By Coral Gables Gazette staff

After years of design disputes, neighborhood opposition and a pending court challenge, the proposed Crystal Residences project at 110 Phoenetia Avenue is returning for a different kind of review: the land-use and zoning approvals needed to make the project possible.

Coral Gables planning staff is recommending approval of four linked requests for the North Ponce site, where FRC Realty LLC is seeking to redevelop the full-block property with a nine-story mixed-use project that would include 184 residential units, 16 ground-floor live/work units, a new space for Crystal Academy and 301 parking spaces.

The Planning and Zoning Board is scheduled to hear the application on Wednesday, June 17 at 6 pm. The board’s role is to make a recommendation to the City Commission, which would still need to consider the applications at two public hearings.

But the hearing marks a significant turn for one of the city’s most closely watched development proposals. Earlier battles centered on architectural review, the Garden of Our Lord, mature trees, neighborhood compatibility and the city’s design-approval process. Wednesday’s hearing moves the project into the entitlement phase, asking whether Coral Gables should change the land-use and zoning framework for an entire North Ponce block.

What the applicant is seeking

The 1.47-acre property is bounded by Phoenetia Avenue, Antilla Avenue, Galiano Street and East Ponce de Leon Boulevard. At that location now is the Church of St. James Evangelical Lutheran, Crystal Academy, and associated facilities and landscaped areas — including the Garden of Our Lord.

The site is now designated Religious/Institutional on the city’s Future Land Use Map and is zoned Special Use. It also sits within the North Ponce Neighborhood Conservation District Overlay and directly abuts the North Ponce Mixed Use District Overlay.

The applicant is asking the city to change that framework. The first request would amend the city’s Future Land Use Map from Religious/Institutional to Commercial Mid-Rise Intensity and bring the block into the North Ponce Mixed Use District Overlay. The second would rezone the property from Special Use to Mixed Use 2, also bringing it into the mixed-use overlay and removing it from the North Ponce Neighborhood Conservation District Overlay. The third request is for Planned Area Development approval. The fourth is for conditional-use approval for a mixed-use site plan, private school, live/work units and an encroachment agreement.

Together, the requests would permit Crystal Residences, a 226,193-square-foot project with a maximum height of nine stories and 93 feet. The staff report lists 184 upper-level residential units, 16 live/work units, approximately 5,000 square feet of ground-floor educational space for Crystal Academy, 20,508 square feet of on-site open space and 301 parking spaces. The current Special Use zoning permits a maximum of three stories and 45 feet. Under the proposed Mixed Use 2 zoning with Mediterranean Bonus, the height limit would rise to 97 feet, while the project seeks PAD flexibility to allow nine stories at 93 feet.

The application is submitted by FRC Realty, LLC, represented by attorney Jorge L. Navarro of Greenberg Traurig. The 1.47-acre site was purchased by Century Homebuilders — the firm founded by the late developer Sergio Pino and now run by Tatiana Pino — for $9.8 million in November 2021. As the Gazette has previously reported, Fifield Companies, a Chicago-based developer, is under contract to acquire the project if the zoning changes are approved.

Staff’s rationale

The staff report describes the property as a transitional site between the mixed-use corridor along Ponce de Leon Boulevard and the adjacent Douglas Section multifamily neighborhood.

Staff says the proposed Commercial Mid-Rise Intensity designation would allow increased height and additional uses, including multifamily residential, commercial uses and the school as a principal use. The report says the change is consistent with the city’s planning framework for directing moderate- to higher-intensity development toward Ponce de Leon Boulevard and for supporting compact, walkable development near transit and employment centers. It also says the project would retain and enhance Crystal Academy, which staff describes as an existing educational institution and community-serving use.

On traffic, staff says the applicant’s traffic impact analysis was reviewed by Public Works and that the development is not expected to have a negative impact on the adjacent roadway network after implementation of the report’s recommendations. Most intersections are expected to operate at acceptable levels of service, the report states, with any required improvements handled through conditions of approval. The project received preliminary Board of Architects approval, including Mediterranean architectural style approval, on Oct. 19, 2023, according to the staff report.

A long-running fight

The staff recommendation does not erase the project’s contentious history.

The proposal has drawn opposition from residents and preservation advocates concerned about the scale of the building, the loss of existing green space, the removal of mature trees, compatibility with the North Ponce neighborhood, and the future of the Garden of Our Lord, a meditation garden long associated with the site.

