A fragment of rare pine rockland is not a slum — for the time being, anyway.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Dennis Moss said Tuesday he was indefinitely postponing a plan to declare land around Zoo Miami blighted to help pay for a Disney-style theme park while he worked out a better way to balance environmental concerns for the endangered forest with the need for jobs.
“The intent has been all along to make sure we have a project that is environmentally sensitive but at the same time provides an opportunity to create jobs,” Moss said after critics blasted the plan for about an hour at Tuesday’s County Commission meeting.
The county has long sought to create a controversial theme park on land it owns off Coral Reef Drive. But last year criticism grew sharper after a Palm Beach County developer bought 88 acres of nearby rockland from the University of Miami and announced plans to build a Walmart-anchored shopping center and apartments. In December, Moss proposed declaring the land blighted as the first step in establishing a Community Redevelopment Area which would help raise $130 million the county needs to entice a developer to build the 70-acre park.