The SunPost

The Gerard Pitt building at 7300 Harding Ave., Miami Beach, built in 1954, is in the area of North Beach where a green space is being proposed in place of a parking lot. Photo by Thomas Delbeck/Courtesy NBDC

Though North Beach has experienced a residential building boom like the rest of Miami Beach, restaurants, stores and other such sidewalk life have been slow to follow. How to stimulate businesses to invest in North Beach to create a lively street life that will encourage area residents to stay out of their cars, and in the neighborhood — as well as attract visitors — was a major topic at Tuesday’s Miami Beach Planning Board meeting.

Board members saw two PowerPoint presentations on the future vision for the Ocean Terrace area, given by the city’s North Beach planning coordinator, Joyce Meyers. Located between North Shore Park at 73rd Street and the public library area just north of 75th Street, the zone offers few attractions for people to come and spend money.

Meyers spoke of the goal of making the area a destination unto itself, a pedestrian-friendly place for eating, drinking, meeting people and community events. She said a key element is for the city to finish building the beach walk, which has hit some budget snags and could be two or three years off. Currently Public Works is negotiating a contract, and there are still issues with the Department of Environmental Protection and other permitting agencies, Meyers said.

Among the plans presented to spark area life were to introduce portable food kiosks to Ocean Terrace and bring in an outdoor street market modeled after that of Española Way in South Beach. She added that the intention is not to compete with the successful Normandy Village Market Place, where farmers come to sell fresh Florida produce on Saturdays around the Normandy Fountain on 71st Street. Other suggestions for bringing businesses and people to Ocean Terrace: waiving sidewalk café fees charged by the city, providing flexible seating and umbrellas for people to sit in the shade, planting shade trees, upgrading street lighting and widening the sidewalks from Collins Avenue to Ocean Terrace.

Planning Board members spoke in favor of the suggestions and said they would recommend them. Ana Velasco, the city’s assets manager, said Miami Beach currently has a concessionaire that could provide portable concessions on an experimental basis. Planning Board Chairman Marlo Courtney warned that food stands should be kept to the highest standards of quality.

Also discussed was the possibility of creating an overlay district in the area, which would loosen current zoning and encourage private development.

Planning Director Jorge Gomez said if an overlay district were created it would provide some “certainty for a private investor” to come in and know exactly what could or could not be built in the area.

Courtney agreed that the city needs to do something.

“Certainly Ocean Terrace needs a lot of help,” Courtney said.

Besides delays with the beach walk, a project seen as essential to revitalizing Ocean Terrace, members of the North Beach Development Corporation said the lack of public restrooms in the area is a big problem.

“How can Ocean Terrace function without bathrooms?” asked Randall Robinson, North Beach Development Corporation’s executive director. “It’s a major frustration in North Beach, and that area, and no one seems to listen.”

Meyers went so far as to say that without the beach walk and bathrooms, she’s afraid the other items discussed would fail.

Later in Tuesday’s Planning Board meeting, Meyers came back to the podium, this time with a presentation on the North Beach Town Center Plan. The gist of her presentation was that wealthier people are moving into North Beach, but they’re going elsewhere to spend their money because there isn’t enough street life to keep them in the neighborhood.

Piggybacking on her earlier presentation, Meyers discussed incentives to bring in commercial development. The vision she presented is to encourage redevelopment of the entire North Beach neighborhood, which encompasses the area from 63rd Street to 87th Terrace and from the Atlantic Ocean to Biscayne Bay. The push is for a mixed-use neighborhood that would combine “retail and restaurant spaces at the ground floor with residential or office spaces above the ground floor.” The belief is that if people had places to go near where they live, they’d leave their cars at home and walk or ride bikes.

A highlight of the presentation was an idea to create green space in the parking lot between 72nd and 73rd streets and Collins and Harding avenues. The dream is to partially submerge the parking lot underground and create green space on top.

Former Mayor Neisen Kasdin was in the audience and got up to praise the idea. He pointed out that doing so would effectively link a continuous swath of green space starting in North Shore Open Space Park, moving down along the ocean to North Shore Park, and between 72nd and 73rd streets from the Atlantic Ocean to Indian Creek.

After the meeting, Meyers told the SunPost that “it will be a stretch for the city to come up with money” to submerge the lot and cover it with greenery. But the Planning Board members welcomed the ideas.

“This is a wonderful first step to create some wonderful street life,” Courtney said.

There was some disagreement over the name Town Center. Board member Cathy Leff said she thinks the word "town" conveys the wrong idea.

“We are not a suburban community,” Leff said.

Meyers agreed to explore other names, and the board voted unanimously to recommend to the Miami Beach City Commission that the plan move forward.

“I have no idea what name I’m going to come up with, but in general I was happy with the response,” Meyers told the SunPost.

The next step, she said, is that she’ll likely present the plan to the Land Use and Development Committee. No date is set, but she said it could be as early as its June 11 meeting. If accepted, it will move on to the commission.

“We just want the commission to adopt the big picture and then we’ll come back with the pieces one by one,” Myers said. If the plan is accepted, funding will have to be found and the idea marketed to private investors.

The proposed Town Center Plan can be viewed on the city’s Web site at www.miamibeachfl.gov. Under the business menu, click on Development Initiatives, then click Planning and Zoning, and finally click North Beach Town Center Plan.

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