Bal Harbour Shops Owner To Pursue 2M SF Live Local Project After Village Rejects Settlement
With the backing of Florida's attorney general, the family that owns the opulent Bal Harbour Shops is pursuing a supersized development that locals despise.
Whitman Family Development, the real estate firm of the Whitman family that owns and operates the open-air shopping center, had agreed to a settlement with the village of Bal Harbour to shrink its original proposal for a four-tower, 2M SF development to a three-tower, 1M SF vision.
But at a packed meeting Monday evening, the Bal Harbour Village Council unanimously rejected the settlement, arguing it would still change the character of the beachfront enclave and add too much traffic.
Whitman Family Development filed its original proposal in 2024 as a Live Local Act application. The law allows projects to supersede local zoning rules if 40% of its residential units are reserved as workforce housing. Bal Harbour rejected the project anyway, and the developer sued.
The settlement to reduce the size of the development was the result of mediation deriving from that lawsuit. With the village's rejection of the settlement, Whitman plans to continue litigation and pursue its original vision, the developer's attorney said in a statement.
“The Village has fought tooth and nail to delay, derail, and deny that proposal while disregarding the very intent of the Live Local Act, so it’s no surprise that Council members rejected a revised plan resulting from hundreds of hours of mediation talks that would have preserved a workforce housing component,” Josh Shubin of Shubin Law Group said in a statement.
“It’s become abundantly clear that the Village will do whatever it takes to uphold its exclusivity at the expense of the greater good.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a “friend of the court” brief in Whitman's lawsuit against the village earlier this month, arguing that the municipal government was violating the Live Local Act by not allowing the project to move forward.
“The Village may not frustrate the Legislature’s judgment through administrative obstruction or misapplication of state law,” Uthmeier wrote in the brief.
Bal Harbour Mayor Seth Salver indicated that village officials plan to challenge the law through the litigation process.
“The Live Local Act that we are currently experiencing the effects of was designed to cut out this democratic process,” he told CBS News Miami after the meeting. “Legislators in Tallahassee, in closed rooms out of the Florida sunshine, drafted this law that I think is unconstitutional because it cuts out the people and the residents who live in this community.”
Whitman's Live Local application consists of four towers rising as high as 297 feet each with 528 residential units, roughly 200 of which would have been dedicated workforce housing. The settlement would have shrunk the housing component to 180 units, with just 10% designated affordable, the South Florida Business Journal reported.
The development is also planned to include office space, a hotel and additional retail next to the shopping center, one of the most desired luxury retail destinations in the country.
Residents packed the meeting, held Monday evening at the Sea View Hotel, to boo the project and urge the council members to reject it. Whitman Family Development CEO Matthew Whitman Lazenby wasn't in attendance but sent a video message reminding the residents that his grandfather, Stanley Whitman, helped found the village, according to CBS News.
“Stanley always thought the shops should be even more, and ought to become a proper village center where residents could live, work and play,” Lazenby said in the video message.