As the Gazette has reported, the garden was designed by architect Robert Fitch Smith and completed in 1951. The historic-designation petition filed by its advocates describes it as one of only three public gardens in Coral Gables and the only one north of Coral Way, as a war memorial, and as one of the first biblical gardens in America, with plants said to have originated from seeds brought from the Garden of Gethsemane. The campaign to preserve it has been led by resident Bonnie Bolton, daughter of the late feminist and civil-rights activist Roxcy Bolton.

Central to the dispute is a mature live oak tree on the site. Opponents have described it as older than the city, while project supporters and developer-side accounts have disputed that characterization and said any removal or relocation would be reviewed separately through the city’s permitting process.

The preservation effort has moved through nearly every available venue. The city’s Historic Preservation Board rejected historic designation for the garden. The Board of Architects approved the project’s design in 2023; that approval was appealed, and a Board of Architects Special Masters panel later upheld it. On Feb. 10, the City Commission denied Bolton’s appeal in a 3-2 vote, allowing the design approval to stand. Bolton then filed a petition for writ of certiorari in Miami-Dade Circuit Court seeking to overturn the commission’s decision. The petition challenges the city’s handling of the design-approval appeal and raises claims involving due process, the North Ponce Conservation Overlay, compatibility and whether the project’s proposed green space qualifies as the kind of public benefit required for the density it received.

The board is being asked to recommend on land-use, zoning, Planned Area Development and conditional-use approvals, not to decide the court challenge. But the pending case means the earlier design approval remains contested even as the applicant seeks the land-use approvals needed to proceed.

The case for the project

Supporters frame the development as a public benefit. They emphasize that it would add roughly 200 rental units in what supporters describe as a housing-short market and — central to their argument — that it would provide a new, purpose-built facility for Crystal Academy, a school serving children on the autism spectrum. A capacity of 75 students is set as a condition of approval in the staff report.

Supporters have argued that if continued appeals derail the project, there is no guarantee a future owner would preserve the school, which could be displaced into the open rental market at today’s costs. The developer has maintained that no tree-removal permit has been granted and that any removal or relocation would be reviewed separately as part of the full permit process.

Both positions reflect genuine and competing public goods — the preservation of a historic garden and a mature tree on one side, and new housing plus a permanent home for a specialized school on the other. Wednesday’s hearing concerns only whether the board recommends the land-use and zoning changes that would let the project proceed; it does not resolve the litigation or the commission’s eventual decision.

Conditions attached

The staff recommendation includes a series of proposed conditions. Among them: the building height would be capped at nine stories and 93 feet, and the project limited to 226,193 square feet, 184 residential units, 16 live/work units, approximately 5,000 square feet of Crystal Academy space, 20,508 square feet of on-site open space and 301 parking spaces.

The applicant would have to submit a restrictive covenant outlining the conditions of approval before building permits are issued, and would have to pay applicable impact fees, sewer capacity fees and service charges, with no impact-fee waiver. Staff also calls for off-site and public-realm improvements, landscaping that exceeds the city’s standard requirements, screening of parking-garage openings so interior lights and headlights are not visible from surrounding properties, and revisions to ground-floor design intended to support pedestrian activity. Other conditions include revising the Antilla Avenue frontage from an arcade/loggia design to stoops or porches with front yards and providing an 18-inch minimum setback along Phoenetia Avenue for landscaping.

The school is also central to the requested approvals. The conditional-use request would permit the current accessory school as a principal use, and the staff report identifies Crystal Academy’s continued operation as one of the project’s public benefits.

The policy question, and the board hearing it

The hearing is a test of whether the city is willing to move a full block out of its existing religious/institutional and special-use status and into North Ponce’s mixed-use development framework — a land-use and zoning change of the kind that permanently alters what may be built on a site.

Supporters of the application can point to the staff report’s rationale: infill redevelopment, housing supply, transit proximity, the continuation of Crystal Academy, internalized parking, and a site staff describes as a transition between Ponce de Leon Boulevard and nearby residential blocks. Opponents are likely to return to a different ledger: the loss of the existing site, the fate of the Garden of Our Lord, the removal of mature trees, the intensity of a nine-story building, and the cumulative pressure of new development in North Gables.

That is what makes Wednesday’s hearing consequential. The board is being asked to recommend whether the city should take the next formal step toward allowing the project to move from contested design approval to land-use entitlement.

The Planning and Zoning Board meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 17, in the Community Meeting Room at Police and Fire Headquarters, 2151 Salzedo St. Members of the public may attend in person or participate by Zoom at zoom.us/j/83788709513 or by phone at 305-461-6769, meeting ID 837 8870 9513. The meeting will also be broadcast on the city’s website at coralgables.com/cgtv.