 |
|
Allyson Warren, deposed
president of the Shorecrest Homeowners Association,
talks to Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff at last
Thursday’s community workshop. Warren believes her
ouster was based on a misinformation campaign.
|
The
future of Miami 21— a massive zoning rewrite being
drafted by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and pushed by Miami
Mayor Manny Diaz to transform the Upper Eastside and
surrounding areas — was the dominant topic at a workshop
hosted by District 2 Commissioner Marc Sarnoff last
Thursday evening. Although everything from parks to
flooding to Miami government operations also came up,
there was something else seething beneath the surface.
At the meeting’s
start, Sarnoff discussed “social responsibility” to
one’s community and neighbors. He challenged meeting
attendees to start thinking more in terms of what they
can do to help the neighborhood’s upkeep themselves
instead of depending on city workers to do it. Then,
alluding to a recent neighborhood meeting, he also
remarked that neighbors living less than a block from
one another can despise each other just because they
don’t communicate.
“It was over the 27th
Avenue lane issue. I was shocked to see people treat
each other that poorly,” Sarnoff later said in a
telephone interview regarding a neighborhood meeting he
had recently attended. “I think we’ve all got to get a
better sense of community … I think it is time for Miami
to stop reacting to each other and mistreating each
other.”
However, a very
volatile meeting took place recently in the same hall
Sarnoff stood just last week. During that July 31
meeting, members of the Shorecrest Homeowners
Association, which represents an Upper Eastside,
predominantly single-family neighborhood located near
the 79th Street Causeway, voted to remove its president,
Allyson Warren. At one point, tempers became so heated
“It was a judgment
call,” Mascareñas said, confirming the incident.
“Emotions had been escalating, and when members engaged
in increasing and continued screaming and name-calling
for a period of time, I felt it necessary to address the
floor and express my concerns, especially for those who
were quietly sitting in the audience. It was then I
asked if it was necessary to call the police.”
was ejected from
office. The offense, according to enraged homeowners,
was that she was not representing the interests of
Shorecrest. Following the vote by Shorecrest members —
20-5 in favor of ousting Warren — at least two board
members of the Shorecrest association also resigned.
“The motion was made
to remove her based on misrepresentation of our
neighborhood at zoning and commission meetings and not
working in the best interest of the neighborhood and
residents,” said Shorecrest homeowner Ginger Vela. As
for those who quit, they gave no reason. “For a long
time, forever, I’ve thought they were a shadow board
with Allyson doing everything,” Vela said.
Warren, though, felt
she was set up by a vocal resident of Morningside.
“Frankly, it was a disgusting display from a small group
of dissidents, many of whom had never been to a meeting,
and only came in and paid dues to accomplish this,”
Warren wrote via e-mail. “Their god, Elvis Cruz,
orchestrated this from head to toe and sat in the back
of the meeting laughing the whole time. … One of the
last comments heard as they were leaving was, ‘Yay, no
more code enforcement.’”
Cruz replied via
e-mail: “Negative. Many neighbors in Shorecrest are
quite angry with her.” He later added, referring to
Warren’s perceived stance on Miami 21: “Warren’s ouster
by her Shorecrest neighbors had to do with her own
actions, not mine. Apparently they found it suspicious
that their homeowners’ association president would
testify in favor of high-rises and against her own
neighborhood.”
Vela also insists
Cruz, a passionate advocate of 35-foot height limits
along Biscayne Boulevard, is not the reason homeowners
decided to remove Warren as their president.
She then quoted
District 2’s former commission representative, Johnny
Winton. “He said to me at a commission meeting a couple
of years ago, when I objected that Shorecrest’s views
were being misrepresented, ‘If you don't like your
elected officials, vote ’em out.’ And that’s just what
we did with Ms. Warren.”
Now Shorecrest
homeowners have a new challenge: finding individuals
willing to volunteer their time to be board members and
maybe president — at least for a little while.
“It’s time for a
change of thinking,” said Maggie Steber, a freelance
photographer who has resided in Shorecrest for the last
eight years. “It’s been a prodevelopment board. We’re
not anti-development, but if there is development it
should be appropriate….”
People
are so angry … very angry and upset.… At the same time,
it’s just been building.”
But even Warren’s
critics acknowledge that finding volunteers willing to
serve on the board, much less run for president, will be
a challenge. Many residents are simply too busy to run a
homeowners association.
“I had a business,”
said Jack Spirk, explaining why he left the board a few
years ago. “We were kind of burned out.”
Five years ago,
Warren, a resident of Shorecrest since 1998, stepped up
to the plate. She was elected president, re-elected the
following year and ran unchallenged the following three
years, she said.
Though Cruz denied
organizing Warren’s dismissal, he did describe it as a
“historic moment.” He e-mailed his “synopsis” of the
event to media and various residents on Saturday, Aug.
