JulesFIU07 wrote:
FIUNole wrote:
Sweetwater will never be a college town. But if in the next 20-30 years developers could buy up most of the property from 110th to 107th and 8th to 6th, I think that area could be master-planned to be a privately owned student housing development with college student-themed shops, restaurants/delis/bars, parks/green space, pool(s) and new, nice apartment-style dorms and/or townhouses designed specifically for FIU students, it could be a nice area and asset to the university.
Maybe that's the plan. I don't know. But a few dorms kind of scattered throughout southern Sweetwater with no real flow or them wouldn't do much for either FIU or Sweetwater, imo.
There is a lot more to it than some random student-centric housing. Sweetwater is undergoing a re-zoning and master planning process to essentially fix the city and make it part of FIU.
And if you read the master plan, they are starting with 109th Avenue from SW 7th street on northward as a "green corridor" with many of the stuff you just mentioned, FIU Nole, to have that "feel". You got to start somewhere, and the fact the City already made those zoning changes, that FIU, MDX, Sweetwater, Miami Dade County, and private investors are working together to try and secure some federal TIGER Grants to make this happen, is a great start. Actually, there is already a new, "different" business that just opened there that specializes in hamburgers catering to FIU students, whose name just escapes me. But, it's the first business endeavor in that avenue which I believe caters to what we are talking about.
It's not turning the whole city into a College Town. It's about starting with a corridor at the very least, and maybe add quadrants to the east, and there you have a "feel" of a small college town.
