A Coconut Grove activist wants the Miami City Commission to let two-story apartment buildings into single-family neighborhoods, offering a concrete alternative as residents push back against twin high-rise towers planned for the West Grove.
Andy Parrish, a former member of Miami's Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board, laid out specific Miami 21 code changes in a letter published Aug. 6 in the Coconut Grove Spotlight. His proposal responds to Related Urban Development Group's plan to build an 818-unit complex with towers reaching 22 and 25 stories on county-owned land near the Douglas Road Metrorail Station, as reported by the Miami Times.
"Instead of doing what most developers do — which is find out the maximum the code allows — let's look instead at what already works," Parrish wrote.
What he's proposing
Parrish wants two changes to Miami 21:
- Allow T4 density (36 units per acre, up from 9) in T3 single-family zones, limited to one apartment building per block.
- Reduce the parking requirement below the T4 standard of 1.5 cars per unit (current T3 zones require 2) in exchange for preserving more trees.
His model building would occupy two standard lots (10,000 square feet), stand two stories at 25 feet to the eaves and yield about eight units with setbacks of 20 feet front and rear and 10 feet on the sides. Under T4 parking rules, 12 spaces would be required for eight units, but only eight physically fit on the site. That gap is the code barrier Parrish wants waived.
The cost math
Parrish estimates his eight-unit building would cost roughly $3.92 million to develop:
- Land: $1.5 million
- Construction at $200 per square foot: $1.92 million
- Architect, fees and permits: $500,000
That works out to about $500,000 per unit. The figure is Parrish's own back-of-envelope calculation and does not include financing costs or the government subsidies high-rise developers receive. He called for a public comparison of per-unit costs between subsidized towers and smaller buildings.
The project he's responding to
Related Urban's expanded Stirrup Plaza project would pair a new 25-story tower with a previously approved 22-story building at Douglas Road and Day Avenue. The original project, Gallery in the Grove, was approved last year as a single 20-story tower with 345 apartments (173 below market rate) at $148 million. The developer has not disclosed how many of the 818 total units would be subsidized.
Both the Related Urban project and a second nearby development, Eviva by Integral Florida (450 apartments), were approved under Miami-Dade's RTZ zoning, which allows taller, denser buildings near Metrorail stations. It remains unclear whether the expanded plans require a second county commission vote or whether the developer could use Florida's Live Local Act to bypass additional approval.
What happens next
Any Miami 21 zoning change to allow T4 density in T3 zones would require action by the Miami City Commission, a separate body from the county commission overseeing the Related Urban project. No hearing or vote on Parrish's proposal has been scheduled. The commission's next regular meeting is Sept. 10.
This is Parrish's second public zoning push in two weeks. On July 27, he published a separate letter calling on the commission to fix the NCD-3 zoning loophole that a 2019 court ruling stripped of legal force. Neither proposal has drawn a public response from District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo or other elected officials.
