Historic Virginia Key Beach's 65th Anniversary Celebration Sunday

Historic Virginia Key Beach celebrates its 65th anniversary Sunday, August 1 with an ice-cream social from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. that includes free rides on its signature historic amusement rides - a miniature train and seaside carousel - plus a chance to explore a surprisingly secluded beach next to a major metropolitan area.

Virginia Key Beach Park - which is accessible directly off the Rickenbacker Causeway just before the Bear Cut Bridge - officially opened in 1945 as a “colored only beach.”

It soon became the preeminent gathering place for a marginalized community, site of church picnics and family reunions as well as a favorite destination for visiting performers and civic leaders, including the Reverend Martin Luther King.

Today, it is a “paradise renewed,” a restored environmental gem. The park’s brochure recalls its storied past and more recent struggles to preserve and protect this community space from commercial development and privatization:

Historic Virginia Key Beach Park represents the focal recreational space where the black community at-large was allowed to gather, commune and create the conditions for solidarity necessary for a civil rights movement to flourish.

Miami’s former segregated beach, like no other recreational park of its kind during the twentieth century, established a significant turning point in terms of forging compassionate negotiation and creative communication between black and non-African American socieities.

Indeed, the message of Historic Virginia Key Beach Park is contained in the power of responsible citizenry and leadership which led to the second reclamation of the property in 1999 by the Virginia Key Beach Park Trust.

IF YOU GO:
Virginia Key Beach Park, 4020 Virginia Beach Drive, Virginia Key
(305) 960-4600
www.virginiakeybeachpark.net


Resources:
Historic Virginia Key Beach celebrates its 65th Anniversary with an ice cream social Sunday, August 1.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=105997039454244&index=1
South Florida Times news article on budget crisis facing the Virginia Key Beach Park Trust.
http://www.sfltimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4891&Itemid=144

@All Rights Reserved 2010.

On Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key

Volunteers Should Take Up Shovels to Bring New Master Plan to Life

The City of Miami Comission unanimously approved a new master plan for Virginia Key Thursday, July 22 that is supposed to serve as a future roadmap for redevelopment as well as ecological restoration of the island.

The Miami Herald briefly reports on this in today's issue: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/23/1743176/virginia-key-plan-is-approved.html

Unlike other master plans, which often sit on shelves, portions of this plan could come to life sooner rather than later with the help of volunteer organizations that can offer their sweat equity in creating bike paths, replanting natives and creating public spaces where there are none today.

If nearly 100 civic and environmental organizations participated in the planning process that transformed the former concrete-laden master plan with this greener proposal, there should be lots of volunteers at the island's disposal.

Shovel, anyone?

New Virginia Key Plan Goes Greener With Shades of Gray

The Miami Herald editorial board, which last year panned the City of Miami's proposals for Virginia Key , sees the latest proposal as more favorable to residents and less so to developers.

Generally speaking, this is so.

Though after delving into the details, you can see there is still considerable commercial and marine-related development in the Marine Stadium area, in particular.

In other words, greater shades of green (open space next to Miami Marine Stadium) mixed in with some gray (a multi-story parking garage, four, multi-story boat storage buildings, a marine exhibition center of 35,000 to up to 135,000 square feet).

View the "conceptual" plan developed by University of Miami students in a semester long design workshop on the City of Miami's website.

http://ci.miami.fl.us/planning/pages/master_plans/VKey.asp

(The 69 page plan takes awhile to download so be patient.)

This plan was developed as part of a semester-long design workshop at the University of Miami architecture school this spring. The students and their professors invited representatives of civic and environmental groups to speak to them and offer suggestions, some of which made their way into the revised plan.

The Planning Advisory Board takes up the issue tonight, Wednesday, July 21 and the City Commission takes it up Thursday, July 22, time to be determined.

These are both public hearings, so come on down to City Hall and participate.
If you have questions or don't like some elements, speak up at the public hearings. If you do like parts, also speak up.

If you can't attend,consider sending an email to City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado: tregalado@miami.gov

After all, this is your island. And it is supposed to be your plan.

City of Miami presents new master plan for Virginia Key

The Miami Herald reports on the City of Miami planning department`s newest proposal for a Virginia Key Master Plan, which will go before the City Commission July 22.

The claim, emblazoned in the headline, is that this plan is
more nature, less concrete than last year`s plan, which contained upwards of 12 parking garages.


