As the Related Group's Icon Bay rises in Edgewater, neighbors of the colossal condo project complain that with a lack of setback requirements for the neighborhood's flurry of new towers, they are being edged out. One Curbed reader brought our attention to the case of 430 NE 29th Street, where construction workers are digging a parking garage for Icon Bay that backs right up to a petite, two-story house occupied by an elderly couple, potentially throwing that house in shadow and... you know... killing their petunias. "They are practically digging under the neighbor's fence, I imagine that there could be structural damage," she says.
A meandering drive through Edgewater shows the rapid changes north of downtown, with many of the neighborhood's distinctive two-story stucco buildings and one-story bungalows (some of the oldest in Miami) already having ceded ground to a bunch of mostly blah high-rises. Whether setbacks would make sense in the case of the homeowner whose present next door neighbor is a ditch and a construction crew, the high density called for in the Miami 21 zoning code is in effect at Icon Bay, and will likely continue. However, the density and urbanism coming to Edgewater are totally logical, furthermore, for such a centrally located neighborhood in Miami's urban core. And if you're doing high density, setbacks aren't good urbanism.
· Icon Bay coverage [Curbed Miami]
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