VonCarol Kinchens Named Interim Head Of Little Haiti Trust

Miami FL

16 September, 2021

11:15 AM

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By Erik Bojnansky, Miami Times Senior Writer Sep 14, 2021 The Little Haiti Revitalization Trust is close to hiring its top executive officer. During its Sept. 8 meeting, the Trust backed the hiring of VonCarol Kinchens as its interim director for the next three months, while the board looks for someone to fill the role permanently. Kinchens is an assistant director at the City of Miami's Human Services Department and the former director of the Neighborhood Enhancement Team. The appointment, as well as a $56,000 payment package for Kinchens, still has to be ratified by the Miami City Commission, which has now been deferred to the Sept. 23 meeting. A chief executive is needed in order for the Trust to start utilizing the $6 million it received from the developers of the Magic City Innovation District. On Aug. 25, the Trust budgeted $500,000 toward assisting Little Haiti residents with first-time homeownership, $500,000 toward assisting current Little Haiti businesses, and $500,000 for rental and home mortgage assistance. Kinchens will hammer out the details on how that money will be allocated. During the meeting, the organization also directed Kinchens to hire the staff needed to assist Little Haiti residents and businesses with obtaining grants from existing City of Miami programs. An ordinance creating the Trust was passed in summer 2019 as part of a last-minute deal with developers of the proposed Magic City Innovation District. In that deal, the city commission granted 8 million square feet of development rights on 18 acres of land control by MCID's partners. In exchange, the developers are to pay $31 million to the Trust in installments. The next payment won't be due until MCID's developers obtain the permits for one million square feet of development. MCID's main partners include Plaza Equity Partners, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, Metro 1 Chairman Tony Cho and Dragon Global CEO Robert Zangrillo. In March 2019 Zangrillo was indicted by federal prosecutors for conspiring to pay $250,000 in bribes to get his daughter into the University of Southern California. He was pardoned by then President Donald Trump just before he left office. The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.