See the Miami Herald story: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/18/1736593/virginia-key-more-nature-less.html

The Herald story also contains a link to the City of Miami plan.

See it for yourself.

Is this the very best than can be done to protect the island`s natural resources and bring back public waterfront access or, merely as one representative of a civic group involved in the planning process put it -- a necessary compromise.

City of Miami Public Meetings on Virginia Key Master Plan

The City of Miami will begin a series of public meetings to present a new proposed Virginia Key Master Plan beginning Tuesday, July 13 at 6:30 p.m. with the City of Miami Waterfront Advisory Board.

For a full schedule and to see the planning department's proposal (which apparently after much public clamoring, was posted today: http://www.miamigov.com/planning/pages/master_plans/VKey.asp

Apparently, there will also be a separate presentation of proposals prepared by students from the University of Miami. This plan, which the Urban Environment League (UEL) has dubbed the community plan, varies from the city planning department's plan in some ways.

What's YOUR plan?


The meetings are open to the public. If you care about Virginia Key's future, attend the meeting and learn more about what various groups are proposing and why. Then stroll up to microphone and have your say.

As the saying goes - more or less - one person can make a difference, and everyone should try.

Virginia Key Kayaking Trip Offers Window to Wilderness of Bear Cut Preserve

One kayaker who participated in the recent Virginia Key kayaking meet-up trip told his story to View from Virginia Key:

By 9:30 a.m. there was a array of two dozen kayaks in bright hues - blue, yellow, green - lined up on Virginia Key beach. Everyone was busy getting their gear in place and mapping out our route out to sea.

The morning started out somewhat overcast with a slight breeze coming in off the water. The water was calm that early in the morning, with few motorboats in Bear Cut, the water body that divides Virginia Key from the tip of Key Biscayne.

Across the Cut, you could see the green horizon of the Bear Cut Preserve, to the north lay Fisher Island.

Even through I’d always heard Bear Cut had a powerful current we paddled across easily and reached the reef in about a half hour.

The fossilized reef - which are actually fossilized mangrove roots from an ancient forest -- looks like giant, jagged rocks from a distance. Up close, the jags and cuts are more ominous. You have to be careful because if your kayak hits one, you’ll run a ground and I was afraid it could even slice my kayak.

We settled into a spot south of an observation overlook in the Bear Cut Preserve, which is a designated natural Environment Study Area in Crandon Park. The area includes various ecosystems - dunes, mangroves and coastal hammock and seagrass beds -- that, together with Virginia Key’s natural areas, are nesting and feeding areas for migrating songbirds, hawks and sea turtles.


The water was about 2-3 feet and crystal clear. With the sun out, you could see clear to the sandy bottom, which is lined with seagrasses. The reef is full of life: live conch, small tropical fish in brilliant hues of purple, yellow and blue. The seagrass beds where we were snorkeling are home to mangrove snapper, parrotfish, crabs, shrimp, sea stars and puffer fish.

The cool water felt good as the heat of the day rose.

It was hard to leave but eventually we headed out to sea to look for the Half Moon underwater archaeological site, where the remains of a schooner that sank in the 1930s has created an artificial reef.

We anchored near a channel marker about a half hour paddle out to sea.

All the kayaks linked together with a rope, since only some of us had anchor. After about 10 minutes of looking, a storm started to materialize off the ocean and we had to pull out quickly.

We ended up paddling back in a light rain, as the seas got rougher. But the storm never reached a fevered pitch and we landed back on Virginia Key safely, ready to tackle Bear Cut another day in search of the Half Moon.

Pedestrians Using Rickenbacker Can Benefit from Overpass, New Multi-use paths

The Rickenbacker’s transformation from causeway to Park-way (that happens to have a road through the middle of it) continues with $4.5 million in proposed improvements that include everything from widened bike lanes to reduced speed limits and a pedestrian overpass.

Some proposals unveiled at a recent town hall meeting are merely studies - like reducing speed limits. Others are slated to happen within the next year - like a new signalized crossing and turnaround at Hobie Island (Windsurfer Beach).

“This will be a multi-year effort,” Miami-Dade County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez told the crowd of 150 people at the Coral Gables Youth Center July 1.

