Attention residents and community members of Edgewater and the surrounding areas. Recently Miami City Parks announced their conceptual plan for Margaret Pace Park. While many aspects of the plan will bring much needed improvements, in the current draft the natural spaces of our beautiful park will be significantly reduced in exchange for the development of additional facilities. This petition represents our collective wish to revise the plan to better meet the needs of our community and to protect the beauty of Miami's largest public green space on the water. 

CURRENT UPDATE (10-25-23):

Following the community meeting where we voiced our feedback, the park plan is being reviewed by the Miami Parks Department in consideration of the community feedback. When the next version of the plan is available, it will be made available to the public for review and commentary. During this time we will direct our attention to the Miami Parks Department to express our many concerns.

Please join us in reaching out to them and respectfully request that they preserve green field space, scrap plans for new buildings, reduce the number of new volleyball courts, protect our shoreline from flooding by doing a full independent review, and should pickle ball remain in the plans to move them to a more logical location with the other net sports. You can reach out to the office of Miami Parks Director Chris Evans using these emails:

cevans@miami.gov - jmora@miami.gov

OLD UPDATE (9-1-23): Recently some of this petition's organizers met in person with D2 Commissioner Sabina Covo and her staff to express our concerns. She was very receptive to our feedback and has committed to taking it into consideration before approval of the final plan. Thanks to our petition and the many emails, calls, and feedback form submissions, her team is now planning to hold an open community meeting to allow everyone to share their voice so that we can come to a consensus about revising the plan with our community's needs in mind. In advance of this meeting, it is our job now to get as many signatures on this petition as possible to show the city officials that we support revisions to this plan to preserve as much natural space and green fields as possible, and to ensure the proposed facilities and park improvements actually reflect the needs and desires of residents who live here.  

ORIGINAL PETITION TEXT (with updates including new information):

We are hoping to foster an acceptable compromise by demonstrating our community desire to retain as much existing field and natural space as possible while understanding the need for new structures and facilities in the park. Unfortunately, many of the proposed features do not make sense in the broader context of the needs of our community. Furthermore, the significant reduction in green space and creation of a new seawall in lieu of our natural shoreline might create additional problems with flooding of our roads in Edgewater and the adjacent communities. Without a proper civil engineering study and an impact evaluation supported by data, this project could create long lasting negative impacts for our community.

Please sign this petition to show Director of the Parks and Recreation Department Chris Evans, and D2 Commissioner Sabina Covo that you also oppose the currently proposed plan and request they consider community feedback on future drafts. Many residents like myself moved here because of the proximity to this wonderful open green space and its relaxed atmosphere. It is our duty to share our collective voice to ask for smart use of one of Miami's last open natural spaces. We believe that loosing 75% of our green spaces to make way for additional facilities is shortsighted and lacks consideration for those who live in this area and come here to enjoy this park. Furthermore, if we are going to give up that space we hope the new facilities reflect the real needs of our residents and visitors. 

To amplify the reach of this petition, respectfully contact the City Parks Department and the D2 Commissioner's office and share your feedback directly by calling, emailing, and using their online forms. Please also share this petition with anyone who agrees that this would be a major loss for our community should the plan proceed as proposed. Thank you, and I hope with your support we can advocate for responsible and reasonable improvements that satisfy both the need for expanded facilities, and the need for residents to retain the beauty and inclusiveness of one of the most beautiful public outdoor spaces remaining in Miami. 

Link to Miami City Parks Feedback Form for the MPP Master Plan

My Two Cents: As this petition has increased in awareness I have been asked to expand on some specific issues we have with the plan so people can better understand what supporting this petition represents and the worst elements I uncovered while participating in this process. The following reflect only my own personal views on specific features of the conceptual master plan that I believe require more input from our community. We (signers of this petition) do not all agree on the following points, but we do agree that these any many other issues must be taken into account before the final plan is approved. 

Phase one will replace our entire natural shoreline with a raised walkway and seawall with appropriate landscaping. This is a major undertaking of constructions and will dramatically alter the existing features of our shoreline. The new seawalk will include complicated water retention facilities and retaining walls that are only vaguely described in the plans. This level of engineering should have an impact study to determine if the changes could harm our properties by increasing flood risk on our roads or by altering the way storm-surge would impact the park and adjacent buildings due to significantly reduced permeable lawn spaces. In addition, the raised walkways and baywalk could obscure the vision of the water as seen from Bayshore Drive, irrevocably altering our street view forever. 

The current plan completely bans organized sports on the remaining lawn which includes kids soccer games, Sunday football, and unpermitted fitness activities like group yoga or training. Currently the size of the park's several fields means it can host training in one corner, yoga in another, and two full team sports games all at the same time with room in the back fields to spare. There is nowhere else in Miami with a public field space like that. Under the current proposal, the community looses more than half of our field space, while the city parks department gains a two story office building in the heart of Miami's nicest park, which happens to be twice as large as our new community center. While the new community center sounds lovely, it could be located anywhere in the district and we believe that occupying 20% of our waterside park for this purpose is not in the interests of our residents. In addition, the concession facility would adversely impact the many healthy local small businesses that have grown up around the area and support the park's visitors and our community.

Further misusing the space are the six proposed volleyball and “mixed sand sports” courts which claim the entire backfield under the current plan. This would be a total a waste of space considering the current volleyball courts are only used a few days a week and sit empty most of the day. These giant sand pits would also add to the urban heat index which the plan claims to attempt to mitigate. We have also learned that significant vocal support for these expanded volleyball courts is coming from individuals who do not even live in our district and wish to claim space in our park for their private interests. The current volleyball courts are sufficient to meet the demand for our residents and visitors, and while one new court would be a reasonable addition, four new courts seems excessive and does not reflect the needs of residents who live in Edgewater. 

On the other side of the park, the plan adds three pickle ball courts next to the basketball court. The basketball court is one of the nicest public courts in the area and it is almost always being used. Adding another basketball court would be a much more community focused addition, despite my personal feelings that I would rather they not expand this space at all. Furthermore, considering the growing protests in Adventura over the public nuisance presented by outdoor pickle ball courts, we believe that placing them in the remaining corner of the park that is supposed to remain "quiet and peaceful" as per the city plan is counter intuitive. It would make much more sense to put pickle ball next to the other courts in some of the space currently claimed by the excessive volleyball expansion. Do we need pickle ball at all in our park, personally I think not, but if we do add them let's put them next to the other courts and limit the impact on the other side of the park which should remain quiet, pristine, and natural. 

Ultimately, we were pleased to learn that the conceptual master plan is just an initial draft and there is still time for us to share our feedback before approval. Many of us took issue with the pace and timing of this process, considering the plan itself was proposed in the heat of the summer while most residents are not even here to notice. However, with our collective actions and this petition, the parks department and our commissioner have taken notice and intend to revise the plan with our feedback in mind. So please continue to share this petition far and wide, and make sure to attend the upcoming community meeting to show your support for compromise and conservation of as much natural space in our park as reasonable.