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Jack King |
A consulting firm will soon be
giving estimates for its proposed vision for a
redesigned Coconut Grove waterfront.
The
Boston-based Sasaki and Associates firm presented its
“final draft” without cost estimates for the Coconut
Grove Master Plan to the Waterfront Advisory Board on
April 10. Among the major elements of the plan, which
centers around Dinner Key, are the creation of 24 acres
of green space, the demolition of the Coconut Grove
Convention Center and moving two nonprofit
organizations, Shake-a-Leg and the Coconut Grove Sailing
Club, to a facility near Miami City Hall.
Bob
Weinreb, a consultant working for the city manager’s
office on waterfront issues, told the Waterfront
Advisory Board Tuesday that Sasaki and Associates will
present the plan with cost estimates to the Planning
Advisory Board on June 20. The cost estimates and plans
will also be presented again to the WAB in June or July.
While
praised by many Coconut Grove residents, including
Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, the draft was opposed by many
Sailing Club members. Back in April, the Grove WAB
offered comments but did not endorse or reject the plan.
“We do
need to take a vote,” said T. Spencer Crowley, chair of
the Waterfront Advisory Board.
WAB
member Jack King, a former SunPost columnist,
said he would like to see a Coconut Grove waterfront
plan finally implemented. “None of the waterfront master
plans in the history of the city of Miami have ever been
done,” he said.
During
a recent Town Hall meeting at St. James Baptist Church,
Sarnoff reiterated his support for the waterfront plan,
though he was somewhat pessimistic as to what version
will be implemented. “It will get what I call
politicized. Everyone who has a stake in the plan will
WIIFM it,” he said, defining the acronym as What’s In It
For Me.
Underground Surprise
Waterfront Advisory Board Grows Impatient Over Slow Pace
of Virginia Key Study
By Erik
Bojnansky
While a master plan continues to
be shaped for Virginia Key, analysis of what to do with
a decades-old 105-acre landfill still hasn’t begun.
The
county has promised the city of Miami $45 million to
redevelop the Virginia Key
Landfill and allocated $365,000 for an
assessment. However, the company chosen to perform the
assessment wanted clarifications on what to do if they
“found things” worse than was predicted, said Bob
Weinreb, a consultant working for Miami’s city manager’s
office on waterfront issues.
Although Weinreb said City Manager Pete Hernandez wants
to complete the study, members of the Waterfront
Advisory Board were skeptical. Board member Wendy
Kamilar said she remembered Alicia Cuervo Schreiber,
chief of operations for the city at the time, saying
more than a year ago that soil samples would soon be
taken.
“Now
she’s taking soil samples for the Related Group,”
laughed fellow board member Jack King, referring to the
development firm Schreiber now works for.
King
said he has been told by city officials for more than 10
years, starting with then-City Manager Cesar Odio (later
convicted of bribery charges in 1996), that work to
analyze Virginia Key Landfill would begin soon. King
said no city manager in Miami likes to start work in an
area where they don’t know what the outcome will be.
“The question may be how do we force them to do it,” he
said.
Virginia Key Landfill was once a body of water known as
Duck Lake, Weinreb said. Starting in the 1950s, soon
after the Rickenbacker Causeway connected Virginia Key
and Key Biscayne to the mainland, people began dumping
their garbage there. It wasn’t long before the city of
Miami followed suit, dumping waste in what Weinreb
called an “unregulated landfill.”
“This
is the ’50s. People didn’t have a clue,” Weinreb said.
Dumping
continued into the 1960s. The landfill was finally
“capped off” in the 1970s — with mounds of dirt piled
atop the mounds of garbage. What sort of garbage no one
is really sure — hence the need for a study.
If
possible, members of the Waterfront Advisory Board would
like to put the former landfill to another use. For
example, Miami-Dade County turned a landfill in Key
Biscayne into a professional tennis center.
Weinreb
said there was no effort to ignore Virginia Key inside
City Hall. “Government is slow,” he said.
Vacancy
Open
Seat on Village Council
Staff Report
There’s an open seat on the
Coconut Grove Village Council that needs to be filled
soon.
How
soon? Well, the deadline for applicants interested in
filling the position is today (Thursday) at 5 p.m.
The
seat became vacant after Village Councilman Ron Nelson
resigned to join Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff’s staff.
“Anyone who has applied in this calendar year for one of
the seats vacated by Commissioner Sarnoff and Yvonne
McDonald is exempt from the $100 application fee,”
stated a flier sent by Grove activist Sue McConnell.
The
nine-member council was formed in 1991 to represent the
interests of Coconut Grove residents “before any and all
governing bodies with legal jurisdiction or authority in
matters pertaining to the residents’ interests.” Often
that means presenting the views of the Grove to the
Miami City Commission, which technically has
jurisdiction over Coconut Grove.
Prior
to his election as a Miami city commissioner, Sarnoff
was chair of the Coconut Grove Village Council. McDonald
would later be hired as one of Sarnoff’s aides. Except
when appointed to fill a vacancy, Village Council
members are elected by those who reside in the area
“bounded by the Rickenbacker Causeway, U.S. 1, the
southern boundary between the city of Miami and Coral
Gables (variously LeJeune or Prospect) and Biscayne
Bay,” according to the Village Council’s Web site.
Qualified applicants must be registered voters, have
resided for more than 12 months in Coconut Grove prior
to qualifying, and have not previously served on the
council for two two-year terms.
Finalists will present their credentials to the Village
Council on June 5, with a decision on who will fill the
vacancy by June 19. By July 3 a new member will be sworn
in to the Village Council.
For further details, log on to
www.coconutgrovevillagecouncil.com.
