Living Local...For a Living

56 permits and one very convenient resolution.

The beloved executive summary returns:

• Dr. Castro’s Live Local resolution might have been bought and paid for. I’ve uncovered a direct financial link between Dr. Castro and the developer who stands to benefit most from her proposal regardless of whether it succeeds or fails.

• The developer is Matthew Whitman Lazenby, president of Whitman Family Development and owner of Bal Harbour Shops, who has a massive Live Local project stalled in litigation with Bal Harbour Village.

• Of the 57 permits Dr. Castro’s company has run in Bal Harbour since she took office, 56 are for Whitman’s property, whether for the mall itself or tenants within it. One address constitutes 98.2% of her company’s Bal Harbour porfolio.

• Days after Dr. Castro’s resolution failed, Whitman published a suspiciously well-timed op-ed in the Miami Herald framing his fight as part of a broader pattern of wealthy cities blocking affordable housing. The Gables’ rejection gave him exactly the narrative cover he needed.

• If Whitman wins his Live Local battle, his project would require hundreds, possibly thousands, of permits. Based on the evidence, Dr. Castro is positioned to run most of them, which would generate a windfall potentially worth seven figures.

• Dr. Castro’s new boyfriend? Andy Peach, former general manager of Merrick Park (another of her best clients), now head of Miami’s Design District. Connect the dots.

Bottom line: Circumstantial evidence suggests Dr. Castro used her public office to advance the interests of a developer who pays her handsomely, and who stands to pay her even more handsomely if his project is approved.

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Last time, we took a close look at Dr. Castro’s Live Local resolution, an idea that (assuming good faith) I characterized as the single dumbest policy proposal from the single dumbest person ever to hold elected office. Note that this evaluation includes all elected offices, such as my niece’s elementary school class president, whose crowning achievement was making K-Pop Demon Hunters the theme of this year’s 5th-grade dance—a policy initiative that in terms of public benefit is practically the New Deal compared to Dr. Castro’s resolution.

I won’t rehash the complete analysis here except to say that should Dr. Castro’s vision ever come to fruition, it would make Coral Gables to Live Local developers what San Francisco was to gold prospectors in 1849. Hell, even Ariel, who suddenly sees only the good in everything, was forced to vote against it.

Now, based on the GIGO principle alone (Garbage In, Garbage Out), it would be perfectly logical to assume that the sheer idiocy of Dr. Castro's proposal is in itself proof of authorship—an idea that terrible can only come from a mind that is equally terrible, or so it would seem. But you’ll recall that I took a different position. As much as I wanted to indict the doctor for being secretly pro-Big Development, I just couldn’t see her cooking up that resolution on her own. Switching from Area Median Income to Municipal-Based Income calculations to raise rent limits? Achieving primary objectives via second-order effects? Basic economic literacy? Dr. Castro can barely pronounce these concepts, much less achieve an operational understanding of them.

No, I argued, this was fed to her. A conclusion I stand by today.

But then I went even further and asserted, based on the doctor's manifestly poor intellectual command of anything that isn’t a purse, that not only was she not the author of the policy, she was genuinely oblivious to its predictable consequences. Simply put, I didn’t think she understood how bad it was for Coral Gables and how good it was for Live Local developers. Indeed, there was, I reasoned, a quasi-exonerating element of naiveté that saw Dr. Castro playing her familiar role of useful idiot rather than informed accomplice.

On that point I can confidently say I was wrong.

You see, ever since I wrote my last post, I’ve had this nagging sense that some of the peculiarities surrounding Dr. Castro’s proposal were a little too peculiar to be left unscrutinized, particularly that Miami Herald op-ed by Matthew Whitman Lazenby, president and CEO of Whitman Family Development and owner of Bal Harbour Shops.

Granted, I mentioned this in my previous post. But save for a quick remark about the rather coincidental timing of the op-ed (it was published mere days after Dr. Castro’s resolution failed), I gave it decidedly little thought.

And that was a mistake, because in politics there’s no such thing as a coincidence. Had I looked more closely, as I recently did, I would have discovered the unmistakable connection between Dr. Castro and Whitman, and with it, the doctor’s crystal clear financial motive for wanting Live Local to gain a much stronger foothold in affluent cities, including the very one she is supposed to serve.

Whitman Family Development Permit Expediting

I’m going to do this a bit differently and start with the conclusion: I strongly suspect Dr. Castro proposed her Live Local resolution to assist Matthew Whitman Lazenby, president and CEO of Whitman Family Development and owner of Bal Harbour Shops. Allow me to explain.

