West Matheson Park reopens but so does a long-running neighborhood conflict
The reopening of parks is reopening old wounds at West Matheson Hammock Park, a wild green haven adored by nature and dog lovers alike.
The 70-acre open space, located across Old Cutler Road from the better-known bayside section of Matheson Hammock Park, was closed along with all other parks by Miami-Dade County in mid-March to stem the spread of coronavirus. It finally reopened Monday, with attendants handing out a list of Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s New Normal plan rules: Wear face masks, practice social distancing, no groups of 10 or more and keep all dogs on leashes,
West Matheson Park visitors are still mystified as to why it took so long to reopen while Hammock Lakes Homeowners Association members are miffed that the entrance to the park in their neighborhood reopened at all.
A years-long dispute over access to West Matheson and its future recurred as pandemic restrictions loosened. The homeowners association, which represents residents in the affluent Coral Gables enclave of large houses on lush lots, lobbied the county for the north gate on School House Road to stay locked. Frustrated park devotees, including dog owners who consider roomy West Matheson to be a paradise for their pets, lobbied the county for the park to reopen when Gimenez announced an April 29 reopening of most parks — such as the more popular and more crowded east portion of Matheson — but kept the west side off limits to people and pets.
“If you’re opening parks and enforcing social distancing, why can’t people bring their dogs on a leash? West Matheson is the ideal place for social distancing, so to keep it closed made no sense,” said Douglas Fernandez, who has been bringing his Labrador retrievers to the park for years. “If you ask me, it’s because of the influence of the wealthy Hammock Lakes HOA. We feel they want a private park. Their intent is to permanently privatize a public road into a public park. They used the pandemic to revive their effort to control access.”
Not true, said homeowners association president Bill Ogden, who objects to the number of cars passing through the neighborhood on their way in and out of the park, not to users of the park, whether they be human or canine, and not to pedestrians walking through his neighborhood to the park. He wants a new main entrance to the park to be designated on Old Cutler Road, where there’s a parking lot.
“This would be an opportune time for you to consider keeping the gate into the park at School House Road closed to private vehicles after the pandemic,” Ogden wrote to County Commissioner Xavier Suarez on April 15. “We implore you to allow the parks department to continue to keep the School House entrance closed to vehicular traffic going forward.”
All dogs are supposed to be on a leash in Miami-Dade County, in accordance with ordinance 58-28. But West Matheson is known as an unofficial, unfenced dog park where dogs can ramble and run. A group of regulars say they are responsible owners whose dogs are socialized to safely play with other dogs and not bother people.
But not everybody is in favor of the freedom afforded by West Matheson, a Protected Natural Area under the county’s Environmentally Endangered Lands Program. In 1930, William J. Matheson and son Hugh donated the tract of tropical hardwood hammock forest to the county for its first public park.
Angst over park entrances
Some of the 125 surrounding homeowners are disturbed by swelling traffic on weekends and unregulated dog activity, and want to reduce car access and parking inside the park. Visitors can drive in from Kendall Drive on School House Road, pass through the Hammock Lakes guardhouse gate where license plates are recorded, enter through an open metal gate and park on the grass. Or they can park in the gravel lot on Old Cutler Road directly across from the north entrance to Fairchild Tropical Garden and walk 500 yards in on the nature trail (which is too rough for wheelchair or disabled users and prone to puddles during rainy season). Or they can walk in from Banyan Road on another rocky trail lined with royal palm trees.
A guardhouse with a gate was installed at the Kendall Drive entry to the neighborhood in 2014; homeowners paid for it through special taxing district assessments. There’s also a pedestrian entrance via Kendall Drive.
While the security guard in the guardhouse cannot prohibit the public from entering, park users complain that the setup is an uninviting deterrent to access.
“The HOA’s desire to eliminate access altogether, via Kendall Drive or Old Cutler Road, is akin to buying a house next to a railroad track then asking them to stop running trains,” said loyal park visitor Jay Caplin. “It is not only unfair but inequitable to limit or close access in order to appease a minimal constituency vs. the broader public that frequents this gem.”
