Photo courtesy of Amanda Prieto Though Miami-Dade County's Department of Environmental Resource Management approved the project, Magill says he wouldn't let his position as a county employee at ZooMiami keep him from speaking out against the project, which he considers directly opposed to his lifelong mission of wildlife conservation.
Bacardí and GL Homes now plan to build 550 homes on the land.ĭismissing residents' assertions that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission should undertake further environmental surveys to protect endangered wildlife like the bats and herons, commissioners voted to change the site's current zoning from parks and recreation to high-density residential. In February, Bacardí sold the property to homebuilder GL Homes for $32 million, retaining a 35 percent interest in any development. In October 2020, commissioners voted to release the 99-year covenant. He then arranged individual settlements of upward of $300,000 with 123 homeowners - roughly 84 percent - creating a deep divide in the community between homeowners on the ring (all of whom signed nondisclosure agreements in exchange for the payments) and their neighbors who wanted to keep developers out. When he failed to persuade 75 percent of them, he sued in court and lost. In 2011, Bacardí offered to pay the homeowners $50,000 apiece to nullify the covenant. The most high-profile Kendall resident in opposition of the development is longtime ZooMiami spokesperson and outspoken wildlife conservationist Ron Magill, a West Kendall resident who requested time off from work to attend last Wednesday's hearing as a private citizen and defend the Calusa rookery, home to the endangered bonneted bat and threatened tri-colored herons. So far, Save Calusa leader Amanda Prieto tells New Times, more than 2,500 people have sent Levine Cava an email "respectfully requesting" a mayoral veto after commissioners approved the development "without adequate consideration of resident concerns about green space, wildlife, wildlife habitat, and resident input into the proposed development." They're aggressively pushing one last-ditch effort to save the wild, overgrown land from construction: an email campaign urging Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to veto the commission's vote.
To be another West Kendall gated community, or not to be: That was the question Miami-Dade County commissioners took up at their November 17 zoning hearing to determine the fate of one of the last remaining green spaces in a suburb already facing overcrowding and traffic.īut after commissioners voted 10-2 to approve the 550-home plan on the shuttered 168-acre Calusa Country Club golf course, scores of residents who opposed the development and attended the hearing in matching green "Save Calusa" T-shirts are not acting defeated.