Bal Harbour Officials Vow To Fight Plan For Residential Towers At Luxury Shops

A battle is brewing between the owner of the Bal Harbour Shops and local officials in its namesake neighborhood over a plan to build four towers at the luxury shopping destination. 

Members of the Bal Harbour Village Council expressed dismay over the proposal from Whitman Family Development to add a 70-room hotel and 600 residences at the mall by leveraging the Live Local Act, a law that went into effect in July and allows developers to supersede some local zoning rules if they meet income-restricted housing criteria. 

“We all found out about the new Live Local [project] that they were trying to put in their application for via The Wall Street Journal,” Buzzy Sklar, the District 3 council member for Bal Harbour, told Bisnow in a phone call Wednesday. “Literally, we were blindsided by this.”

At issue is language in the Live Local Act that requires municipalities to give administrative approval to development proposals that have at least 40% of units set aside for residents making up to 120% of the area median income, or $89,640 for a single person in Miami-Dade County. 

The law increases the maximum height developers can build to and provides density bonuses to projects that meet the 40% workforce housing threshold. Whitman Family Development's plan has towers rising as high as 275 feet with the minimum number of required units allocated to workforce housing, as well as an additional 46K SF of retail space. 

“Bal Harbour is a thriving community today, but too many hospitality and service workers, teachers, nurses, and first responders are forced to commute long distances into the Village because they can't afford to live within its boundaries,” Matthew Whitman Lazenby, the CEO of Whitman Family Development, said in a statement to Bisnow.

“Bal Harbour Shops is already adjacent to dense, high-rise development, making it an ideal place to create a multi-use development with attainable housing for our local workforce,” he said.

Members of the council in Bal Harbour, a small village north of Miami Beach with a population of just over 3,000 as of 2021, voiced frustration over the plan at a meeting Tuesday.

Sklar said the developer had shown the council and residents disrespect that was “beyond reproach.” Council Member David Albaum said he was “deceived, lied to by the developer,” and Mayor Jeffrey Freimark said the plan angered him, CBS Miami reported. 

Council members unanimously passed a resolution that authorizes the village manager to “expend resources to take all necessary steps to protect the village” in response to the plan, and Sklar told Bisnow the council would take steps to block the development.  

“We are not going quietly into the good night,” Sklar said Wednesday. “This is something that is a quality-of-life issue. Do I believe in the Live Local Act and workforce housing? One hundred percent. But there are places where that should be built.”

The proposal follows a 2021 referendum to allow Whitman Family Development to build above height limits in the town. That initiative was voted down by nearly 90% of Bal Harbour residents. 

In this year's legislative session, state lawmakers are considering amendments to the Live Local Act that would pull back on some of the density bonuses provided to projects that meet the workforce housing requirements, including by reducing the maximum height bonus by tying it to the tallest building within a quarter-mile radius, as opposed to the 1-mile radius the law allows now. 

That change is unlikely to impact the plan for the Bal Harbour Shops. The Whitman family said in a release announcing the proposal that the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort directly across the street from the shops also rises 275 feet. 

Sklar said Lazenby conceded to him in a meeting that he saw the Live Local Act as the only way to secure approval for the project. 

“He's not doing this for the altruistic use of helping local residents have affordable housing,” Sklar said. “He saw a loophole, and he ran with that loophole to try and develop what he wants.”

UPDATE, JAN. 17, 4 P.M. ET: This story has been updated with a statement from a Whitman Family Development spokesperson.