West Avenue Phase II: Where are we 6-months later?

On November 18 2025, we had the opportunity to share our concerns about West Avenue Phase II with City senior staff and Elected Official. The same presentation was made the previous week at the SoBe West Monthly meeting. It includes lack of communication, impact on residents and possible delays.

As of today, we have not heard back from the city about the concerns brought up during these two meetings.

On Dec 17, we had another meeting on site with the team in charge of West Avenue Phase II including representatives from the contractor. This was the first meeting on site with the full team since the project started 6 months ago.

The contractor shared concerns again about the lack of accurate information as it relates to the location of cables and other utilities buried. Whenever third-party companies (ATT, Verizon, Breezeline, etc) order any installation or modification, they use subcontractors who don’t necessarily report their work accurately. These companies do not have an obligation to deal with correct or relocate what is in the way of the project as an emergency,

Construction is currently stopped for the holidays, but RicMan is also waiting for the relocation of a Verizon cable. These issues are making the work of the contractor difficult and trigger an immediate stop on part of the project until the issue is resolved. In these cases, RicMan tries to assign his staff to another location within the segment, but it is not always possible.

The city had tagged trees for immediate removal (before the holidays). With the updated schedule the removal of the trees followed by the installation of the new Stormwater system will not take place until March 2026…

We are expecting in Early January a communication from the city about how the schedule is being affected and the consequences on delays with the projects.

As of now we have not been able to make progress on the following:

• Immediate communication with affected residents (Text Messages like the ones used for traffic issues) in case of emergency.

• Better information about signage and access during construction for vehicles and pedestrians

• Better communication about scheduling and issues with the construction team (closed access for pedestrians during Art Basel, delays about addressing repairs like lighting).

• Regular reports with Elected officials who were not aware of most of the issues we brought up during these meetings.

We shared with the construction team the need to have meetings in person with directly affected property owners before moving forward. We hope that our meeting on Dec 17 will initiate a shift on how these matters are being handled.

We asked the City CIP program to involve the residents as early as possible in the design of Phase 3 (South of the Waverly). Looking back, a lot of delays could have been avoided with phase 2 if the residents would have been involved sooner (Location of the above ground infrastructure, Parking, Harmonization concerns etc).

During our meeting with City officials in November we raised the concern about the possibility to bifurcate and separate the raising of the street from the replacement of underground infrastructure.

Our existing infrastructure is collapsing, and a large part of the infrastructure work is not funded. The replacement of the Stormwater system with a much larger capacity and the addition of the pump should be enough to handle the current flooding concern for more than 20 years without raising the street. Raising the street also means a private harmonization agreement and additional work/cost.

We also requested to go back to the initial work by segment program and suggested that segment should be designed so that no part of the construction should take more than 6 months.

We would also like to see a program to give residents the option to relocate mature trees which are planned to be removed. This could be done through an approved contractor who would be paid by the residents a relocation fee to eliminate issues/liability.

SOBE West is committed to following up on all the issues related to West Avenue Phase II and III so the impact on its residents and businesses is substantially reduced.

If you have any questions, suggestion or comment please contact Stephan@gaythering.com