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Beach Planners Are Right to Protect Public’s Access to
the Bay
“When we said ‘baywalk,’ it always meant, ‘public baywalk.’”
“Biscayne Bay is beyond argument, Greater Miami’s most precious natural
resource. Every person in Dade County shares a stake in protecting the
bay, visually as well as physically.”
So
stated a Jan. 30, 1984 Miami Herald editorial endorsing a
countywide ordinance requiring minimal shoreline setbacks, open spaces
with view corridors to the water and guidelines enabling physical access
to the bay for any project bigger than a duplex or a single-family home.
That law came too late for much of Miami Beach, where the bay is nearly
inaccessible. To rectify that, Miami Beach committees have required
public baywalks for project approvals in recent years, particularly
along West Avenue where the city has long promised a continuous baywalk.
Some developers have seen fit to ignore these guidelines they agreed to,
often in exchange for the Miami Beach Design Review Board’s quick
approval of their plans. And so, metal fences were erected, blocking the
very baywalks that were meant for the public.
Fortunately, officials from the city of Miami Beach Planning Department
are finally putting their foot down — demanding that developers provide
access to paved baywalks intended for the public.
The SunPost only wishes the city had acted sooner. Take the case
of the Waverly. Condo owners insist a fence has been present since
before 2001 and claim they never knew it was illegal. It’s still a
mystery why the city didn’t have it ripped down the very day it went up.
But to their credit city officials hung tough. “If the board were to
grant the proposed request in any manner, it would clearly be seen by
the community as violating the public trust and would set a potentially
damaging precedent,” Planning Director Jorge Gomez advised the DRB.
And this last October, the DRB backed its Planning Department and
ordered that the fence come down. Time would be allotted for the
Waverly’s condo association to build a fence that would protect its
private areas, city officials said. Apparently, the Waverly is using
this time to instead file another appeal, scheduled to be heard in
February, to keep the fence as is.
Meanwhile, the developer of the Flamingo, the Waverly’s next-door
neighbor, is also claiming he didn’t know the baywalk he was required to
build was supposed to be public. “The right to exclude people from your
property is a fundamental constitutional right,” Cliff Schulman,
developer MCZ/Centrum’s attorney, declared at last week’s DRB meeting.
Well, it’s public property — not private. That was the deal as
remembered by those who approved it back in 1997. “When we said ‘baywalk,’
it always meant, ‘public baywalk,’” said Arthur Marcus, a South Beach
resident and architect who was a member of the DRB back then. The
Planning Department is doing as it should — protecting the public’s
property rights.
Public baywalks are nothing to be feared. In principal, they should
enhance waterfront properties’ value — not detract from it, as those who
reside in some of South Beach’s ultra-luxurious bayfront high-rises told
the DRB.
Yes, the city should cooperate with developers and condo associations in
expediting the approval of a fence that will protect from trespassers
property that is truly private. But the baywalk is public — not private.
That was part of the deal when Waverly, Flamingo and many other projects
were approved by the city and the county’s Biscayne Bay Shoreline Review
Board almost a decade ago.
To
reverse that now would be detrimental to a movement that began more than
20 years ago to protect the public’s access to the water, arguably this
county’s finest and most precious natural resource.
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