By Coral Gables Gazette staff

In approving the design of Coral Gables’ new Mobility Hub, the City Commission wrapped its decision in a series of justifications that – on closer inspection – don’t all stand up to scrutiny. The commission’s 3–2 vote Oct. 28 to greenlight the 145-foot-tall structure at the site of the city’s deteriorating Parking Garage 1 may partially solve a lack of parking spaces but it also raises deeper questions about process, consistency, and scale in a city where elected officials promise development control but just as often say they don’t have the guardrails to stop it.

A familiar divide on height

As with most major projects in Coral Gables, height once again dominated the debate. Commissioner Ariel Fernandez opposed the Mobility Hub as “too tall, even if it is within the height that is allowed,” arguing that it “doesn’t fall in line with the Miracle Mile side of the building.” Commissioner Melissa Castro agreed, noting that while she supports new parking infrastructure, “this is not what I promised. I agree we need a garage… but not at this scale.”

Mayor Vince Lago countered that the building’s height is dictated by the narrow footprint of the site. “The reason why the building has to go vertical is because of the depth of the lot,” he said. “If we had a deeper lot, we could build lower.” The mayor’s defense sounds reasonable – until one recalls that the city itself owns another, larger parcel one block away: Parking Garage 4. That site could potentially accommodate the same number of spaces at a lower height, but the city has other plans for it, possibly a sale or lease to offset the Mobility Hub’s rising costs, which is a whole other controversial discussion.

City Manager Peter Iglesias offered additional context, noting that both city-owned garages are within the same zoning district. “Both Parking Garages 1 and 4 are zoned MX-3, and the approved height of the Mobility Hub is actually less than what the zoning allows,” Iglesias said. “While both existing garages are obsolete and non-ADA compliant, Garage 1 was identified as the preferred location because it is more centrally located and provides better access to merchants along Miracle Mile and in the downtown core. The plan is to explore a public-private partnership for the redevelopment of Garage 4 once the Mobility Hub is underway, but no changes will take place until then. We will have updated cost estimates for the Mobility Hub once a Construction Manager is formally onboard.”

Still, the fact remains: the height of the new structure is as much a policy choice as an engineering one.

A developer’s mindset on a public project

Near the end of the Mobility Hub discussion at the October 28 meetings, Lago joked about going to the city with maximum height requests on a city-owned parcel – just so residents would be thankful when it was scaled back. Although he made the comment in jest, it brought to light the innate conflict in the mayor’s private and public roles. He put on his developer hat instead of his elected official hat, and while he was joking, it gave insight into how he views the process of development in the city. Ask for the maximum, so that residents will be appeased if you scale it back.

It’s interesting that at the same meeting, the commission approved an overlay district to see if they could try and reign in what they acknowledged was overdevelopment planned in the Rapid Transit Zone (RTZ) across from the University of Miami.

Lago, Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson, Commissioner Richard Lara, and Iglesias blasted members of the city’s Planning and Zoning Board for delaying and resisting approval of The Mark, only for the developer to turn to the county’s RTZ process to be able to build a taller, bigger, and less city-friendly project without city oversight.

In that case, they said the mayor and city manager now had to meet with developers in a “Hail Mary” attempt to get them to lower the height of the project and so that the city could retain oversight and impact and permit fees.

But with regard to the Mobility Hub, where the city retains all control, they are still going for the maximum allowable height – not counting Mediterranean bonuses, which they acknowledge should not be in play.

Consistency, it seems, depends on who owns the project.

Justifying height through “design”

Proponents also argued that the Mobility Hub’s height was functionally necessary for better design. The city manager cited the need for higher ceilings to allow for adaptive reuse – a feature that “adds additional height but gives future flexibility, including potential office or residential conversion.

But these rationales come close to circular logic. If the city’s primary goal is a functional parking garage, not an office tower, why plan for a use that may never materialize – especially when it inflates both cost and scale? Adaptive reuse might be a selling point for a private developer; for a municipal project, it risks sounding like overengineering.

The illusion of public consensus

Defenders of the Mobility Hub repeatedly pointed to limited public opposition as evidence of support. “We’ve had renderings available, we’ve had public comment, and only a handful of residents have appeared against it,” Lara said. “That’s an implicit endorsement in my view.” Anderson added that at a recent Garden Club meeting, “not a single person said they didn’t like the design.”

Yet, the lack of turnout may reflect ignorance that the project is back on or fatigue, not consent. The project was shelved by a previous commission in part because it was unpopular. Many residents likely assumed it was dead, perhaps because it was barely brought up, if at all, by any of the winning candidates in the Spring elections. Castro called for a deferral to hold a town hall meeting, but her colleagues dismissed the idea. “We are approving this without voter input,” she said. “We’re not really talking to the neighbors.”

Lago, Anderson and Lara scoffed at the idea and said Castro had ample opportunity to hold such a meeting in the past few months, when it was clear the project was back on. They may be right, but so is Castro when she says public input on the Mobility Hub this time around was conspicuously minimal.

The bottom line

There’s no disputing that the existing garages on Andalusia Avenue are crumbling and need replacement. As the mayor said, “The state of that parking structure is embarrassing. We can do better.” But “better” is not synonymous with “bigger.” The decision to go nearly to the maximum allowed height, to skip a broader public engagement, and to locate the project on the city’s most constrained site – rather than a nearby larger one – suggests expediency won out over thoughtful urban design, even for a project that has been years in the making.

The Mobility Hub may eventually deliver on its promise of more parking and downtown vibrancy. Yet the arguments used to justify its size expose deeper contradictions in the city’s development philosophy – one that publicly preaches restraint to private developers while failing to live up to it with the Mobility Hub.