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.

Miami Marine Stadium: beauty amid the horror

The World Monuments Fund has just announced that a new engineering study of the Commodore Ralph Munroe Miami Marine Stadium on Virginia Key shows the concrete restoration of the shuttered stadium could cost between $5.5 - $8.5 million - less than the City of Miami’s earlier predictions of $15 million.

That doesn’t include renovations of seats, bathrooms, ticket booths and everything else vandals ripped up or damaged since the City of Miami closed the stadium after Hurricane Andrew.

But it’s still good news and a first step in restoring the public uses of the island.

On Tuesday, Feb. 2, the President of the World Monuments Fund, Bonnie Burnham, will tour the site with City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado. It will be her first look at the stadium. And it’s encouraging and truly amazing that a City of Miami official has taken an interest.

Regalado has in fact, gone as far as calling it “one of the Magic City’s crown jewels” and vowed to make restoration of the stadium one of his administration’s priorities.

Not too long ago - say during the City of Miami’s last go round on developing a “master plan” for Virginia Key - the iconic structure wasn’t even in the game plan, having been wiped off the map of Virginia Key by the master plan consultants. Thanks to a public outcry (how come the previous city administration didn’t see that coming?), the stadium later appeared in the proposed master plan.

Now the hard part begins. How to fund the restoration and how to restore the public’s use to all the land around it?

What will the dignitaries see on their tour Tuesday? The stadium sits abandoned and vandalized, locked behind a decrepit chain-linked fence in a sea of asphalt. The setting has reached a ‘World without Us’ stage - small cracks have turned to large fissures and weeds transformed to trees. Faded ‘No Trespassing’ signs give the area a creepy, horror movie feel.

And yet, there is beauty. The shoreline here is rich with new plant life and the view of the Miami skyline is sublime.

Across the blue basin lies the mysterious Bill Sadowski Critical Wildlife Refuge, where flocks of birds come to roost in the comforting darkness of mangrove forests and manatees spawn and are nurtured in its folds. What an amazing place. And what poor stewards we have been.

Until now. Maybe the tide has turned.
After all, the Mayor has joined the fight to save the stadium and Virginia Key.



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Why restore the Marine Stadium? The World Monuments Funds answers:
“For the citizens of Miami, the stadium represents the modernity of a growing city and the international cultural influences that helped shape it. Miami Marine Stadium defined a significant shift in American architectural style from staid civic buildings to exuberant structures reflecting changing tastes and a desire to project the city as a forward-looking place.”

More info:
http://www.wmf.org/project/miami-marine-stadium