A group of Miami-Dade residents fed up with the county’s inability to follow
through on its promise to preserve a rare waterfront lot behind the AmericanAirlines Arena as a public space are basically taking it upon themselves to make it a park.
No, literally. They are simply using the space as intended.
They have gone so far as to name Parcel B — a lot that the Miami Heat uses for its valet parking and for a staging area and satellite trucks during events — the Dan Paul Park, after the late attorney, first amendment champion and environmental activist who fought, specifically, against overdevelopment on the waterfront.
And on Saturday, they staged a picnic to bring attention to 20 years of broken promises.
“Interested groups are fighting a little more aggressively to get this four-acre site turned into a park — the waterfront park that it should be,” said Peter Ehrlich, of the Urban Environmental League of Miami, and one of the organizers of the event. The other two were the New Tropic and Emerge Miami.
It doesn’t look anything like a park. Recently paved for a street race, there are barricades inside and the gated property has a sign prohibiting entry. “Violators will be prosecuted.”
It was padlocked when the first of about 120 activists and/or picnickers arrived Saturday. There was momentary chaos as nobody knew who had the keys. The city of Miami didn’t know. The county didn’t know. Eventually, someone at the county contacted someone with the Miami Heat who had the keys to let them in.
What keys? Doesn’t someone have bolt cutters? This is our property? Why is there a fence to begin with? Ladra says that the county have a crew and a bulldozer there first thing Monday and take that illegal fence out. Violators will be prosecuted? They are the violators!
Emerge Miami’s David McDougal wore the chain and padlock around his waist for the duration of the picnic protest.
How is it that a private entity like the Heat feels they have the right to fence in and padlock a public swath of waterfront land? They are enabled by the Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “M
r. Giveaway” Gimenez and the commission that allows them to lie about profits in order to rip taxpayers off and pay way below market rates for use of that parcel as a parking lot.
Read related story: Heat’s sweet Parcel B parking deal causes commission clash
It is just one more example of how wrong this administration is and how it works for the benefit of the connected big wigs instead of Joe Taxpayer.
Another example of how wrong this administration is: Ladra heard the county tried to charge the groups sponsoring the picnic $7,500 for the two-hour event. Say what? When you charge the Miami Heat $2,100 a day to use it as a parking lot and it’s our land? Thank goodness that someone prevailed with a legal opinion that changed the county’s mind. Especially after Commissioner Mayor Sir Xavier Suarez reminded them that a fee schedule proposed by Commissioner Juan Zapata (which X supported) did not get passed. How can the county suddenly come up with that number from thin air?
Miami-Dade County Commissioners voted last summer — after much hand-wringing in one of the most ethnically-divided meetings Ladra has ever seen — to allow a Cuban Exile Museum be built on that parcel. Money is currently being raised for that project, which must come back to the commission for approval. In the meantime, competing “parallel track” proposals for a Black History Museum and a museum that might combine the Miami stories and achievements of both the black and the Cuban-American community.
But there are a growing number of people who believe that it should be left an open space, as was promised two decades ago when voters agreed to build the AmericanAirlines Arena and lease it to the Miami Heat. The promise was “key to the campaign,” a consultant said then.
Suarez, who was at the Don Paul Park christening 
Saturday, reminded Ladra on Sunday that there is a restriction on the land sale from the city of Miami on that parcel. “It was always the intention and the promise to the comunity that that parcel would be kept open to the public,” Suarez said, adding that he is looking into the true viability of future electric car races for which part of the park was paved over for.
“I want to remove that asphalt,” he said. Well, maybe we can turn it into basketball or shuffleboard courts.
He says access is the biggest concern and says the best way would be to build a foot bridge, which is already on drawings in his office, from the Perez Art Museum Miami, which is open free to the public the second Saturday of each month. “Imagine being able to cross over from the museum and be at the park,” Suarez said, referring to pontoons and adding that it won’t be very expensive to do.
“Don’t let folks in the county say we don’t have the money. We have lots of money. We just don’t use it right,” Suarez was quoted as saying at the park.
Read related story: Mayor, Miami Heat bait and switch to ‘better deal’ for who?
Exactly. That’s because Gimenez gives it away to the Miami Dolphins ($5 million a year) and the private developer of Skyrise Miami ($9 million), who just happens to raise him lots of campaign cash, and others on his friends and family plan. There’s no way he’s going to defy people like Miami Heat lobbyist, Jorge Luis Lopez, before what could be a contentious re-election next year.
What choice do people have but to just take back our 
park by force?
And maybe this is just the beginning. Maybe this can be the start of a new movement. Taking back what’s ours. Maybe if enough people wake up to the fact that we are the ones with the power here, we can ensure that more of the promises made to us are kept.
“Today, we took over a park,” Justin Wales, one of the activists posted on Facebook Saturday, hinting at the upcoming Miami election.
“In November, we take over a City.”
Picnic in Parcel B ‘park’ defies county stance, Heat padlock added by Ladra on
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