Deed Restrictions: Marine Stadium and Basin lands

What has kept Virginia Key’s vast open spaces and waterfront lands from being turned into hotel rows or Bayside Marketplaces?

The answer may lie in the deed restrictions set when the lands were conveyed to the City of Miami from the State of Florida or Miami-Dade County. Consider it a kind of people’s bill of public property rights.

Three key parcels - the Marine Stadium and surrounding basin, the historic Virginia Key Beach Park (“Old County Park”) and the secluded North Point -- come with restrictions that limit uses.

Let's take a look at the Marine Stadium Basin first.

A deed dated March 12, 1963 between “Dade County”  and the “City of Miami” states:

This deed of conveyance is made upon the express condition that the land hereby conveyed shall be perpetually used and maintained for the operation of a Marine Stadium and allied purposes only, and in the event the use of said land for such purposes shall be abandoned, then in such event the title to said land shall revert to the grantor herein.”

The “grantor” in this case is Miami-Dade County, which theoretically could demand all the land back. Afterall, it could be argued the City of Miami “abandoned” the operation of the Marine Stadium when it shuttered it after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

But with the Miami-Dade County Commission voting April 6 to provide $3 million in seed money towards restoration of the stadium, maybe all the intervening years of neglect will be forgiven and forgotten when the stadium hosts its first comeback concert.

As to the surrounding land, what constitutes “allied purposes” is apparently still up for discussion, as the City of Miami’s previously proposed master plan called for shopping areas, expanded marina and boat storage operations and new restaurants.

Some city officials are hoping that as long as it has the name "marine" appended to it, it fits the bill, as in a "marine-themed" shopping center. Who knows, maybe there's even a "marine-themed" dog park proposal out there.

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No fishing or cutting bait off Virginia Key

Imagine a Miami where:
-conservation and critical habitat are protected;
-streets become tree-lined boulevards and parkways;
-cultural and historical sites are protected, maintained and promoted;
-the public has equitable access to lakes, beaches and other major natural features;
-parks are models for sustainable development and,
-you can fish without a boat.

Those are some of the concepts that would flow from the principles behind the “Parks and Open Space System Master Plan” developed by Miami-Dade County Parks for all parks, public spaces, natural areas, greenways, blueways and trails in the county.

Everything, except the fishing part. That I added because it seems the right to fish should be an inalienable one in a waterfront community. Of course it’s not, particularly in the Biscayne Bay-Rickenbacker Corridor, where police are sometimes seen rustling people off the Bear Cut bridge.

It wasn’t always this way. A news photo from the early days after the Rickenbacker opened in the late 1940's showed people casting bait into the Bear Cut channel. And Virginia Key Beach once had a fishing pier. Now, even with a boat, you can’t go off fishing from Virginia Key unless you rent a slip there, as the only public boat ramp on the island was closed years ago.

People do fish off the old, now closed half of the Rickenbacker bridge. Officially, it's a fishing pier, though sometimes it feels a bit forlorn and forbidding -- particularly in the mid-day sun, when only a scrappy few try their luck amid the chipped concrete and weathered walkways.

Which is maybe why the City of Miami consultants came up with a spiffy new design for a fishing pier in the earlier version of the Virginia Key Master Plan (see artists rendering above). It was so fancy and outlandish it wasn't well-received, to say the least. One city board member said he felt he would need a tuxedo to go fishing there. Which may be why that particular rendering was never seen again.

Imagine a Miami where people can fish without a boat. What a concept.

Resources: See the Parks and Open Space Master Plan at
http://www.miamidade.gov/greatparksummit/library/OSMP_FINAL_REPORT_entiredocument.pdf