Does Virginia Key Need Guiding Principles?

Alternatives to the 2009 proposed master plan for Virginia Key are now being mulled over by community groups, public officials, editorial writers and even University of Miami Architecture School students in a special design workshop on Virginia Key. The City of Miami Commission is set to reconsider the Virginia Key Master Plan in May 2010.

What will guide decisions about what, where and how the island should be used? Should public land be redeveloped using the same principles as private property? Do private sector rules of highest and best use apply? Does public access trump revenue generation by a cash-strapped city? Should short term goals override sound, long-term planning? Is the fragile environment of Virginia Key going to survive?

Perhaps a lesson from the recent past can help. In 1999, the City of Miami was in the throes of a financial crisis, much like today, and Virginia Key public land was seen as an opportunity to increase revenues, much like today. Sensing a need for some kind of order amid the chaos of competing interests, University of Miami Professor Greg Bush, then president of the Urban Environment League, came up with these guiding “Principles for the Future of Virginia Key.” Here is his memo in its entirety:

Memorandum
From: Gregory Bush, President, Urban Environment League
To: Virginia Key Advisory Group
Date: February 3, 1999

Subject: Principles for the Future of Virginia Key

-Open all public parkland for use by the public within three months in order to folly insure the rights of all residents.
All existing deed restrictions should be adhered to in order to avoid further erosion of the public’s historic right to their park land.

-Free and clear public access to the beach and all public property should be maintained.

-Public participation should be insured throughout the process of re-designing the use of public land with due public notice given in major newspapers. The need for public charrettes, paid for by the city and other sources of funds is paramount. All city and county reports should be completed on schedule and issued in writing.

-Those Virginia Key Advisory Board or Waterfront Board members with personal interest of their own, or by members of their family or close personal friends in future economic benefit from the and in question should consider that this might constitute a conflict of interest and should consider removing themselves from their respective Committees.

-Public bathroom facilities should be made available to all and adequate security should be maintained in all public parks.
-Public access to public land should not be inhibited by parking restrictions or inadequate public transportation.

-Public parkland should be used to enhance the appreciation of nature through walking trails, public campgrounds. It should also provide places of contemplation and relaxation as well as be redesigned for active recreational uses and as entertainment venues. There is a paramount value to keep all activity small scale.

-Public parkland on Virginia Key should be used to memorialize the civil rights struggle of African Americans. A memorial structure should be constructed modeled after the FDR memorial in Washington D.D. that will be a place of contemplation and tell the history of the struggle. It should be developed in cooperation with the Black Archives. The site should be a non-commercial service to the community, act as a tourist destination. All proceeds should benefit underprivileged youth.

-A suitable memorial should be created for all those from Cuba and Haiti who arrived on the shores of Virginia Key in their flight from oppression.

-Commercial eating facilities should be strictly limited to small scale operations.

-Educational programs for youth should be a major objective in redesigning the public parkland - done in conjunction with the Biscayne Nature Center.

-This Committee should be retained during the entire process of the planning for Virginia Key not merely to help with Specification for RFP’s so that there be continuity of knowledge.

-A Wilderness Campground should be created for inner city children, children at risk, and others, similar to the youth camp at Biscayne National Park.

-Any designs should be completed only after full and active consultation with local experts in the fields of environmental science and local history and with due deference to the ecological and historical nature of this island.

To see the proposed October 2009 Virginia Key Master Plan that was deferred by the City of Miami Commission, as well as earlier presentations created by the consultant, go to http://www.virginiakeymasterplan.com/

Illustration: EDSA, Rendering of proposed master plan for Marine Stadium Basin properties, Oct. 2009.

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on Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key

Seed Money for Miami Marine Stadium Restoration

This week at a community dinner meeting at the Rusty Pelican restaurant on Virginia Key, City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado said there would be “good news” regarding the Miami Marine Stadium.

“There will be an announcement soon that we will have access to $3 million to be used as seed money to start restoration,” Regaldo told the audience of about 75 people. The meeting was sponsored by the Urban Environment League (www.uel.org).

Regalado’s announcement was part of a free-wheeling oral history interview conducted by the UEL’s Gregory Bush, a University of Miami history professor and longtime public parks advocate.

The interview traced Regalado’s roots to Havana and arrival as a teenager in Miami during the Pedro Pan children’s airlift in the early 1960’s. Regalado also recounted his time as a journalist covering the Haitian and Cuban migrations. The interview was recorded and will be posted to the UEL website, the group announced.

During the interview Regalado floated the idea of having a “public trust” manage the stadium and hiring promotional companies to book events and concerts, much like the Bayfront Trust manages events at Bayfront Park.

“No condos or shopping centers,” Regalado said regarding uses outside the stadium, where empty parking lots now sit. “Well, maybe a cafeteria,” he added.

Illustration: courtesy University of Miami, College of Architecture Design Studio. Rendering of a restored Miami Marine Stadium.

The Honeymoon Cottages of Virginia Key Beach

“With its scant four-tenths of a mile of actual shoreline, the (Virginia Key Beach) Park was the only bathing beach in the county legally available to African Americans at that time. In spite of these restrictive limitations, however, Virginia Key Beach Park was a cherished “Paradise” and a vibrant recreational locale which united all neighborhoods and social classes as a center of Black life.”
Virginia Key Park Civil Rights Task Force, December 2000

One of the most cherished aspects of Virginia Key was the availability of bathing cabanas and overnight cottages.

Former Miami-Dade County Parks Director A.D. Barnes recalls in his History of the Dade County Park System how the honeymoon cottages came to be there:

“The Dade County Port Authority had just purchased a piece of land in Virginia Gardens to enlarge Miami Airport. There were several houses on the property and the Port Authority agreed to transfer any of the buildings the Park Department needed...One, a rather substantial and not too unattractive single family house was selected for the cabana area at Crandon. Another substantial three living unit building was selected for Virginia Beach...It was refurbished with one unit set aside as living quarters for the Virginia Beach Maintenance Foreman...the other two units were furnished with beds and items common to efficiency apartments and rented out....”

Though long gone, the so-called “honeymoon cottages” live on in the memories of those lucky enough to have spent time there. And they are part of impetus behind the idea of considering the entire historic Virginia Key Beach Park a Civil Rights Museum:

Artist and writer Dinizula Gene Tinnie spoke of this in the landmark essay, “Politicized Memories in the Struggle for Miami’s Virginia Key Beach,” by University of Miami Professor and Historian Dr. Gregory Bush, in To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History, (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).

“One of the strategies that we have to have is looking at our sacred sites, places that have been consecrated by, labored by, the struggle. There are too many people with too many fond memories, too many people who have been baptized out there; had their honeymoon’s out there, had their first love affair out there. I said that was a place that brought together an entire black community. It was the only place we could go.”

Read excerpts from To Love the Wind and the Rain, including "Politicized Memories in the Struggle for Miami's Virginia Key Beach," at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-rAXz2l92mkC&source=gbs_navlinks_s


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On Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key