The Miami Dade College board of trustees is taking a second shot at voting on the transfer of a 2-acre Downtown Miami site intended for President Donald Trump’s presidential library after a political activist filed a lawsuit that blocked the initial land deal.
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This time around, Miami residents will have a chance to weigh in on the plans for the $950M project after the board votes on the land transfer on Dec. 2, the Miami Herald reported.
The new vote comes after a judge in Florida’s 11th Circuit Court blocked the initial land transfer in October after political activist Marvin Dunn filed a lawsuit claiming the board of trustees violated the state’s Sunshine Act, which requires reasonable public notice of government meetings.
“We won,” Dunn told the Herald on Tuesday. “This is what we wanted them to do. Re-notice this and give the public a chance to appear and express our views, so we won. They caved.”
The 2.6-acre Miami site serves as an employee parking lot for Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Campus, which is adjacent to Freedom Tower, a 14-story Spanish Revival building that was a resource center for Cubans seeking asylum in the U.S. between 1962 and 1974.
The site has an estimated worth of $67M, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The board initially voted in late September to hand the site to the state.
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After the transfer vote, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered up the parcel to serve as the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, though it was short-lived when Judge Mavel Ruiz of Florida’s 11th Circuit Court ruled that the college didn’t provide reasonable public notice for the school board to vote and donate the land.
Now, Dunn told the Herald he hopes to organize hundreds to weigh in on the plans.
Still, Trump has no shortage of options for where to plant his library in Florida.
His team reportedly eyed Miami’s Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, which offered a 100-year lease for free.
State officials have ensured the path to Florida’s first presidential library was clear after passing a law in April that blocks counties and municipalities from enacting or enforcing measures regarding presidential libraries unless authorized by federal law, according to Florida Politics.
