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Mark this day!
I am righting the ship on what to do with the 70-acre parcel off Biscayne Bay, once home to FPL that should be a park and a marina with restaurants, stores and boating services instead of only a park. I left the marina part out of my previous column.
Imagine the fanfare from residents of South Dade and the number of jobs created by what I’m calling the Palmetto Bay Marina, which many village residents would support. All of us in South Dade know that we have boats lined up at Matheson and Black Point on Saturday and Sunday mornings waiting to get on the water. We certainly could use another marina to take the pressure off those two.
How would we make it happen? Well, Miami-Dade County would still have to buy the property at 6525 SW 152 St. from the private property owner. Think Homestead Miami Speedway, but with water and boats instead of high-speed racing.
To get our bearings, let’s look at the marina services that are already available:
Black Point Park & Marina, located at 24775 SW 87 Ave., has 200 boat slips, contributing to its status as the largest public marina located in Miami. It’s got a fuel dock, boat ramp dockage and boat rentals.
Matheson Hammock is a 630-acre urban park at 9610 Old Cutler Rd. that surrounds the north and western ends of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. The park has a full-service marina with 243 wet slips and a fenced in dry storage facility with 71 spaces, a snack bar and restaurant built into a historic coral rock building, picnic pavilions and nature trails. Matheson also contains a sailing and powerboat school.
Chapman Field Park, which has 483 acres at 13601 Old Cutler Rd., also has been discussed in the past as a full-service marina, but somebody dropped the ball on that.
Turn the 70-acre environmentally contaminated parcel on Biscayne Bay into a park and marina and you get a great destination for locals and visitors looking to park their boats somewhere convenient. I think 200 slips would be sufficient and certainly help the boating enthusiasts in South Dade.
And, maybe closing a deal on a park and marina would motivate the Village of Palmetto Bay and the private property owner to settle litigation that has been an albatross on the land for years.
As for the park and marina, the 70 acres still would have to be contained to make sure the contamination in the soil isn’t a health hazard to park visitors and does not leach into the bay. The same would have been required of the 110-home site the property owner had planned for the site. So, in the end, the contamination would be mitigated and the property would be recycled as a beautiful park and marina.
So, let’s get it together people. Let’s make the park and marina the most beautiful destination in Miami-Dade, drawing thousands to South Dade instead of the hundreds of residents 110 homes would have added. It’s hard to believe Palmetto Bay officials turned down a single-family housing project on the bay, but I guess that’s in the past now.
I’m all in for turning the 70 acres of contaminated land in Palmetto Bay into a public park and marina! Let’s make a possible Palmetto Bay Marina a model for the world as to what can happen when good people work together to achieve a great result.
Have questions or comments? Please feel free to call or text me at 305-323-8206 or email grant@cnews.net.
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