4. Cruz claimed that during a May 15 meeting with Miami
officials and Biscayne Boulevard property owners
regarding Miami 21, Warren voiced her support, even
though “it would allow eight- to 12-story-tall buildings
along 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard, next door to
the single-family homes of Shorecrest. Her response was
‘the people there don’t have a problem with it.’” In
contrast, Sarnoff advocates a three-story limit along
the 79th Street corridor and a 35-foot height limit
along the Boulevard.
Warren said she never
represented herself as president of the Shorecrest
Homeowners Association but as president of the Upper
Eastside Miami Council, which aspires to be an umbrella
group for both residents and businesses in Miami’s Upper
Eastside area. She also insisted that the subject of
height along 79th Street was never discussed — instead
it was property owners’ opposition to a 35-foot height
limit along the Boulevard.
“Twelve stories never
came up,” she said.
Warren said that
under current zoning, unlimited height is allowed along
79th Street. As a T6-8-zoned corridor under the
proposed Miami 21 plan, it would be nearly impossible to
build taller than eight stories on most parcels, Warren
asserted, but then added that a lone possible exception
would be the proposed 79th Street shopping center, where
enough land exists for a 12-story structure. “They could
go even taller under the current code,” she said.
“The city has never
put forward three stories; only Marc Sarnoff [has],”
said Warren. She believed such height limits would hurt
the area economically. “How can you revitalize a
commercial corridor with only three stories?”
Sarnoff, who attended
the July 31 meeting with Commissioner Joe Sanchez to
discuss tree canopy along the boulevard, said he saw
that people were anxious to vote Warren out but left
before the vote. A critic of certain elements of
Plater-Zyberk’s vision for Miami, Sarnoff thinks the
Miami 21 process has ignited passions among homeowner
groups in his district. As for the UEMC, which Warren is
a part of, Sarnoff said, “I think that certain elements
of the Upper Eastside are very friendly to developers
and the pendulum has swung the other way.”
Such was the case in
Shorecrest, where a petition of 135 signatures from that
neighborhood favored a three-story height limit along
79th Street and not a T6-8 zoning code that would enable
the construction of mid-rise buildings there.
Warren also had been
under fire from some residents after she got the rest of
the Shorecrest board to compromise with the Related
Group over Oasis, a project to be constructed on 79th
Street. Warren insisted a 20-story tower was better than
a 35-story high-rise. Many neighbors disagreed with the
compromise and filed a suit against the project.
Then there were the
Upper Eastside Miami Council meetings a few months ago
at which Frank Rollason, a representative of Belle Meade
and one-time candidate for the District 2 seat, made a
motion against supporting the current draft of Miami 21.
The motion passed. But at another scheduled meeting, the
decision was reversed and Rollason was thrown out of the
UEMC. In response, Belle Meade and Morningside seceded
from the UEMC.
“We were, like, just
amazed and appalled; that got all the major
neighborhoods pull[ing] out,” Spirk said.
Warren counters that
Rollason cast his Miami 21 vote at the last minute,
after many council members had left the meeting. She
said Rollason’s removal was actually initiated by UEMC
member David Treece, not her. “I have been accused [by
Elvis Cruz] of orchestrating all these things — I must
be quite a Wonder Woman,” she said.
According to Spirk,
some homeowners were eager to commence the vote to oust
Warren at the beginning of the July 31 meeting but
Warren said it would be “embarrassing” to have such a
vote with Commissioners Sanchez and Sarnoff present.
Association members relented for the time being and a
motion was made later. “Everyone started speaking up,”
Spirk said.
Warren compared it to
a “gang rant.” “I mean screaming, fist shaking, and my
older normal neighbors literally ran out the door,
telling me after that they felt intimidated and were in
fear for their own safety,” Warren stated in an e-mail.
“Nobody could speak at all because anyone who appeared
to disagree with them was shouted down, including my
90-year-old neighbor on a walker.”
Frank Alter, a former
board member who also sought Warren’s ouster, said her
supporters were equally rowdy, citing a neighbor’s son
who shot him the bird. “We were pretty sure we had the
two-thirds,” said Alter. “We saw that the balance of
power was sort of leading away from her. She saw some
faces there [she] never expected to see….”
Vela said Warren
never sought out or communicated with members of the
association and simply acted on her own — and that’s why
she was ousted. Alter agreed: “We are trying to reclaim
our neighborhood … from people who don’t care about the
neighborhood.”
On Sept. 25, the
Shorecrest Homeowners Association is scheduled to meet
to discuss appointing interim board members to replace
those who resigned. In January, elections will be held.
“We have to canvass the neighborhood to let some of the
other residents know what happened and recruit new
members.”
Warren, though, has
no intention of leaving her post as president of the
Upper Eastside Miami Council. “I’m elected by all the
neighborhoods, not just Shorecrest,” she said.
Will she challenge
the Shorecrest vote to remove her? “We will see what
happens,” she said. “I have a lot of other things to do
with my life.”
For more information
on Miami 21, log on to
www.miami21.org. Comments? E-mail
erik@miamisunpost.com.
