The city of Miami is moving forward to renovate Morningside Park with a plan that many say is long overdue, yet others say is bound to fail.
City commissioners unanimously approved a resolution last month to apply for more than $4 million in grant funding from the Florida Inland Navigation District (FIND) Waterways Assistance Program, which the city will then match in its own dollars. The money will fund the first phase of a four-part revitalization plan initially approved in March 2022.
Morningside Park, celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, has long been plagued by flooding caused by sea-level rise, heavy rain and king tides. The first phase of the project will focus on the construction of a sea wall bulkhead and an elevated baywalk to mitigate flooding.
(Change.org via Daniel Maland)
Morningside Park is plagued by flooding caused by sea-level rise, king tides and heavy rain.
The park dominated the public comment period during the May 11 commission meeting, where nearly 30 residents showed up to speak in favor of grant funding for the plan. Many were parents who say their children have grown up with a park that is rendered unusable by flooding for the better part of each year.
“This is really a thoughtful plan that has been developed over five years that my neighbors and I have been advocating for money to be spent on this park,” said Rachel Furst, a 10-year resident and board member of the Morningside Civic Association. “We have watched as other parks have been improved … and Morningside Park languishes.”
Morningside Park currently has a living shoreline that would be enhanced in the plan with added coastal vegetation, such as mangroves. The sea wall would be set back from the water’s edge by permeable ground material, improving drainage while providing visitors with continued access to Biscayne Bay. The area between the coast and the sea wall would additionally include a 5-foot-wide walking path with picnic tables, benches and trees along the way.
“Not only will the park be getting long overdue upgrades for resiliency and sea-level rise mitigation, but it is coming in the form of a living shoreline,” Miami Commissioner Sabina Covo told the Biscayne Times. “The more we can incorporate our natural environment into our projects the better.”
Resident Elvis Cruz, on the other hand, has led the opposition to the plan since its inception in 2021. He’s critical of the staff in charge after it was the city’s own mistakes of blocking drainage ditches with concrete sidewalks and tennis courts that he believes contributed to the park’s dilapidated state in the first place.
“We’re not buying a timeshare, we’re making a permanent decision on a precious waterfront park,” Cruz said. “Why hurry to approve a shoreline protection plan that won’t protect the shoreline? It’s a bad plan that some support fearing we won’t get funding later … Getting it done right is more important than getting it done right away.”
He believes raising the sea wall at the coastal edge will be much more effective in mitigating sea-level rise and suggests having the wall curve in at certain points to maintain the view of the bay.
Cruz’s comments mirror a larger debate over how to protect coastal cities from climate change, especially in Miami where every politician’s catchphrase says “the environment is our economy.” Miami-Dade County is currently seeking its own recipe for coastal resilience after residents rejected a 20-foot sea wall proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last year. At the same time, some studies have shown that mangroves are generally ineffective at protecting coastal cities unless they extend to at least 328 feet.
During the commission meeting, many residents in support of the plan readily admitted that there is no perfect resilience strategy. They’re not looking for perfection, however; they’re looking for improvement, and they have been for nearly 10 years now.
On that note, adds Morningside Civic Association board member Daniel Maland, Mother Nature waits for no one.
“There’s never going to be a moment where the experts’ opinions aren’t going to be challenged,” he said, “but there is going to be a moment where Morningside Park is going to be washed away, and that time is now.”
Up until now, time has been everybody’s worst enemy, it seems, but there’s still more of it to come. Phase one of the project is expected to take three years to complete, after which the three additional phases will take another three to four years each.
It’ll be time in the end that tells if the plan worked.