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Parks By the Water
Public Spaces to Be Encouraged in
Coconut Grove Waterfront Plan
“If you take away my parking space, I’ll be moving to Fort
Lauderdale with my boat.”
By Tiffany
Rainey
It took Sasaki
Associates and Economic Research Associates (ERA) nearly nine
months, but they finally unveiled three preliminary schemes for the
Coconut Grove Waterfront Master Plan at two public meetings this
week.
Hired by the
city of Miami to redesign the waterfront parcels stretching from
Peacock Park to Kennedy Park that are currently home to the Coconut
Grove Convention Center and Miami City Hall — as well as several
marinas, sailing clubs and restaurants — design teams focused on
enlarging the public open space and encouraging a greater connection
to the Grove’s commercial district.
Boaters,
however, voiced concern over the lack of attention to marine
activity, currently the property’s primary function, displayed in
the redesigns presented.
“This
waterfront is very unfriendly to boaters, yet Coconut Grove is a
port city,” Dinner Key Marina slipholder Jeff Schwartz said before
Miami’s Waterfront Advisory Board on Tuesday. “What I see here
doesn’t work for me.”
The key
complaint was that the schemes — Regatta Park, Grove Gardens and
Flying Clipper — do not allow for parking easily accessible to the
docks.
“We’d like to
aim for sufficient parking within five minutes,” said Mark Dawson of
Sasaki. “We have to balance the need for convenient parking and the
need for open space.”
Each of the
proposals includes parking components, with the two most intensive
and expensive proposals — Grove Gardens and Flying Clipper — calling
for a parking garage. Other amenities include community centers,
water taxis to the nearby spoil islands and amphitheaters.
Boaters, often
forced to lug heavy equipment and provisions to their vessels, said
the five-minute walk would be too cumbersome and would drive them to
seek slip spots in more convenient marinas like those found further
north in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
“If you take
away my parking space, I’ll be moving to Fort Lauderdale with my
boat,” Schwartz told planners.
Tom Moriarity
of ERA, who presented an economic component to the plans that
included increased commercial connection between Coconut Grove
retail and the waterfront, agreed that the possibility of
discouraging marine activity by limiting parking might need further
consideration.
“We do
understand the business nexus between slip spaces and parking,”
Moriarity said. “If this becomes a critical issue to marine
viability, we’ll have to retool the plans.”
Waterfront
Advisory Board member Jack King voiced opposition to covering the
open space with parking.
“I know
everyone says that there’s a God-given right in Miami to park right
at your [destination] but it’s not going to happen,” said King, a
former SunPost columnist. “We need to think outside of the
box.”
Dawson said the
firm would continue to look into ways to make the necessary parking
more environmentally appropriate.
“There’s a lot
more open space than there is today, but we can’t just dismiss
parking,” he said. “One thing we can do with all this parking is
make it less of a heat sink.”
Throughout both
presentations, planners reminded those in attendance that the
schemes were only the first step in working toward a concrete plan
for the land.
“In the end
this is an alternative stage. Nothing’s cast in stone or any other
material,” Dawson said. “These are very loose conceptual plans.”
Overall most
were pleased with the amount of progress made toward creating a
master plan that might actually prove viable.”[Studies and plans]
are usually done as devices to make sure that nothing gets done,”
King said, citing several similar projects for the site that fell
through in the past. “The fact that we’ve gotten this far with these
people is unbelievable to me.”
Though Dawson
admitted that none of the schemes could be accomplished within the
next five years, he said he was eager to begin narrowing the
proposals down to one with the help of community and boater
suggestions.
“We want 80
percent of the people happy with 80 percent of the plan,” he said.
“We’re not going to make 100 percent happy all the time.”
For more
information and updates visit
http://projects.sasaki.com/coconutgrove.
Comments?
E-mail
letters@miamisunpost.com.
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