| RIPTIDE | ▼ MIAMI SIGN OF THE TIMES? W LITTLE HAITI RESIDENTS WORRY ABOUT SHRINKING NEIGHBORHOOD BORDERS. BY JOSHUA CEBALLOS ilkinson Sejour is angry about a sign. An otherwise unas- suming street marker, the City of Miami plac- ard at the southwest corner of NE 68th Street and NE Second Avenue bears a mes- sage that rubbed Sejour and his neighbors the wrong way: “YOU ARE NOW LEAVING LITTLE HAITI.” Sejour, a Little Haiti resident and busi- ness owner better known by his alias, “Chef Creole,” posted a photo of the sign on his Instagram with an incredulous caption: “Wow. I didn’t know that Little [Haiti’s] end was 68 St. NE 2nd Ave. News to me. I thought it was 84 St.” Reached by New Times on Monday, Mi- ami’s District 5 Commissioner Christine King said that the sign was placed at that spot erro- neously and would soon be moved. The plac- ard was, apparently, part of an initiative from King’s District 5 predecessor Keon Harde- mon, who now sits on the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners. “The community can rest assured that the boundaries of Little Haiti have not changed,” King said through a spokesperson. Though the kerfuffle seems to have been a simple misunderstanding of borders, Sejour and other Little Haiti locals have cause to be wary of encroachment, as Little Haiti is al- ready encircled by hungry developers gob- bling up land, and the persistent threat of gentrification. “The people of Little Haiti are disappear- ing anyway, and those who are left are too old GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS ▼ MIAMI FLOATING AN IDEA that can move between land and sea floats his boat. His kids ask him to park blocks away when he drops them off at school, so their friends don’t laugh at his boat-car hybrid. A former captain of Miami Pirate Duck Tours, A Langesfeld has been driving off the road and into Miami’s waterways for over two decades. Since at least 2016, the semiaquatic seaman has lobbied his local government to bring his passion to the public by creating a fleet of duck trolleys for the City of Miami. “CAPTAIN AMPHIBIOUS” WANTS SEMIAQUATIC BUSES FOR MIAMI DURING FLOODS. BY JOSHUA CEBALLOS ndy Langesfeld is obsessed with am- phibious transportation. Cars that sail on water, ships with wheels — anything Project developers have committed $31 million to the Little Haiti Revitalization Trust to support local businesses and redevelop- ment of the area. To date, they have contrib- uted six million dollars to the trust, in accordance with their agreement with the City of Miami. But not all of Little Haiti’s business own- “I SAW GENTRIFICATION IN BROOKLYN AND THE BRONX. I SAW THOSE SAME PATTERNS FORMING IN LITTLE HAITI.” ers have been convinced they will share in the prosperity that proponents claim the project will bring. “I saw gentrification in Brooklyn and the Bronx. When I came back [to South Florida], I saw those same patterns forming in Lit- tle Haiti. I know what comes with a quick land grab,” local res- ident Ashley Toussaint told New Times last year when in- terviewed about her involvement with initia- tives to promote local Haitian businesses. Another planned high-rise project, Sabal Photo courtesy of Chef Creole to pay attention to what’s going on,” Sejour says. “They’re steamrolling everything while everyone’s got their head in the dirt just try- ing to survive.” Haitian migration to Miami began en masse in the late 1970s, and by the late 1980s, the Haitian diaspora had formed a significant footprint in the area then known as Lemon City and Little River. In 2016, Miami City Commissioners voted to name the area Little Haiti, officially adopting the name that many had already been using for some time. Official maps from Little Haiti’s 2016 for- mal designation as a neighborhood show the area stretching north on NE 2nd Ave to the Little River Canal, just south of El Portal. (The errant sign indicated a slash in the neighborhood’s area by about 16 blocks.) A sign at NE 68th Street and NE Second Avenue implies that Little Haiti is much smaller than it should be. The community is on the cusp of major transformation via large-scale developments like the Magic City Innovation District. The project would cover a large swath of Little Haiti, with 2,598 apartment units, 2.34 million square feet of office space, and 432 hotel rooms lined up for development. The construction permit application for the project’s first tower, the Parcel 11 high-rise, is under review. Plaza Equity Partners, a developer and in- vestor in the project, announced in August that it had secured a deal with Miami-Dade County to supply utilities to the Magic City Innovation District. Palm Village, would be built where the De- sign Place apartment complex now stands in Little Haiti. Plans include nearly 3,000 apart- ment units and another large hotel. Little River, the neighborhood north of Little Haiti, is seeing a ratcheting-up of devel- opment into an entertainment and cultural district, leading some to believe it may be- come a future Wynwood. On Google Maps, the borders of Little River reach into the offi- cial boundaries of Little Haiti, down to NE 62nd Street. With rents and property values already skyrocketing throughout Miami-Dade County and large developments hemming in lower-income neighborhoods, locals like Se- jour worry that the writing is on the wall, if not on the sign: “YOU ARE NOW LEAVING LITTLE HAITI.” Though his plans have so far treaded water, Langesfeld is still trying to make his amphibious dream a reality six years later. After watching the intense flooding from Hurricane Ian in southwest Florida and from king tides in Miami, he says his ideas don’t look so outlandish anymore. “I’m based in Allapattah, which is notorious for flooding. Three months ago the water was up to my door, so I took my amphibious car out, and my neighbors whose cars were ruined asked me to talk to our city commissioner to tell him we need more of these vehicles,” Langesfeld tells New Times. For the past few months, Langesfeld has reached out to City of Miami staff while working with outside partners in Boston to create an aquatic bus service that can serve Miami in the event of severe flooding. His idea is to create an “amphibious evolution” for transportation and base it in Miami, ground zero for sea level rise. “The climate is changing on us, and we need “WE NEED TO INCORPORATE AN AMPHIBIOUS EVOLUTION IF WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO SURVIVE.” to incorporate an amphibious evolution if we want to be able to survive,” Langesfeld explains. “The buses could go in and out of bodies of water to avoid traffic gridlock. When there’s emergen- cies, I can rescue people from places that are un- reachable because of flooding.” While Langes- feld has the experi- ence and local know-how, his part- ners in Boston have the design. Kevin Neprud, owner and chief technical officer at luxury design company Nou- voyage LLC, patented a design for an amphibi- ous vehicle platform back in 2012. He tells New Times his company has used his designs for sev- eral military contracts as well as an amphibious limousine, and they’re in the process of creating a bus design for Langesfeld’s vision of semi- aquatic public transit. “Our vehicles can carry between 40 and 48 people and can also carry two crewmembers. The footprint is similar to urban buses running downtown now, and reach speeds of 25 to 28 knots (28 to 32 mph),” Neprud says. Neprud explains that the bus design will be high-end and sleek to fit with the city’s aspira- tions to be a new tech hub. He says they will be hybrid vehicles that can run fully on electricity in the water and will have the ability to push and pull debris during cleanups. The pair have already engaged with investors and plan to build a facility in Miami that can build and maintain their waterborne buses, making it a fully local operation. “This is the time. The tech is there, the ur- gency is here,” Langesfeld says. 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