Will the "Turn-Dirt" Crowd Prevail on Virginia Key?

THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2010

“If Miami thought it could get more on the tax roll it would construct a whorehouse in Bayfront Park.” Dan Paul.

Provocative, acerbic, combative, Dan Paul, who passed away this week at his home in Miami, started fighting for public parks and open spaces since the day he arrived in Miami in 1949. The man may be gone but his legacy remains. 

In particular, his vision for a pastoral, accessible waterfront of “tree-lined trails, places to picnic, a pond for kids to sail their toy boats on, a tropical garden” is embodied in an amendment to the Miami-Dade County Charter he spearheaded: Article 7, which opens with this bold statement:

“Parks, Aquatic Preserves and lands acquired by the County for preservation shall be held in trust for the education, pleasure and recreation of the public and they shall be used and maintained in a manner which will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations as part of the public’s irreplaceable heritage.”

The “public’s irreplaceable heritage.”

If only those words would come into the minds of elected officials and other civic leaders who are charged with making decisions about development on what’s left of our community’s open spaces, including Virginia Key.

In a definitive profile of Paul in the Miami Herald (“The Human Wrecking Ball,” Oct. 13, 1996) by staff writer Linda Robertson, Paul described local leaders as having a “very bad habit of building in haste and repenting at leisure.” 

Paul also addressed the local leaders habit of demolishing in haste, when he wrote on behalf of saving the historic Miami Marine Stadium on Virginia Key. In an Oct. 8, 1993 letter to the City of Miami Waterfront Advisory Board, Paul spoke frankly of the situation:

“....The Miami Marine Stadium as a facility has been an extremely successful building. This has been in spite of being grossly mismanaged and badly maintained by the City of Miami. Now the very people, who caused what damage there is to the Marine Stadium’s integrity (both as a building and as a revenue generator), are the ones who want to tear it down. ....It would be interesting to know if the City already has some favored business arrangement for that land....”

That land is still in question, as is the fate of the Miami Marine Stadium, as the City of Miami weighs alternatives and proposals for Virginia Key’s future.

Whose vision will prevail? Dan Paul’s, with his love of nature and egalitarian approach to our community’s waterfront lands, or those of the “turn-dirt crowd,” as he once described his foes. 

A prescient quote from Elizabeth Pater-Zyberk, architect, town planner and dean of the University of Miami school of architecture, appears in the same Herald article that is as relevant today as it was in 1996, particularly when it comes to Virginia Key opens spaces and park lands: 

“(T)hey are great land banks we’ll be grateful for one day. Giving it away to individual projects is an incredibly clever attempt to control very valuable land by people who don’t really need it.”