Miami-Dade wins vast former Job Corps property

Miami-Dade County is in the process of acquiring a former 42-acre Job Corps site near Homestead after winning a federal bid for the land.

As Miami Today reported in September, after the US declared it surplus, the county expressed interest in the land to use for an emergency management response center or a park.

“There was a surplus process run by the federal government and the county submitted under that process, to get this property as a non-competitive fee, no-cost conveyance … it’s a nominal cost,” said Alex Muñoz director of the county’s Internal Services Department. “The application was submitted to the federal government, their GSA, their General Services Administration Division department.”

“Through that process,” he said, “we were successful bidders and awarded the property, and now they’re currently going through the process of actually conveying it or transmitting it to us, and that involves a few steps.”

The county must take administrative steps to acquire the site at 12350 SW 285th St.

“The two major administrative processes, county internal, is rezoning of the property and also going through the environmental assessments for the property,” said Shavannie Braham, real estate assistant division director. “Especially the environmental assessment, that is a requirement that needs to be completed. On the federal side, we’re awaiting a deed for the property.”

“The conveyance is in progress, a deed is being drafted by the federal government, and once that’s done by federal GSA, they’ll send that over to us for our county attorneys to review and we can go forward with going back to the [county commission] for final approval,” she said. “At the same time, as I mentioned, we are going through a rezoning process and also the environmental assessment process.”

The Federal GSA is going through its timeline, said Ms. Braham. “They haven’t told us specifically when we will get the draft deed. When we last followed up with them, they said they were still going through their own internal process, and so we’re just waiting for that to be completed for us to start our process of review. There’s no set timeline on their end, but we’re ready to get to action once we do receive it.”

The US Labor Department used the site 5.5 miles from the heart of Homestead for Job Corps training for about 20 years before the camp closed in 2017. The current Jobs Corps operation in the county is in Miami Gardens.

After the Jobs Corps decamped, the Department of Health and Human Services made the site an emergency influx shelter for unaccompanied alien children until June 2021, when that operation ended. It has been vacant ever since.

The county needs a hub for emergency management response and fire and rescue to relocate the urban search and rescue team, Carladenise Edwards, chief administrative officer, wrote in an October memo. That team now uses land beside Homestead Air Reserve Base that the US gave to the county in 2004 but is headed back to federal hands for national security use.

The backup plan was to use the land for parks, providing green space to help with storm water collection and reduce urban heat.

The county now is looking forward to obtaining the land.

“It’s a great opportunity to accept this property from the federal government and put it to good local use for a nominal-fee conveyance,” said Mr. Muñoz. “We’re just excited for the opportunity.”