Meeting Summary May 11, 2015 (9:00AM – 4:00PM); Miami-Dade Transit Office The Southeast Florida Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Working Group is an informal group of participants from many agencies and organizations with the purpose of working together to foster the creation of TOD in Southeast Florida in a cooperative, collaborative, effective, and efficient manner. The most recent meeting was held on May 11, 2015 at the Miami-Dade Transit Offices in the Overtown Transit Village North Tower. Working Group participants introduced themselves and provided individual updates on TOD-related efforts. The meeting facilitators shared preliminary results from the TOD Work Plan survey on priority actions and presented a draft of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) District 4’s TOD Readiness Tool. The group provided comments and feedback on ways to improve the assessment tool. Mr. Jess Linn from Miami-Dade County and Mr. Kenneth Naylor with Atlantic Pacific Communities presented information about planning and implementing TOD projects in Miami-Dade County. After the presentations, participants toured affordable housing TOD projects at the Northwest 7th Avenue Transit Village and Northside Metrorail station. KEY THEMES AND TAKEAWAYS The TOD Working Group Priority Actions Survey responses indicate some consensus among respondents. Respondents would like to see more information about TOD Case Studies, pursue funding opportunities, create a TOD compact, and organize a developer/lender panel. The meeting facilitator encouraged Working Group participants to complete the survey if they have not already done so. Facilitators presented a draft of the TOD Readiness Tool to the Working Group. The tool outlines 20 measures that planners and stakeholders can use to determine how ready an area is for TOD and develop strategies to increase readiness for TOD. Participants liked the tool’s flexibility, ease of use, and clarity. The group also suggested incorporating walking comfort, safety, and parks into the tool. The group questioned the tool’s applicability to different areas of analysis (e.g. linear corridors vs. station areas), whether the tool adequately considered transit, and potentially conflicting measures regarding affordability. Miami-Dade County’s Comprehensive Plan contains multiple land-use classifications with densities that support TOD. According to one developer, densities from 20 to more than 180 units per acre can facilitate TOD. County staff and developers work together to develop specific 1 policies for TOD areas. Developers then utilize the specific policies to create site and building plans. When developers propose TOD, they need to communicate with the surrounding neighborhood to address community concerns. Neighbors expressed concerns about increased densities in several Miami-Dade County TOD project areas. County staff explained that the existing Metrorail infrastructure is “out of scale” with the existing densities and the increased densities are compatible with the future land use and match the existing transit infrastructure. Transit operators in Miami-Dade County have seen significant transit ridership increases after the implementation of a TOD. Atlantic Pacific Communities has developed several TODs comprising hundreds of affordable housing units. These TOD projects typically have high occupancy rates and do not require large marketing efforts to fill the available units. The affordable TOD projects developed by Atlantic Pacific Communities required significant subsidies from the county, state, and federal governments. The Miami-Dade Affordable Housing Surtax Program has been important to the development of affordable housing in the community. The Miami-Dade County transit story is noteworthy because it provides lessons learned for other communities and demonstrates that it is possible for cities to implement high capacity transit and achieve TOD. With the lessons learned by the County, other local governments may be able to operate transit and enable TOD more efficiently and with more effectiveness. ANNOUNCEMENTS Meeting facilitators introduced the TOD Working Group Website. The website contains information about the TOD Working Group, TOD research and reports, meeting materials, and other TOD information. The website is located at the following link: http://www.sfrpc.com/TOD.htm The facilitators provided an update of the Southeast Florida TOD Inventory and map. This inventory and map is under construction. When it is completed, the inventory and map will identify the location of transit services and stations in southeast Florida and their accompanying planning documents. ROUND TABLE UPDATES Broward County held a workshop with FDOT, the Broward County Planning Council, the City of Fort Lauderdale, and Broward County Transit about multimodal transportation measures and the possibility to enhance its transit concurrency system. Broward County is updating its comprehensive plan through the Broward NEXT process. The County anticipates completing the process in 2016 although no deadline exists. Transit and TOD were a large part of the discussion at the workshop. The County is looking to improve transit from a regional perspective to supplement a local service perspective. See http://www.broward.org/browardnext for additional information. Palm Tran provided an update on the ‘wedge’ property at the intermodal station in West Palm Beach. The site plans are approximately 30 percent complete and proposed development on the 6.6 acre property includes 420 residential units, 335,862 square feet of office space, 34,927 square feet of retail space, a 300 room hotel, and several bus bays. Stakeholders are working on construction phasing to ensure that the bus transfer station remains in operation throughout the construction process. 2 The Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council (TCRPC) provided an update on the effort by the TCRPC, South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (SFRTA), and the City of Boynton Beach to create development rights at the Boynton Beach Tri-Rail Station property. The Boynton Beach Tri-Rail Station is currently located within a built-out Development of Regional Impact (DRI) and contains no development rights. Stakeholders would like to see TOD constructed on the property, which will require additional development rights. To obtain the necessary development rights the current options include abandoning the DRI and rezoning the property or amending the DRI with a Notice of Proposed Change. TCRPC is working with the Florida Housing Finance Committee to secure funding for the project. TCRPC also shared regulations from the Palm Beach County Comprehensive Plan that could serve as a valuable model for other local government comprehensive plans to help TOD applications meet concurrency requirements. Five years ago SFRTA, Palm Beach County, FDOT, and the Palm Beach Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) developed the regulations as a “concurrency release valve.” The regulations allow development within a quarter-mile of an existing Tri-Rail station to reduce the required auto Level of Service (LOS) to 30 percent above the LOS D traffic volume if the development meets TOD criteria. The regulation provides a “low bar” that could help TOD applications overcome problems meeting roadway concurrency standards. A representative from TCRPC provided an update on FDOT Central Office’s initiative to develop Complete Streets guidance for the State of Florida. TCRPC is participating in the guidance workshops. Smart Growth America is providing assistance to develop the guidance. Stakeholders are looking at how Complete Streets affect the market and how to develop Complete Streets. Working with Smart Growth America, FDOT will revise all its guidance documents to be more context sensitive (e.g. Urban versus Rural) and will include a range of dimensions for Complete Street components and amenities. Within this process, stakeholders are having a larger conversation about land use. Participants are also discussing what makes a Complete Street corridor successful from the land use perspective. FDOT is planning to finish work on the documents this summer and anticipates publishing in the fall. See the following links for additional information: http://www.dot.state.fl.us/rddesign/CSI/Default.shtm David Orshefsky asked whether any legislation that could support TOD failed during the recent legislative session. He also asked the question, “What is happening with the Federal Highway Trust Fund and federal funding legislation?” The Florida Legislature passed legislation that eliminated one of the Regional Planning Councils and limited the duties of the remaining planning councils. At the Federal level, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) had announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity and Request for Proposal for a new National Public Transportation/ Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Technical Assistance Initiative. The initiative will provide technical assistance for transit-oriented development activities around public transportation stations. The FTA has budgeted up to $4,000,000 over a four-year period. Proposals were due on April 10, 2015. SFRTA is working to create a Downtown Miami Tri-Rail link. SFRTA applied for a TOD grant from FTA, but has not received any communication back. SFRTA anticipates that FTA grant administrators will provide an update by the end of December 2015. SFRTA is also working with the Broward MPO on the Cypress Creek Mobility Hub master plan. 3 The Broward MPO indicated