The money comes from 25 cents of every toll collected at the Rickenbacker toll booths, which have been in place (and now are up to $1.50 for cars) since the roadway opened in 1947. The Miami-Dade County Commission is scheduled to vote on the measure July 20, 2010.

Pedestrians and slower-moving wheeled traffic - including moms with strollers - could be big winners with the construction of a new “multi-use” path along the North Side of the Rickenbacker from Bear Cut Bridge to the William Power Bridge (the tall one).

Instead of cycling or jogging alongside fast-moving vehicular traffic, users would enjoy a path protected by barriers, possibly bollards (waist-high telephone poles) set among a landscaped swale.

That project is scheduled for Fiscal Year 2013-2014 but really should be moved up the list, given the demand and need for safer alternatives.

Another pedestrian amenity would be a foot bridge over the Rickenbacker. This would open up a safe (and non-motorized) way for beachgoers enjoying the refurbished public park on the south side of Hobie Beach to visit existing restaurants and hopefully, other public amenities on Virginia Key built either by the City of Miami, Miami-Dade County or even, state or national park systems.

The "Dade County Aquarium and Marine Laboratory" on Virginia Key

Early planning for an Aquarium on Virginia Key envisioned a “civic institution of educational value, providing unique entertainment at a moderate admittance fee controlled by the County.”

In what now seems a rather quaint practice, the Board of County Commissioners wrote up a sales sheet of sorts to convince taxpayers to approve the issuance of $2 million in bonds to pay for the project.

Entitled, “Facts of Importance to All Property Owners” the County put it this way: “These projects are not for us. They are for you, your family and friends, the visitors who spend millions of dollars here, and for the general welfare and progress of our commmunity.”

Accordingly, the “Dade County Aquarium and Marine Laboratory” project which would be built on 40 acres of County-owned land on Virginia Key would include:

a marine biology laboratory operated in cooperation with the United States government. In addition to hundreds of varied kinds of fish and ocean life in display tanks, it would have a museum of wild life, laboratory equipment for the benefit of the public, batteries of microscopes to view minute marine life, equipment for showing scientific motion pictures and rooms for public lectures.

To convince taxpayers of the fiscal soundness of the project, they projected $175,000 annual revenue, which would be used to pay off the bonds. Not only that, but as the marine center provided an inducement to motorists to cross the newly constructed (1947) Rickenbacker Causeway, the increased toll revenues would speed up payment of the causeway to the day when the toll would be removed altogether.

Of course, the project’s appeal to tourists was touted as another plus, given that “(T)ourists are the main support of this area.”

But perhaps the greatest sales pitch was this: “As a publicly-owned institution, proper controls over its policies, prices and operation can be excercised to keep the aquarium as a recreation center for all the people.”

Happy Fourth of July: Flags of Historic Virginia Key Beach

Boaters Be Aware of Manatees of Virginia Key this Fourth of July weekend

Boaters traveling through and around Virginia Key this Fourth of July weekend are being asked to be especially careful of the endangered manatee, which uses the surrounding waters for feeding, resting, mating, traveling and calving.

Virginia Key is located within the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve, which shares the bay with Biscayne National Park, where manatees frequent. And the Virginia Key marinas are across from the Bill Sadowski Critical Wildlife Area (CWA), a 700-acre state-designated refuge with “extraordinary habitat values” that contains the island’s largest remaining portion of unaltered mangrove forest and largest amount of unaltered, submerged land, is an important undisturbed spawning area for many species of fish and invertebrates.

The Save the Manatee Club is asking boaters to abide by posted speed limits, to slow down in shallow areas where manatees like to feed and rest and to travel through deep water channels whenever possible in the interest of saving the endangered species.

Other tips range from wearing polarized sunglasses to reduce glare and see below the water’s surface to limiting high-speed watersports (jet-skiing, water-skiing) to landlocked lakes or waters well offshore. Ideally, boaters should remain a safe distance away - at least 50 feet - while operating a boat or personal watercraft. Cut your motor if you want to observe a manatee, the club suggests.

Last year, a record 97 manatees were killed by boat strikes, according to the club. But the population also succumbed to the cold winter, with more than 500 manatees dying in the first six months of the year.

If you see an injured, dead or orphaned manatee, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at 1-888-404-3922 or #FWC or *FWC on your cellphone, or use VHF Channel 16 on your marine radio.
Resources:
http://www.savethemanatee.org/boatertips.htm
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/sites/biscayne/