Kendall Parkway development back on fast track

A long-stalled bid to cut driving time from West Kendall to downtown by adding 13 miles to SR 836 is set to rev up after the county pulled out of a war over control of five tollways.

Commissioners voted unanimously last week to exit the fight, clearing the way for the Greater Miami Expressway Agency to put Kendall Parkway construction in high gear.

“They’ll be bringing it up in their next meeting,” said Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera, who worked for months to broker an accord among the agency, called GMX, the county commission, and the ousted Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, or MDX, which for years has been fighting in court to affirm that it, not GMX, should control the county’s toll roads.

The county’s vote removed it as a party in appealing a Sept. 25, 2024, court order to give GMX control of the roadways in a years-long struggle against its taking over. GMX has been operating the roadways as MDX has been opposing the takeover. The county last week voted to pull out of the appeal of the court order.

Whether MDX representatives will continue in court is not clear. The county’s vote “does not mention MDX, which I’m glad, because we don’t control them. We have nothing to do with that,” said Commissioner Raquel Regalado.

The county’s vote to pull out of the court motion, however, also aims “to continue working [with GMX] on the properties that we have previously discussed, and again restarting that partnership on all sorts of new things that we’re going to be doing and putting this chapter in the past and moving forward,” Mr. Cabrera told commissioners.

“This is important for many, many, many reasons,” said commission Chairman Antonio Rodriguez, “for my constituency and those that live out west, specifically for the parkway extension that has been on hold for way too long.”

The hold is to be lifted very soon, said Mr. Cabrera. Ms. Regalado asked how soon.

“Do you have any idea? You’re going to go to Panama” as President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador, she said. “I don’t want to call you a year from now and ask you about the land swaps.”

“We have had the conversation” with GMX, Mr. Cabrera replied. “As soon as we pass this, everything will start moving forward is my understanding.”
Kendall Parkway plans ground to a halt after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law in July 2019 to abolish MDX and replace it with GMX.

At the time, the price of the 13-mile extension from the western end of the Dolphin Expressway, 836, to West Kendall stood at $1 billion, a cost that surely has soared with materials and labor escalations.

The Kendall Parkway at the time was also being challenged in court. The county was a defendant in a suit by the Tropical Audubon Society and the Friends of the Everglades. It argued that the parkway, which was to stretch beyond the county’s Urban Development Boundary meant to protect the Everglades, would endanger wetlands and could invite urban spread, harm critical ecosystems, and threaten the county’s water supply.

How much time the six-lane parkway would actually save drivers between downtown and West Kendall was also debated. One planner said the saving would be only six minutes. The office of then-mayor Carlos Giménez said the parkway would save 23 to 29 minutes but could fall at times to as low as five minutes.

Construction time for the parkway was estimated in 2019 at about five years. No newer estimates have been revealed.

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