New Miami parks stalled by neighbors who say ‘Not in my back yard’
Big Hill Park, a longtime waterfront gathering space with sigh-inducing vistas of Biscayne Bay — and a swell spot to cast a fishing line — remains as mangy as ever two and a half years after Coconut Grove volunteers won a $20,000 grant to transform it.
No benches, picnic table or resilient shoreline, as proposed. No shade trees or rain garden to filter the stormwater that runs down the slope of Royal Road. No cleanup of beer cans, Burger King bags, condoms or the occasional pair of underwear. The view and the breeze cannot be improved upon, but the dumpy 30-by-60-foot plot — one of the few bayfront places accessible to people who don’t own multimillion-dollar homes — is bursting with potential.
Yet the project, which was to be implemented with free citizen labor, donated materials and money from the Miami Foundation’s Public Space Challenge, has stalled.
Park proponents say it’s a classic case of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). One of the two homeowners living on Royal Road objects to any enhancements. She fears too many people would be attracted to the park and too many cars would drive down her street.
Nearby, at Cocoanut Grove Park, it’s NIOBY (Not In Our Back Yards), as neighbors abutting the public land also known as Four Corners have resisted another volunteer effort to spruce up four vacant lots at the intersection of Plaza Street and Palmetto Avenue with an $8,000 grant. The opponents have even gone so far as to remove a kids’ play hut made of palm fronds, hand-painted signs identifying native vegetation and a frog statue placed in Charlie’s Woods, which occupies one of the four quadrants.
A similar stalemate is emerging on South Bayshore Lane, where some homeowners don’t want a public green space touched. The bayfront pocket park is sandwiched between walled McMansions. A neighbor who won an $18,000 grant wants to add landscaping, seating and a berm to prevent flooding.
Things have gotten ugly in beautiful Coconut Grove. Blame the offending frog, blame selfish neighbors, blame city of Miami leaders for allowing the projects to wither. There’s plenty of blame to go around.
“I’m disappointed that my city, instead of choosing public benefits for the entire community, got scared and intimidated by a handful of homeowners,” said Brian Carson, a landscape designer who created the Big Hill Park proposal. “It’s embarrassing and unfair that these indisputably good ideas are in limbo. You buy a property and it is yours, but not the one next door, and if you shut it down, shame on you.”
Caroline Weiss, who has lived in an Alfred Browning Parker-designed house halfway down the hill for 48 of her 81 years, wants the shabby plot left alone. Fixing it will not fix the problems that have plagued the location forever. The only solution is to close off Royal Road, she says.
“We have lovely parks. That is not a park and is not meant to be a park, and if they try to make it one I will litigate all the way to the Supreme Court,” said Weiss, who dreads the prospect of more loud music, screaming, drinking, gunshots, garbage-dumping, cars, vandalism and riff-raff at the end of her street.
In the 1980s, it was a drug dealers’ dropoff for bale-laden boats. “Now it’s the No. 1 makeout-sex spot. Clean it up and who would come? Families? They’re afraid of getting mugged. Joggers? I tell women going by, ‘Honey, don’t run down there alone.’ Rich people? Working people? It’s all the way at the bottom of a 1,365-foot-long street.”
Commissioner Ken Russell, who attempted to broker harmony and compromise between neighbors, said revitalizing the lots isn’t as simple as it appeared when the grants were awarded.
“These are cool ideas and the public has every right to access but the grants don’t cover the additional funding and long-term maintenance requirements of the city,” said Rebecca Wakefield, Russell’s chief of staff. “It’s good intentions meeting the reality of local government. Our parks and public spaces system is under-resourced as it is, and there are already 100 city projects in the pipeline that have priority over citizen-generated projects.
“And the infighting makes the process more complicated. You’ve got to talk to your neighbors first.”
Carson, who has invested “hundreds of hours” of his own time in design, sketches, research and meetings with city officials, argues that the projects could be completed with the grant money alone.
“We don’t need additional construction from the city. We don’t need anything from the city. All we need is permission to plant trees in dirt and install two stone benches,” he said. “We designed it to be close to zero maintenance. We designed several different inexpensive plans. It’s a great gift and totally achievable within a $20,000 budget.”
For the $8,000 allotted to Cocoanut Grove Park, Carson said he could plant 10 native 10-foot trees that would grow into large legacy trees and erect a historical marker. Local historian Iris Guzman Kolaya has already researched the origins of the neighborhood and written text. But anti-park neighbors don’t even want a sign. Unless it says “Stay Out.”
Ron Kohn, who has lived near Plaza Street for 20 years, said it is unfair to portray neighbors in opposition as xenophobic.
“It’s a peaceful green space. Leave it alone,” Kohn said. “To designate it with signs, add seating, picnic tables and waste bins -- that’s tasteless. Keep it natural.
“People and kids from inside and outside the neighborhood use it every day. My grandchildren play there. I don’t care who they are or where they’re from. They could be from Hialeah. We don’t mind. It’s just that we don’t want more cars and activity.”
The plan for city easement on South Bayshore Lane is more ambitious but Albert Gomez, who made the proposal, said it’s been scaled back to fit the $18,000 grant and satisfy neighbors.
“I’ve seen what happened to the other two parks so I have actively sought input from my neighbors. A couple have expressed apprehension about attracting more people to the area,” Gomez said. “We plan to do the minimum to make sure they are comfortable. Some trees, landscaping, a bench and a natural berm that will prevent us from getting pummeled again by storm surge from the next hurricane — without building an unattractive concrete monolith seawall.”