Let’s start with the op-ed. Published in the Miami Herald just days after the Coral Gables commission rejected Dr. Castro’s resolution, Whitman penned a passionate defense of Live Local and a scathing indictment of “affluent communities” that “throw up roadblocks” against affordable housing development. Notably, the piece never mentions Coral Gables or Dr. Castro’s failed resolution. It is, from start to finish, about Whitman’s own stalled project in Bal Harbour and his litigation with village officials.

So why does the timing matter? Because Whitman’s op-ed frames his Bal Harbour fight as part of this quasi-epidemic of wealthy enclaves resisting affordable housing, and that framing is far more persuasive when it lands days after another affluent South Florida city just publicly rejected a pro-Live Local proposal. In other words, the Gables’ rejection of Castro’s resolution and all the anti-Live Local rhetoric that went with it gave Whitman the broader context he needed, allowing him to air his grievances in a way that comes across less like an ultra-wealthy developer fighting with his neighbors and more like a virtuous call to action against local NIMBYism.

Of course, you’re probably thinking: “Okay Aesop, it’s one thing to demonstrate how Castro’s resolution benefits Whitman, and yes, the timing is suspicious. But that’s a long way from establishing that Dr. Castro is in cahoots with Whitman or even has anything to do with him. Isn’t the simplest explanation that Whitman simply saw an opportunity to write the op-ed once he heard what happened in the Gables?”

Sure, maybe that’s the simplest explanation. But in politics, you’re not looking for the simplest explanation. You’re looking for the financial explanation.

Hence why I submitted a public records request to the Village of Bal Harbour asking for all permits pulled by M.E.D. Expeditors, Dr. Castro’s permit expediting company, since she took office in April 2023.

Here’s what I found: since being elected commissioner, Dr. Castro’s permit-expediting company has run 57 permits in Bal Harbour Village. Not exactly chicken feed.

But that’s not the good part. The good part is this: 56 of those 57 permits, pulled over a two and a half year span, are for the same site: 9700 Collins Avenue.

What’s at 9700 Collins Avenue, you ask?

You’re going to love this:

Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit! Turns out Dr. Castro’s permit-expediting company has quite a little book of business in Bal Harbour, a multiple six-figure book of business it would seem, 98.2% of which comes from one single client: Whitman Family Development.

Note that while some of these permits may involve tenant improvements, the overwhelming concentration at a single property—Whitman’s property—tells its own story. And it doesn’t matter which contractor is doing the work, when it involves Bal Harbour Shops, Dr. Castro’s company runs the permit.

So to recap: Dr. Castro, out of the clear blue sky, proffers a resolution that would make affluent cities like Bal Harbour and Coral Gables far more attractive to Live Local developers. Everyone in the room knows it will fail, as by this point, anything she brings to the commission is dead on arrival. And fail it does, loudly, accompanied by all the anti-Live Local rhetoric one might expect from a city like Coral Gables.

Days later, one of her best clients—a major developer with a massive Live Local project stalled in litigation with Bal Harbour—publishes a conveniently timed op-ed in the Miami Herald bemoaning the veritable epidemic of affluent communities trying to thwart Live Local projects.

Meanwhile, Dr. Castro's permit-expediting company continues to serve as Whitman's preferred vendor for permits—56 and counting, with the most recent dated December 5, 2025. This doesn’t include, of course, the scores of permits she would no doubt run, and the potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars she would make, should Mr. Whitman’s humongous Live Local Project be approved.

Mhmm.

The oldest profession

Plausibility is an inherently relative quality. To determine the most plausible explanation for something, you have to compare it to the set of all possible explanations. There is no sense in considering the impossible.

Thus, I think we can safely exclude any explanation that involves Dr. Castro studiously poring over the 100-plus pages of Live Local’s statutory text (text she surely cannot understand) and independently discovering a superior rent-setting methodology involving a relatively obscure metric, then attempting to codify it via legislative entreaty, all because she cares deeply about affordable housing in places like Opa-locka and Hialeah.

Yeah, I think we can all agree that never happened.

Which means any viable explanation necessarily involves someone feeding this policy proposal to Dr. Castro. And that leaves only two broad explanatory paths.

The first path is the more innocent one: A well-meaning policy advocate with no connection to Whitman or any developer simply wanted to see Live Local become more viable in wealthier communities and, for reasons that defy comprehension, chose the single dumbest and most feckless politician in Florida to serve as their spokesperson. The fact that this politician’s best client, i.e. a developer who just happened to have a suspiciously apropos op-ed ready for publication, stands to benefit from the resolution whether it passes or fails is pure coincidence. Nothing to see here.

