Photos by Mitchell Zachs/Magicalphotos.com

Alex Fuentes and Milly Herrera with the Citizens of South Florida for the Preservation of the Hialeah Race Track are taking a stand against development of the area.

“Everybody predicted this place would die,” Fuentes told me. “But I said, ‘If it’s hip, Cubans will buy it. You could charge 10 bucks for a coffee and we’d buy it.’”

Fuentes is struggling now with a different kind of sales job, one that would seem nearly impossible in a climate in which we salve our social disquiet with more trips to the (strip) mall. Fuentes, an energetic, earnest 29-year-old, is the brains of an effort to prevent Hialeah Park owner John Brunetti from converting the defunct racetrack into a mega-development that would bloom like a plastic sunflower from the squat surroundings of the neighborhoods around it.

“This is our Central Park,” he said. “Or it can be. It should be.”

According to a large-scale development plan Brunetti filed with the South Florida Regional Planning Commission last year, he wants to build more than 3,700 apartment and condo units, plus a mega-mall retail shopping complex and offices. The plan calls for preserving a token portion of the park, such as the clubhouse, as a nod to the park’s storied past.

Brunetti, a colorful real estate developer who has owned the park since the late ’70s, has said he was driven to this end because the park is no longer viable as a racetrack. The decline started sometime in the Eighties, with the final nail in the coffin occurring in 2001, when the state Legislature deregulated the racing dates for the various horse tracks. Hialeah Park’s competition, the tracks at Calder and Gulfstream, essentially then colluded to split the season between them, leaving Hialeah with nothing. Hialeah lost its racing permit, but according to a spokesman, is seeking to get it back.

Brunetti, as well as several Hialeah-area politicians, lobbied for years to return to regulated race dates that would allow the park to compete, but that effort failed and I wouldn’t hold my breath this year either.

Both the city’s and the state’s Historic Preservation boards have pooh-poohed the idea of a mega-development at the park. The park is on the National Register of Historic Places, although as far as preventing development, the designation is mere window-dressing.

The Hialeah City Council has paid lip service to the idea of preserving the park (sending a letter in opposition to the plan filed with the state commission), but also seems to be supporting Brunetti’s plans through incremental stages. Late last year, the old stables were decertified as historic, so they could be destroyed.

Mayor Julio Robaina told me that is because he’d received numerous complaints from nearby residents and business owners about the dilapidated state of the stables, which they felt was contributing to the vermin problem in the area. He explained to me that the park is privately owned and the city has limited control over what can be done with it. “I can’t force him to do anything,” he said. All he can do is make sure Brunetti keeps the property clean and up to code.

Robaina, like almost everyone else I’ve spoken to on both sides, would rather see the horses come back to Hialeah. That’s unrealistic, though. Also unrealistic, in his view, is the idea that the city could buy the whole property for a public park. He’s heard it’s worth more than $200 million, when the city’s entire annual budget is only $140 million.

So Robaina (with a largely malleable City Council behind him) supports a compromise, as yet undefined, but something less than Brunetti’s walled mega-city. He’s thinking a town center type of development, setting aside maybe 50 acres or so for a park area that would include the old clubhouse, gardens and statues. With the Metrorail station right there, it could become a real central destination in a landscape without an identifiable core.

When I called Brunetti’s offices, the designated spokesman was Steve Bovo, who also is president of the Hialeah City Council. Bovo, like Robaina, claims a deep emotional connection to the park and its history, and ideally would like to see it largely preserved. “I’ve always said, ‘You better replace one jewel with another jewel,’” he told me. “To see skyscrapers or warehouses here is something I don’t think anyone wants to see.”

But Bovo says he can also understand his boss’ point: Where were all the people who want to save the park when he was struggling to keep it afloat for years? “Brunetti has put his money where his mouth is as far as trying to save the park for racing,” Bovo argued.

Bovo also pointed out that a lot of his constituents don’t have such a vital connection to the park, and would be more interested in seeing major chain stores, like a Chili’s restaurant or Barnes & Noble bookstore, coming into Hialeah.

This is the essential test of what kind of place Hialeah can be. As with any city, the quality of life has a lot to do with an active citizenry who cares about and is willing to fight for what they want. One of Hialeah’s problems, traditionally, is that it was ruled by one strong-willed man, former mayor Raul Martinez, and an incredible political machine for 25 years. Its activist core was never large, and so now it is a challenge to go through the unfamiliar process of building a large coalition to fight for the park.

Fuentes, along with activist Milly Herrera (the heart of the movement) has reached far and wide to gain support. Nancy Liebman, president of the Urban Environment League of Greater Miami, went out to the park to speak to Robaina and others, and the UEL is fully behind the activists.

She points to what happened when Tropical Park in Miami lost its racing and was bought by the county as an example for Hialeah to follow. “It’s going to take tons and tons of money and effort,” she said. “Can there be a public effort for the city to purchase it? If it is turned into a strip mall, it would be like knocking down a national monument. I haven’t had this sense of horror since we lost the Art Deco buildings (on Miami Beach, which galvanized the preservation movement there).”

She encouraged Fuentes to apply for a special designation for the park from the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the 11 most endangered historic sites in America. He did, and Liebman notified local trustee Tony Goldman, as well as Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Milly Herrera views the Save Hialeah Park campaign as the biggest fight of her, and Hialeah’s, life. “This park is our park,” she said. “It’s a regional and national issue, not just local. It is the issue that is going to unite the citizens with the government. It evokes passion.”

And that’s something Hialeah could use.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.