As reported in The Miami Herald.

Miami-Dade’s public housing agency and a for-profit developer have teamed up to transform a low-density, 22-acre complex of rundown apartments for seniors in East Little Havana into a “vibrant” urban neighborhood of mixed-income housing complete with parks and on-site shopping, County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Tuesday.

Quietly in the works for years, the far-reaching $600 million project aims to take a big bite out of the county’s affordable-housing shortage. It would more than triple the number of units already in existence at the county-owned site on the south bank of the Miami River, bringing the total to 2,600 apartments meeting strict affordability criteria.

Dubbed River Parc, it would be the largest project to date in Miami-Dade combining low-income housing with “workforce” housing, generally understood as rentals for cops, teachers, clerical workers and other middle-income people who have been priced out of homes in the city amid sharply rising costs.

Most of the units will be new, and workforce apartments will be indistinguishable from those classified as affordable. The county and its partner, the affordable-housing arm of developers The Related Group, will demolish much of what’s now on the property, which sits across Northwest Seventh Street from Marlins Park.

Plans call for a dozen new buildings set around a central “paseo” as well as a public riverwalk and waterfront park. The 1963 Robert King High Towers, considered one of Miami’s finest Modernist buildings, and a companion community building will be kept and receive a total renovation, officials say.

The approximately 1,500 current residents in the three senior-housing projects now on the site won’t be displaced, but will instead be moved into new or renovated apartments as construction work proceeds in phases, the county said.

“This is a landmark project,” Gimenez said as he unveiled an ambitious master plan for River Parc. “This is really a milestone in the evolution of public housing in Miami-Dade County.”

Architectural rendering of the Gallery at River Parc apartment building, which will offer 150 units near Marlins Park. 30 of the apartments will be designated affordable housing. The rest will be workforce housing. THE RELATED GROUP

The planned River Parc would be nearly twice as large as the county’s radical revamp of the Liberty Square housing project, which is being transformed into a community mixing traditional public housing with affordable, workforce and market-rate apartments. Liberty Square’s first phase was inaugurated four months ago.

The Liberty Square project has featured prominently in the news for years, in part because of the housing development’s storied but troubled history, and in part because of vocal protests by skeptical residents who did not believe promises by county officials that they would not be displaced. When the new Liberty Square’s first phase was inaugurated four months ago, many residents were delighted to get keys to attractive new apartments with no increases in rent over what they were paying for dilapidated units.

The Little Havana project, in contrast, has largely flown under the radar. Related Urban won rights to redevelop the property as far back as 2011, when the county advertised for proposals in a competitive process, Miami-Dade housing chief Michael Liu said. In 2014, county records show, Miami-Dade commissioners approved a development agreement with Related Urban.

The plan also has strong support from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which under the Obama administration began encouraging the redevelopment of failing public housing projects across the country into mixed-income communities using a combination of public financing, tax credits and other incentives, and private financing. In contrast to public housing projects were everyone is poor, mixed-income communities are seen as far more economically sustainable.

The idea was that the injection of private funding could partly make up for the substantial loss of federal funding for public housing in past decades. Federal money for new construction and maintenance has all but dried up, but HUD has allocated money for conversion of public housing under public-private partnerships like the ones managing the Liberty City and Little Havana redevelopment projects.

At the master-plan unveiling in Little Havana on Tuesday, HUD’s regional administrator, Denise Cleveland-Leggett, called such partnerships critical to the future of affordable housing.

“If you hadn’t noticed, the days of HUD bringing in boatloads of money are over,” Cleveland-Leggett said.

County housing administrators and Related Urban officials say they held more than 20 public meetings and workshops at the Little Havana complex to ensure the master plan for the redevelopment, drawn up by Modis Architects of Miami, reflects community wishes and needs. The plan has the endorsement of the resident tenant councils and other area stakeholders, they said.

The transformation is also already well underway in Little Havana. The county housing agency and Related Urban Development inaugurated the first new building at the site, the 104-unit Martin Fine Villas, a year ago.

The old, bunker-like 50-unit Martin Fine Villas complex next door is now being demolished after residents were moved into the new apartments, which look like those in any nice market-rate building.

Tuesday also marked the ceremonial groundbreaking for the project’s second phase, the 150-unit Gallery at River Parc. The apartment rental building will comprise 120 workforce units, restricted to people making 60 percent to 140 percent of the county’s median household income of just over $50,000, and 30 affordable units for people making less than that.

Related Urban president Albert Milo, Jr., said financing for the $37.5 million Gallery project follows the typical model used by affordable housing developers, who cobble together federal tax credits and other tax incentives with bank loans to reduce costs and keep a lid on rents. Land is often provided by government at no cost to the developer — as is the case in Little Havana.

A private partnership with SunTrust Bank, which provided a $28 million construction loan and a sizable equity investment, helped to seal the deal.

Under the agreement with the county, Related Urban would own and manage the buildings for 40 years, Milo said.

The redevelopment will also be better for Little Havana than the existing senior complex, Gimenez and Liu said. Bringing in working people with higher incomes will help support new businesses as well as the continued maintenance of new and renovated housing, while spurring new life in what has been an isolated piece of the neighborhood.

The River Parc master plan calls for a “linear park” connecting Seventh Street to a new riverfront park, as well as a riverwalk along the south bank, which is now largely inaccessible to the public. A new paseo lined with shops would also lead from the street into the complex and would be public, they said.

Instead of functioning as an island, that means the new housing would be eminently walkable, green, sustainable and connected to the larger neighborhood, said Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins.

“We’re actually creating neighborhoods,” said Higgins, whose district includes East Little Havana. “That’s different from how we used to do affordable housing.”

Related Group chairman Jorge Perez, the so-called “condo king” whose residential towers have played a key role in the revival of downtown Miami and Brickell but also contributed to the city’s gentrification, said projects like River Parc and Liberty Square are a needed counterbalance.

“We don’t want just a 24-hour city for the rich,” Perez said. “Most cities are becoming that. That’s why these projects are so important.”