun)
work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value
The importance of overflow parking for the library and the single-family neighborhood is not the day-to-day trips when the parking spaces are consistently full. The overflow parking option serves the library and the neighborhood when it operates as special event parking for large scale events like the recent Literacy Festival where attendees parked in the lot alongside other cars. Early Voting and 4th of July are two other great examples. More than 25,000 Miami-Dade voters cast their 2024 ballots at our Coral Gables Public Library from 7 am to 7 pm during the two week voting for Primaries and again in the November general election. Without overflow parking, where can voters safely park while still allowing the library and youth center to operate their full and busy schedules? To use this greenspace, currently open to everyone, for a 40,000 sq ft fenced in dog park eliminates this flexible option, obliterates the promised buffer, and adds more activity to an already congested area. Several of the Planning & Zoning Board members wanted the City to conduct a parking study and a traffic study before voting. Ultimately, the majority of the Board voted to recommend the item conditioned on having a parking study and a traffic study developed BEFORE the item go before Commission. Instead, City Staff wrote a half page memo concluding overflow parking wasn’t needed at this location.