The Official South Florida Discussion Thread

[Dat Migo]

Where you at down here? I own a title company in downtown fort lauderdale, I can toss you referrals if I come across anyone and introduce you to some of the mortgage brokers I partner with

I work for a small team of agents in Coconut Grove/Brickell. Referrals are always welcomed But I was going refer TB to my bro-in-law since I know he likes to keep it black

 

[Aspiringleigh]

 

[Scientific Playa]

Finga Licking Opens in Miami Gardens: Party With DJ Khaled
Thursday, July 23, 2015 | 5 hours ago

Fried lobster and sides at Finga Licking.

Photo by Finga Licking via Instagram
Tomorrow, Miami Gardens will get a new spot for fried lobster and grilled shrimp. Finga Licking, located at 17467 NW 27th Ave., will open Friday, July 24, with a party. The celebration will kick off around 3 p.m. with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert. Then it's on to the festivities. From 3 to 6 p.m., 99 Jamz will be onsite, and DJ Khaled, along with some special surprise guest stars, will provide the entertainment. There will also be a red carpet.

Elrich Prince, best known for his Poe Boy Music Group, opened the flagship Finga Licking at the former Arnold's Royal Castle on 125th Street in North Miami last Memorial Day weekend. The music mogul decided to go into the restaurant business after tasting chef Latosia Colton's food. He convinced the chef to collaborate on the first Finga Licking. "I want people to know they can get good food away from South Beach."

Now, Prince is opening a second restaurant, in Miami Gardens. Although the menu here will be the same as the one at the original location, this new, smaller Finga Licking will focus on take-out; however, there are a substantial number of seats in the dining room, decorated with red accents. Store manager Sharod Robinson says that the first location remains, after all, the "flagship" of the group.

Finga Licking's North Miami location has become a musicians' hangout of sorts, with celebrities like Mike Tyson and Flo Rida frequenting the restaurant. When the North Miami location opened, Sean Combs widely promoted a video of the place on his I Am Diddy Instagram account.

The restaurant features a mix of Caribbean and soul food favorites such as fried lobster ($22.99), grilled shrimp sautéed with onions and peppers ($15.99), and fried turkey ($13.99). Sides include mac 'n' cheese, sweet candied yams, string beans, and steamed broccoli.

Finga Licking's hours are Monday through Saturday from noon to 2 a.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to midnight.

Finga Licking at Royal Castle
12490 NW 7 Ave
North Miami, FL 33168

786-703-3087

Finga Licking Opens in Miami Gardens: Party With DJ Khaled

 

[Scientific Playa]

Meet the Miami Midnites, South Florida's Minor-League Basketball Team

by Adam Hendel | Monday, July 6, 2015
Miami Midnites' may be successful on the court, but off the team exudes humility. They play home games out of the David Posnack Jewish Community Center, a 40-acre complex amid suburban Davie's strip malls, and players earn roughly $800 to $1,200 a month, so many of them hold second jobs.




Meet the Miami Midnites, South Florida's Minor-League Basketball Team

See also: Semi-Pro Miami Midnites Chase Basketball Dreams One Blowout at a Time

 

[OfTheCross]

Royal Castle on 79 St. Is better than Finga Lickin

But good job by dude to start a successful franchise

 

[OfTheCross]

Breh put me on to miami gardens bck in the day we stayed in those apts across the street from toosties by the shells gas station (I think thats shells) ... Im trying to be in a cool spot 180k and under

I drove by again today..

It's called Aventura Isles

Aventura Isles luxury single family homes, townhomes in North Miami, Florida

 

[Akata Man Bromo]

I drove by again today..

It's called Aventura Isles

Aventura Isles luxury single family homes, townhomes in North Miami, Florida

Thanks but way outta my range breh

 

[OfTheCross]

Florida among top states with fastest job growth - South Florida Business Journal

The Sunshine State is ripe with opportunity when it comes to the job market, according to Kiplinger magazine.

Florida was ranked one of the top 10 states expected to see the fastest employment gains in 2015.

Meanwhile, Kiplinger projects Florida to add 253,600 new jobs in 2015 and 274,600 new jobs in 2016.

“Construction, tourism, health care, transportation and technology will buoy the economy.

 

[OfTheCross]

No lie, Wynwood is about to turn into Upper Manhattan in less than 3 years

1) Almost all of Wynwood is converted from 'Light Industrial' and 'Industrial' to 'General Commercial' with a lining of 'Light Industrial' in the blocks along I-95 and a chunk of 'Medium Density Residential' in the SW corner where Mana Wynwood is located.