Talk to Gomez’s neighbors and they are not apprehensive. They are alarmed. The compact space, which has a walkway and gumbo-limbo trees down the middle, is already abused by outsiders — pot smokers, beer drinkers, drive-by dog owners who don’t pick up their poop. Someone had a wedding there. Kids set off firecrackers and dance on the seawall. Residents had to hire an off-duty cop on weekend nights. They don’t envision a pretty, passive space. They envision “party central,” one homeowner said, and there’s simply no room for more strangers or more cars.
Then-City Manager Emilio Gonzalez was gung-ho about the pocket parks, even designating the public rights of way as Play Streets to expedite the implementation process.
Progress was made on planning, design, acquiring donated materials and plants. Meetings were held and emails were exchanged. The city was ready to survey the Royal Road property last May, according to an email from a city engineer. Juvenal Santana, deputy director of the Department of Resilience and Public Works, discussed adding $70,000 from the city to do grading and build sidewalks.
“And then everything came to halt. Radio silence from the city,” said David Villano, co-founder of the Grove 2030 advocacy group that supports the Public Space Challenge proposals. Communication with Santana ceased.
“He hasn’t returned my calls in months,” Villano said. Nor has Santana returned messages from the Herald.
Villano and other citizen volunteers stymied by the city’s about-face say it was caused by complaints by neighbors, and their lawyers.
Russell’s diplomatic approach didn’t work. He couldn’t persuade wary neighbors to accept changes. They wanted to keep their quiet streets quiet. But the South Grove and the West Grove, a historically black neighborhood, are in dire need of parks. Big Hill Park is within walking distance of the West Grove, and one of the pillars of Carson’s proposal was to enhance the waterfront space that West Groveites have easiest access to.
“At some point, our leaders need to exert the political will to say the needs and rights of the public supersede those of wealthy property owners who live next to public land,” Villano said. “They’ve always known they live next to public land. They can’t keep it private.”
Weiss’ goal is to privatize her entire street, and she intends to re-apply to the city to do so, having been rejected once before. Ransom Everglades School bought out her neighbors and tore down those houses over the years as it has expanded its upper school campus. She’s the only one left on the north side of Royal Road and she’s not going to sell.
Weiss has a keen eye and deep love for the Grove and thinks the city should spend money on maintaining its neglected places rather than creating new ones.
“Make Peacock Park and Kennedy Park more inviting. Figure out how to make the Barnacle [which is a state park] free to the public. Much more bay frontage in those,” she said. “Is the Grove Playhouse going to remain an eyesore? Will we ever have bike paths? Water fountains? These are the priorities, not a teeny park no one will want to use.”
Carson encountered hostility one day when he and other volunteers were working in Charlie’s Woods, so named because theater promoter and Coconut Grove Arts Festival founder Charlie Cinnamon used to live in a bungalow next door. After he died, his house was torn down. Construction is under way on an 8.5-bathroom “luxury estate.”
“I was out there measuring trees and the neighbors were hovering, picking on us, making demands,” Carson said. “’You can’t do this and you can’t do that,’ they said. I said, ‘We want your input. We’re working to beautify your neighborhood.’”
Glenn Terry, a Grove resident and activist for 44 years before he moved to Gainesville last year, had long fought to make the Four Corners lots into a park. The original land owners, including architect Walter DeGarmo, platted the “Cocoanut Grove Park” subdivision in 1911 and deeded three acres at its center to the city to be “dedicated to the perpetual use of the public.”
But adjoining neighbors said no. When kids started playing soccer on one of the lots, a neighbor planted palm trees in a staggered pattern. When Terry installed benches, they disappeared, and he was told by a neighbor, “We can’t have benches; somebody might sit on them.”
He did manage to shape Charlie’s Woods from an impenetrable jungle into a place to explore, with a little path through the middle, plants to attract butterflies and birds, and a clearing where neighbors occasionally gather for potluck dinners and outdoor movie screenings. Before he moved out of his Palmetto Avenue house, he installed five new wood benches on the lots, each inscribed with the name of a notable Miamian. He sunk the legs into concrete.
On a recent visit, Terry was gratified to see the benches were still there, people relaxing and a West Grove family playing tetherball.
“Three adjacent neighbors fought my Four Corners Park proposal for years and now, despite their anger and the city refusing to help, pro-park momentum continues to make it a joyous, public place,” he wrote in his blog. “Last Saturday there was a yoga class bending in places that won’t bend on me, kids running through Charlie’s Woods, and a new awareness that ‘this land is our land.’”
All of Miami is park poor, consistently ranked low for per capita park space compared to other cities. The projects align with the county’s Parks and Open Space Master Plan, which aims to have “a great public space within walking distance of every Miamian.” The goal of the Public Space Challenge is to fight blight, activate emptiness, knit together fractured communities and reincarnate wasted places.
Grants are wonderful, Kohn said, but the money should go to neighborhoods where it is most useful and most desired.
“They never should have given the money to the South Grove. We don’t need it,” Kohn said. “They should give that money to Little Havana or Allapattah or an area that deserves more green spaces.”
Carson doesn’t want to give up on the parks he’s eager to build. They would be models of climate-change sustainability as well. He understands neighbors’ opposing viewpoints and hopes to reach a consensus with them, without sacrificing the public good to private preferences. He’s received extensions on the grant money but it won’t be available indefinitely.
“Let’s identify the challenges and revive this,” Carson said. “How can the city say no?”
This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 6:38 AM with the headline "New Miami parks stalled by neighbors who say ‘Not in my back yard’."
