By Coral Gables Gazette staff

Coral Gables commissioners voted 3-2 Tuesday to advance the Crystal Residences project on Phoenetia Avenue, moving a nine-story mixed-use tower and a rebuilt home for Crystal Academy closer to final land-use and zoning approval, over objections that the project would remove the Garden of Our Lord as neighbors have fought for years to preserve it.

The commission approved, on first reading, a land-use map amendment, a zoning district change and a Planned Area Development for the project at 110 Phoenetia Avenue, all by identical 3-2 votes. Mayor Vince Lago, Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson and Commissioner Richard Lara voted yes each time; Commissioners Melissa Castro and Ariel Fernandez voted no. A fourth item, a site-plan resolution, was not voted on Tuesday and is expected to return with the ordinances on second reading.

What the project would build

The 1.47-acre site is bounded by East Ponce de Leon Boulevard and Galiano Street and would include 301 garage parking spaces. Attorney Jorge Navarro, representing the applicant, told commissioners the project has been “more than five years in the making” and has gone through “an extensive historical, architectural, and public review process.” As presented, the project includes 184 residential units and 16 live-work units in a nine-story building that steps down to eight stories along its eastern edge, plus a 5,000-square-foot courtyard open to the public and a 4,000-square-foot children’s park available to the public after school hours. Navarro said the design provides three times the open space required for similar North Ponce projects and 55 percent more than the city’s Planned Area Development regulations require.

City staff recommended approval of the project, telling commissioners it was “consistent with the comp plan” and supported the city’s goal of encouraging more workforce housing in the area. Staff said the applicant’s two requested code deviations — the ninth story and a reduced-transparency allowance on the building’s western face — were granted in exchange for the public benefits the project provides, including the new school and courtyard.

Central to the project is Crystal Academy, a nonprofit school serving children with learning disabilities and developmental delays that has operated on the site for 17 years and has served more than 600 families. Navarro said that when the property’s former owner, a church, put it up for sale in 2021, the developer “made a promise that they would keep Crystal Academy on site, build them a brand new facility and give it back to them rent-free for 99 years.”

The garden at the center of the fight

The project’s most contested feature is not the tower but what sits beside it: the Garden of Our Lord, a walled meditation garden built in 1951 and designed by Robert Fitch Smith, the University of Miami’s first dean of architecture. Neighbors and preservation advocates have fought since the property’s 2021 sale to save it, arguing it is one of only a few public gardens in the city and a rare quiet space in an increasingly dense corridor. The city’s Historic Preservation Board denied the garden historic-landmark status, a decision resident Bonnie Bolton unsuccessfully challenged through circuit court and the Third District Court of Appeal.

That fight resurfaced Tuesday. Bolton told commissioners that the Planning and Zoning Board’s recommendation for approval last month was conditioned on the developer saving “as much as possible” of the garden, and that the renderings presented showed “0 percent of the Garden of Our Lord as being saved.” She argued the developer had “violated the most fundamental principle upon which this project was approved.” The applicant’s team disputed that characterization in rebuttal, saying it was still working toward a design that would preserve part of the garden, and separately argued the space has never been legally open to the public and remains private property.

The dispute has also centered on two mature oak trees on the site, including a large specimen in Crystal Academy’s existing playground. The applicant’s design team told commissioners it plans to relocate the larger oak to the property’s southwest corner, along with a second oak and two gumbo limbo trees, rather than remove them.

Residents divide over project and preservation

More than a dozen residents spoke during the more than three hours of public comments. Omar Packard, a 40-year North Ponce resident, told commissioners he was “getting tired of coming up here and speaking against this proposed development,” calling it a project “the community overwhelmingly opposes” and accusing the developer of “hiding behind Crystal Academy” to avoid accountability for the project’s scale. Nicolas Cabrera, chair of the city’s Board of Adjustment, spoke in support, telling commissioners that after five years of review, “the question stops being whether the process was followed and becomes whether we’re willing to respect it when we don’t like the outcome.”

Navarro also told commissioners the applicant had gathered 500 petitions of support from residents within an eight-block radius of the project, saying the signatures reflected neighborhood backing for the project and its mission.

How commissioners explained their votes

Castro cast the sharpest dissent, telling colleagues she would “not vote to remove neighborhood protections to try to fit a nine-story building into a low-rise residential area,” adding, “Absolutely not.” She questioned earlier in the hearing whether the city’s zoning code exists “only for residents” or “to make exceptions for developers.” Fernandez said he was “a no today” but wants to see the applicant consider relocating the children’s park to the garden’s footprint before second reading, saying he could “make up some of that ground” if that change is made.

Lara said his yes vote was “for responsible intelligent development, for helping to drive the economic engine in the Ponce area,” and for Crystal Academy. Anderson voted yes “for all my reasons previously stated.” Lago, who requested that city staff prepare a memo on a 1926 zoning map he said showed the block originally planned for multifamily housing before a 1970 rezoning to religious use, said commissioners could “disagree on style, use, height, units” but should agree that “we’re a better city with Crystal Academy here.” He also remarked that “it’s politics season and elections are in November.”

Where the fight stands

Tuesday’s vote is the latest turn in a dispute that has run for nearly five years, since St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church sold the property, including the garden and Crystal Academy’s leased space, for $9.75 million in November 2021 to Century Crystal Group, an entity led by the late Sergio Pino. Chicago-based Fifield Companies later entered a contract to acquire the property contingent on the project’s approval and completed its purchase this year. The Historic Preservation Board’s denial of landmark status, upheld through two rounds of litigation, has left the garden without legal protection distinct from the rest of the property. In February, commissioners voted 3-2 along the same lines to uphold a separate Board of Architects design approval over a due-process challenge from Bolton, whose attorney, David Winker, has represented her throughout the dispute.

Litigation over the project remains pending in court. In one related certiorari case, the City of Coral Gables filed a June 1 response adopting Century Crystal Group LLC’s opposition to Bonnie Bolton’s petition and asking the court to deny the petition and requested relief. That litigation remains active as Tuesday’s votes advance the project on a separate, parallel track.

What comes next

The items approved July 7 now advance to second reading, when the site-plan resolution will be considered alongside them. Fernandez’s request for a redesigned park location, and Lago’s requested staff memo on the property’s zoning history, both remain open questions the commission is expected to revisit before a final vote.