2) Financial incentives, including Transfer of Development Rights, are in place to preserve warehouses and incentivize development.

3) Zoning along North Miami Avenue and 29th Street will allow development up to eight stories as-of-right, with an additional four stories in exchange for public benefits. The majority of the rest of the area allows building heights up to five stories with an additional three in exchange for public benefits.

4) The new zoning does allow for development of new one-story buildings.

5) The Wynwood Development Review Board gives local control to approve all large projects.

6) The new zoning promotes affordable small studio apartments (less than 650 square feet) instead of large live-work spaces, with option to pay for a release from parking requirements at $12,000 a pop. This money would then go into the Wynwood Public Benefit Trust Fund and be used to pay for centralized parking.

7) Requires ten foot minimum width sidewalks.

8) Requires pedestrian paseos (cross-block walkways) for larger projects.

9) Woonerfs!

10) Solid, roll-up doors are banned.

11) Centralized parking facilities, paid for by developers looking for reductions in parking requirements, will encourage pedestrian walkability.

12) Increased housing density from 36 and 65 to a uniform 150 dwelling units per acre.

13) Allows both pure residential or live/work uses, while today only live/work is allowed as-of-right.

14) Incentivizes activated rooftop green spaces, and ground floors

15) Developers can pay into the Wynwood Public Benefit Trust Fund, which pays for open space, for an additional 3 to 4 stories of height or increased lot coverage from 80% to 90%. The trust fund will be used only in Wynwood, for open spaces, public parks, civic spaces, and woonerfs.

16) Facades on new developments will be required to either be wall art or glass.

17) Wynwood-only use categories like art galleries and manufacturing-enabled retail will preserve the character of Wynwood.

These are the Rules of the Big New Wynwood Zoning Code

Traffic is gonna suck, man. Cutting through the hood is I avoid my head exploding from being stuck on Biscayne

 

[Scientific Playa]

Miami-Dade County
July 22, 2015

With new plan, stakeholders lay out vision for ‘Wynwood 2.0’

By Andres Viglucci

• 
  
  • Wynwood property owners and developers, looking to turn the industrial-district-turned-hipster-mecca into a real, honest-to-goodness neighborhood, have banded together to do something almost unheard of in Miami: Voluntarily control development.
    
    Working through the auspices of a city-chartered business improvement district, the group has crafted a comprehensive zoning plan that its members say will encourage preservation of Wynwood’s characteristic warehouses and funky vibe, foster development of small-scale retail, creative enterprises and affordable housing for its youthful habitues, and improve the street experience by widening sidewalks and introducing greenery where now there’s cracked concrete and asphalt.
    
    The proposed Wynwood Neighborhood Revitalization District, which goes to the city commission for initial review on Thursday, would allow warehouse owners to sell unused development rights to other local property owners in exchange for preserving the structures, and would create a design-review board to ensure new development is compatible with the artsy neighborhood aesthetic.
    
    It also contains a novel approach to parking — a bedeveling issue since the district became one of Miami’s hottest redevelopment zones. Instead of requiring a set parking minimum for every new development, the plan would allow developers to reduce the number of required slots by paying into a special fund. The BID, which represents the district’s 200 property owners, could then use that pooled money to fund construction of centralized parking.
    
    The reduced requirements, the plan’s authors say, would lower housing costs and encourage development suited to Wynwood’s small industrial lots, many of which can’t accommodate lots of parking, instead of the typical Miami redevelopment model of lot assemblages that often leads to overscaled development. Think New York City’s traditional mid-scale neighborhoods and not maxed-out Brickell, they say.
    
    “We’re trying to discourage developers from building up to the maximum height,” said David Polinsky, a BID board member and developer who’s building Wynwood’s first new residential project in years, a small 11-unit condo next to Panther Coffee. “We want human scale.”
    
    The linchpin of the plan, drawn up for the BID by Miami firm PlusUrbia: Increasing but strictly capping housing density to bring full-time residents to the sparsely populated warehouse district, whose outdated light-industrial zoning now makes new residential development largely unfeasible. The plan would also create a true, walkable urban environment of the type that attracts the millenial generation already flocking to Wynwood’s art galleries, bars and restaurants and its growing number of creative businesses.
    
    The plan also would allow the creation of Miami's first woonerf — a Dutch-inspired curbless street design in which slow-moving cars and pedestrians share the right of way — to help bring a semblance of landscaped public space to a neighborhood with a severe shortage of it. Three side streets have been designated as possible woonerfs, which could beclosed for special events.
    
