Maurice Ferré: Today, I fight for green spaces in Miami’s waterfront | Opinion
Former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferré wrote this letter to Miami city commissioners and Mayor Francis X. Suarez as they consider allowing amusement park-style entertainment on Bayfront Park at Thursday’s commission meeting.
Dear Mr. Mayor and Commissioners:
I write today in reference to the March 28th Meeting Agenda item PZ.12 5119 to add an “Amusement Ride” as a use allowed within the “CS” Civic Space Transect Zone.
I think this would open up all our waterfront parks to become a Miami “Coney Island.”
My request to the sponsor of the item, Commissioner Willy Gort, and to all of you, is to please assure that all the Bayfront parks have no possibility of becoming Miami’s Coney Island. At the very least please delete the amusement rides from the Maurice A. Ferré Park.
For all of my 19-year tenure as a city of Miami Commissioner, city of Miami Mayor, and subsequently Miami-Dade County Commissioner, I heard what I thought was the long-winded litany of Miami’s need for more usable parks for its residents.
Miami was at the bottom in all the statistics of parks per resident, and parks per square mile in the country. There have been so many outstanding proponents of a “greener” Miami.
One of my regrets and a shortcoming of my tenure in office was not having paid more attention to the need of a greener Miami. On the contrary, being one of the proponents for development, not only in Bayside, but my strong advocacy to bring a Tivoli Gardens-type center for Watson Island, and for proposing the developments on the vast properties owned by the city of Miami in Key Biscayne. I was a pro-growth mayor.
It was I that was responsible for bringing the Rusty Pelican Restaurant to Miami and the other small marinas and restaurants in that area.
It was I who mistakenly agreed to build a duplicate of the Chart House Restaurant from the mountains of Colorado to Biscayne Bay at Dinner Key Marina, with bunker type massive concrete walls on three sides rather than an open view toward our beautiful bay. To name but some of the mistakes that I made.
Now, at age 83 and, obviously, towards the end of my life, I have finally awoken to the reality of the truth of our need for more green parks.
Organized parks include activities that attract people to the park, but that cannot be at the expense of open green areas.
Yes, there are places that are uniquely owned by government where the private sector can not duplicate locations, such as Bayside.
But to put a major concrete bulk coliseum on the bay, as this community did with the humongous arena on Biscayne Bay, prime waterfront property, where while sitting and watching a basketball game there are no windows to see the beautiful Biscayne Bay, was an act of negligence.
To consider building more museums or buildings on Parcel “B” is a betrayal of the commitment that I and the other county commissioners made to keep Parcel “B” a green area.
This community continues to senselessly ignore the reality that if one wants something of quality, one must have the discipline to stand one’s ground. It’s not as if the advocates of more parks are demanding the greening of Miami at a major financial expense to us. What is being asked for is more understanding, caring and discipline by our local elected representatives.
What is as alarming as the “Amusement Ride Ordinance,” is the fact that on April 18, the city has allowed the Bayfront Parks Trust to put out an RFP that could bring major commercial development, not only to the slip, but to the green area adjacent to the slip in the Maurice A. Ferré Park.
This is extending Bayside and the commercialization of the parks on both sides of the AmericanAirlines Arena on Biscayne Boulevard.
Just like I don’t think this community wants a ferris wheel in our bayfront, neither do we want any other major tourist restaurant distraction to once again remove the little green area that we have left with an open view to Biscayne Bay, our Central Park.
We acquiesce from one concrete block to the other on the bay. Enough is enough!
It’s time for us to recognize, in our quest for monetizing beauty, that just the presence of an open green area has an irreplaceable price which has no simple calculation on a computer.
Since I was one of the culprits, if not the main culprit, let me plead with you to be stronger and wiser than I was, and spare the little area that we have left as green space along Biscayne Boulevard.
Please reject these and future requests to further intrude by again improperly monetizing our beautiful series of parks along the waterfront and river of Downtown
Maurice A. Ferré was the mayor of Miami from 1973 to 1985.
This story was originally published March 27, 2019 at 1:37 AM.