Mayor Carlos Gimenez to meet with Underline park backers

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Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez will meet Wednesday afternoon with Meg Daly and Parker Thomson, founder and president and the director, respectively, of the Friends of the Underline, a group of activists who want to transform the stretch of land underneath the MetroRail tracks into a 10-mile linear park and bike/walk trail from Brickell to Dadeland.

It’s a brilliant idea that should be supported. Gimenez has long been a supporter of the Underline, which he mentioned in his State of the County address earlier this year and featured in an ad for his recent re-election campaign.

But we were supposed to break ground in 2016– and now it’s been pushed back to the Fall of next year.

Last week, Friends of the Underline collected $47,000 in donations during Give Miami Day. Twenty percent, or at least $24 million, of the estimated $120-million project — which will be designed by James Corner Field Operations the firm that designed New York’s High Line — is to be raised from private donors. So far, Swire Properties has donated $600,000 and three other developers donated $75,000 in total.  The Knight Foundation gave $515,000.

According to published reports, the $120-million price tag is divided into three parts: $80 million for the trail, $20 million for intersections and $20 million for destination parks.

Each portion also has its own budget and finance sources, according to a story in the Real Deal, which reports that $7 million in public funding has already been secured for the Brickell segment of the trail. That breaks down to $3 million from Miami-Dade County, $2 million from the state of Florida, $1 million from the Florida Department of Transportation and $1 million from the city of Miami, which has committed $50 million in impact fee monies.

Ah, that must be it. Gimenez can sniff out a new public trough from miles away and under water. He smells money he can direct toward his friends and family. It’s only bonus that most of the public money comes from the city of Miami.

May Ladra suggest that Daly and Thomson, whose name was spelled wrong on the mayor’s calendar, watch the budget and the awarding of contracts closely?

The mayor’s meeting with the Friends from the Underline is at noon at County Hall Wednesday. It’s clear after that.

  Carlos Gimenez, The Underline