    “This is the planning document that takes us to Wynwood 2.0,” said Joe Furst, BID chairman and managing director at Goldman Properties, the firm that helped launch the Wynwood renaissance when it commissioned graffiti artists to spray-paint murals on a set of old warehouses. “It’s time to create a place that people can call home. This is the most comprehensive way of thinking about a neighborhood.”
    
    The plan’s backers say they believe reductions in parking and the density increase could result in relatively affordable apartments as small as 650 square feet.
    
    The plan, in the works for more than a year, was developed in conjunction with Miami’s planning department and recently won the unanimous endorsement of the city planning board. It applies only to the industrial zone south of 29th Street, and not to the mostly residential, working-class portions of Wynwood north of that.
    
    The plan would, among other features:
    
    ▪ Increase overall housing density and allow buildings up to 12 stories along North Miami Avenue and up to eight stories on Northwest Second and Fifth avenues, with the rest of the neighborhood at five stories.
    
    ▪ Discourage warehouse teardowns by allowing owners looking to preserve the structures — which are too modest to qualify for protection as historic buildings — to sell their unused air rights to developers who want to build up to the caps on the main avenues.
    
    ▪ Establish a design-review board made up of local stakeholders to advise the city planning department on the compatibility of new development.
    
    ▪ Mandate expansion of sidewalks from the current five feet to 10 feet and require that the district’s long blocks be broken up with “paseos,” or public cut-throughs from one block to another, in new developments.
    
    Some developers are already designing projects according to the new rules. Jonathon Yormak, principal of a New York firm that has bought several properties in Wynwood, said its architects have laid out plans for 250 apartments and 35,000 square feet of retail on a large property across from Polinsky’s 250 Wynwood condo.
    
    The new building would rise on the site once slated for Wynwood Central, a scrapped mixed-use project that would have had just 69 large rental apartments under the existing zoning. The new rules would permit smaller, more affordable units that appeal to Wynwood’s young millenial professionals and creative types, Yormak said.
    
    “There is no question it’s better for Wynwood” he said.
    
    “Under the existing zoning code, if you wanted to build housing and cater to millenials, people who can’t really afford luxury, there was no way to build that at all.
    
    “We want young, smart knowledge-based workers in all industries to be able to afford and live in an urban environment where there is food and art and culture, and to be able to walk everywhere. It needs to be a 24-7 environment, and not just Thursday night partying and Sunday brunch.”
    
    
    Miami-Dade County
    
    Read more here: With new plan, stakeholders lay out vision for ‘Wynwood 2.0’
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

 

[NY's #1 Draft Pick]

No lie, Wynwood is about to turn into Upper Manhattan in less than 3 years

Traffic is gonna suck, man. Cutting through the hood is I avoid my head exploding from being stuck on Biscayne

I've thought of moving back to Miami but I wanna but I wanna buy a good sized home in a good area and you know how that is in Miami.

 

[agnosticlady]

Thanks but way outta my range breh

Living in Aventura is EXPENSIVE. It is a nice area, but is EXPENSIVE. I stay in Miami Gardens, and depending on the area you can find a good place and commute to the hot spots. Miami Lakes also has some affordable housing. South Broward Pembroke, Miramar, Cooper City, and etc) have reasonable housing. I plan to leave Miami though.

 

[OfTheCross]

I've thought of moving back to Miami but I wanna but I wanna buy a good sized home in a good area and you know how that is in Miami.

Dat Palm Bay life got you spoiled, breh.

The cribs up there are too big and cheap.

I can't deal with the silence and solitude, tho

 

[OfTheCross]

Living in Aventura is EXPENSIVE. It is a nice area, but is EXPENSIVE. I stay in Miami Gardens, and depending on the area you can find a good place and commute to the hot spots. Miami Lakes also has some affordable housing. South Broward Pembroke, Miramar, Cooper City, and etc) have reasonable housing. I plan to leave Miami though.

That complex is actually nowhere near Aventura, tho..its in Miami Gardens.

Shows how much Miami Gardens has come up, tbh

 

[agnosticlady]

That complex is actually nowhere near Aventura, tho..its in Miami Gardens.

Shows how much Miami Gardens has come up, tbh

Really? Well damn excuse me lol. I didn't even notice that. Miami Gardens has come up. The 183rd street 46 Avenue area is slowly getting better.