What’s unfair, counters Ogden, is portraying him and his neighbors as selfish rich people who want to bar outsiders.
“I’m tired of hearing that we are McMansion owners who don’t want anyone in the park that was here long before we built our houses, tired of hearing that it’s like moving next to an airport and expecting planes to stop flying, tired of claims that we’re making a land grab, tired of being castigated,” Ogden said. “We are really nice people. We know the park is not private property. We have no issue with people and their dogs using the park. We have issues with traffic, cars and free-for-all parking in there. It’s like a tailgate party on weekends.”
Ogden asked guards to count how many park users come through and it’s up to as many as 200 on peak days, which he says adds up to 400 trips through the neighborhood, “and I have an extremely accurate count,” he said.
Park regulars disagree with that figure.
“Most of the traffic is residents, landscaping trucks, construction trucks, telecommunications trucks, nannies, kids going to and from school,” Fernandez said. “The maximum number of cars I’ve ever seen in the park is 25 on a Sunday. There’s no constant flow of traffic to the park, no speeding, no partying. There are only 12 houses lining School House Road.
“Every few years the homeowners take another stab at closing the neighborhood. It keeps coming back, like Pokemon. We want the park to be more accessible, not less.”
Ogden said the gate-arm entry to the park used to be closed to all but maintenance vehicles until Gimenez ordered it to stay open in 2009.
“To say they have the right to use a maintenance gate is ludicrous,” Ogden said. “It was never approved for that use. Why such a sense of entitlement by them?”
A master plan proposal by the county would permanently close the gate to cars, build a fenced dog run for off-leash dogs, add walking and biking trails, pave the parking lot on Old Cutler Road and improve the wooded walkway into the park from that lot.
“It’s a gorgeous plan,” Ogden said. “Right now it’s not entirely compatible to run or bike through there because you might get chased or knocked down or intimidated by a dog.”
At least improve the parking lot and walkway so that people with disabilities can use it, he said. Instead, the county has had to focus on the $55 million sea rise-mitigation plan for the east side of Matheson, which was flooded and damaged by Hurricane Irma in 2017. Many repairs still haven’t been made despite lots of complaints, and there is much heavier use of the revenue-producing east side, which has a marina, beach, restaurant and a mangrove walking trail that is frequently under water.
“Why put the traffic burden on us? West Matheson is a regional park that should be accessible by arterial road, not via a residential neighborhood,” Ogden said. “The county should commit funds to fix that parking lot and walkway so that everyone — not just dog owners who drive in — can have access. We’ve been given assurances that this would be addressed since 1995. The county has failed miserably, reneged on plans for park improvements and stabbed me and our community in the back.”
Suarez, who met with both homeowners and park regulars, said the strapped parks department has to decide on priorities that are most beneficial to the most users. Maria Nardi, county parks director, has said sea-level rise at iconic parks such as Crandon Park, Haulover Beach and the Deering Estate is the agency’s central and most pressing challenge.
West Matheson devotee and golden retriever owner Julie Roth Paikowsky is relieved that she can finally return to pet paradise.
“This park is perfect for social distancing and it is never crowded,” she said. “It’s a natural wonderland, a great hidden beauty of our community that has been missed by people of all ages. As a Miami native I’ve enjoyed this park for decades. It would be a great loss if anything changed.”
After a series of mixed messages from the parks department about whether dogs would be allowed in West Matheson upon its reopening, Fernandez is pleased that things are back to normal — or new normal. But he and his park friends still dread the day that access gets diminished or real estate developers find a way to move in.
“We have to protect this special place. If we hadn’t kicked and screamed it would still be closed,” said Fernandez, who brings his two labs, Finn and Charlie, to the park, where they also have friends. “I want to make sure for my daughter and granddaughter that Matheson continues to exist. Parks are for the people.”