The second path is rather less innocent: The resolution was fed to Dr. Castro, directly or indirectly, by the one developer who just so happens to be one of her best clients. A developer uniquely positioned to benefit from this resolution being introduced in a nearby wealthy community, and whose eventual victory in his Live Local battle can reasonably be expected to secure a substantial financial windfall for Dr. Castro, who went along with it because she is demonstrably rapacious (three Maseratis!) and has never been known to say no to the men who butter her bread.

You know which one my money is on. But just in case you’re still not sold on this, allow me to quantify what is at stake for Whitman, and by extension anyone who stands to benefit from his project gaining approval.

Whitman’s proposed Live Local development would add approximately 528 residential units, a 70-room boutique hotel, a private 200-member club, and 46,000 square feet of additional retail to Bal Harbour Shops. At 275 feet, the towers would rise roughly 27 stories, which is nearly five times the current height limit in the village.

Let’s do some back of the envelope math. Luxury condos in Bal Harbour currently sell for anywhere from $1,400 to over $2,800 per square foot, with the median listing price hovering around $2.5 million per unit. Under Live Local, at least 40% of the residential units must be designated as workforce housing with restricted rental values. But the remaining 60%, roughly 317 market-rate units, is where the real money is. Even using conservative estimates, the market-rate residential component alone could generate north of $850 million in gross sales revenue. Add the workforce housing component, the boutique hotel, the retail, and the private club, and you’re looking at a development with a stabilized value in the hundreds of millions.

By the way, if Dr. Castro's municipal-income proposal ever became state policy, the rent thresholds for Whitman's workforce units would skyrocket—instantly adding tens of millions of dollars to the project's value.

The construction budget is also quite the doozy, somewhere in the range of $450 to $600 million in hard costs. Whitman recently secured a $740 million refinancing and construction loan from Blackstone for Bal Harbour Shops, so capital access is not going to be his problem.

And construction is how Dr. Castro comes into the picture. A project of this magnitude doesn’t require 56 permits. No siree. It requires hundreds, possibly thousands, across multiple phases and trades. And based on what we’ve seen, who do you think is going to run most if not all those permits once Whitman gets the green light?

Remember, Dr. Castro’s mother famously made seven figures expediting permits for The Plaza and Merrick Park. The family playbook of attaching yourself to luxury malls and mega-developments has already been written. If Dr. Castro lands the permit work for Whitman’s Live Local project, she stands to make a windfall that would dwarf anything she’s earned from him so far.

And if you need any further confirmation that Dr. Castro’s world revolves around developers and the men who run luxury retail destinations, look no further than her personal life. Her new beau, the one she keeps posting cozy photos with on social media, is Andy Peach, who until recently served as general manager of the Shops at Merrick Park. The same Merrick Park that has for a while now been one of Dr. Castro’s best luxury mall clients. Funny how she keeps getting close to men who just happen to run institutions that constitute her target market.

By the way, Mr. Peach now heads Miami’s Design District. So if you’re curious where M.E.D. Expeditors permits are going to start popping up next, you have your answer.

It's all as slimy as it is obvious. Dr. Castro's newfound interest in the minute mechanics of Live Local has nothing to do with helping cities like Opa-locka or Hialeah, neither of which she serves. She's interested in Live Local because her best clients are interested in it, and if making her clients happy means throwing her city (which she basically just moved to) under the bus, then so motherf’n be it.

Granted, Dr. Castro’s resolution urging Tallahassee to amend Live Local was always a long shot; a measure unlikely to succeed even as symbolism. But imagine if it had. Imagine if the three of her colleagues who haven’t completely checked out mentally had failed to spot the ramifications of her proposal. Imagine a city like Coral Gables sending a message to Tallahassee that says, “Hey, let’s make Live Local projects significantly more lucrative in wealthy communities like ours.” What do you think that would do to future efforts to limit the State’s increasingly bold preemption of local zoning authority? How bitterly ironic would it be if a commissioner whose anemic base consists of the city’s most extreme anti-development residents ended up dealing the biggest blow against that very cause since Coral Gables was founded?

The depressing truth is that when Dr. Castro isn't doling out public dollars to political allies or using her seat to shield her cronies from accountability, she's pursuing policies that overtly benefit her business and personal finances. The men. The malls. The Maseratis. It's not complicated. She has organized her entire public life around converting public office into private gain, and she has done so with a degree of shamelessness that can only emerge from unchecked greed combined with limitless stupidity.

Many consider public service to be the highest calling. Dr. Castro, unfortunately, seems to have confused it with the oldest profession.

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P.S. If you think this was bad, wait until you see what's coming. Preview below: