At last, a DPZ project close to home?

For all their success nationally and internationally, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk have yet to design a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in their home base, Miami-Dade County, and get it built. Their first success on that score will come if the University of Miami gains approval for a 136-acre TND on university-owned land near the Miami-Dade zoo, 12 miles from the Coral Gables campus.
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, with Dover, Kohl & Partners, has master-planned a development called South Campus Village, which would contain up to 1,200 residences along with a public school, a public library, parks, and neighborhood shops. “It will be a real model,” said Michael Katz, president of Mamco, a nonprofit subsidiary the university established to carry out off-campus development. Detached houses, low-rise condominiums, and townhouses of varying sizes and prices would appeal to “workforce,” middle-, and upper-income brackets, according to Mamco.
The university is calling it an “academic village,” though houses there would be for sale to the general public, not restricted to people associated with UM. Included in the project, about a half-mile west of Florida’s Turnpike, would be a university “wellness center” and a branch of UM’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The school, for grades 6-12, also would be affiliated with the university.

Under one of the first tnd ordinances
“South Campus Village has the potential to become one of the first TND model communities in Miami-Dade County, which is in dire need of mixed-use, transit-ready communities,” Galina Tahchieva, director of town planning for DPZ, told New Urban News. It would be permitted under a TND ordinance that was written by DPZ and adopted by Miami-Dade in 1991 with the intention of encouraging traditional neighborhood development. Several TNDs have been permitted or are going through the process, she noted, but not many have been built.
The project — for property that has been used partly for university library storage and an animal research facility — has gone through a comprehensive plan amendment with the county but not through rezoning. The plan has gone through “multiple iterations,” Tahchieva said, characterizing it as “still in flux.”
Mamco is negotiating with two national builders, Centex Corp. and Lennar Corp. “This is an opportunity,” Tahchieva said, “to involve them in the best new urbanist practices that will include an ambitious environmental approach — compact, walkable, infill urbanism; durable and climate-responsive architecture, using sustainable materials; [and an] ecological program that includes preservation and maintenance of 30 acres of natural forest communities.”
The Miami Herald said questions have been raised about whether the development would be compatible with endangered plants and whether controlled burns — a regular part of maintenance of the pine forest — could take place so close to a residential neighborhood. UM has talked about using canals, clearings, or roads to insulate the neighborhood from fire.