SOME PEOPLE LOVE PARKS; SOME PREFER MUSEUMS: THE Folly of Covering Bicentennial Park With Construction

A MESSAGE FROM:  Judith Hancock Sandoval

Common Sense Miami/A Citizens Committee for Fiscal Responsibility 

Co-chair, Parks and Public Spaces Committee, Miami Neighborhoods United

305/857-0397

mimosan@earthlink.net

 

SOME PEOPLE LOVE PARKS; SOME PREFER MUSEUMS:

THE FOLLY OF COVERING BICENTENNIAL PARK WITH CONSTRUCTION

 

A park is a park and a museum is a museum, and Bicentennial Park is a medium sized, public green park, which should belong to every person in Miami. Why should our residents, whose taxes have paid for the park since its creation decades ago and maintenance for 30 years, pay more taxes to give away eight acres to build expensive new science and art museums? The museums could go on other available sites and help revitalize our urban core. The Performing Arts Center did not ask to eliminate city park land but chose to be part of the urban fabric on Biscayne Boulevard. If the City of Miami had taken care of Bicentennial Park, it would not be shabby and have an image of being unsafe. It could be wonderfully landscaped with shade trees, walkways, benches for people to enjoy a romantic evening, flowers, playing fields, and the popular children's splash fountains. Such improvements would cost hundreds of millions of dollars less than building two museums on city land worth millions of dollars being given away free! And most of the construction money is to come from General Obligation Bonds, paid for with our taxes! The Cooper Robertson landscape plan, which will cost between $68 and $80 million to to build and expensive to maintain, would cover another 10-12 acres with cement, walls and constructions, without any ball fields, few normal park amenities and! only 4 to 6 acres of landscaped gardens. Are a only few acres of landscaped gardens out of a total of 29 acres, your vision of a people-friendly park? 

 

Now the City of Miami is considering, at the May 10th City Commission meeting, a transfer of $2 million of our Homeland Defense Bond money to the Miami Art Museum, before it seems to have raised any of the promised $100 million that is required as a match. Miami-Dade County is supposed to give the museum $100 for completion of the museum project starting next year, but not until the art museum has raised and spent equal millions on its own. Last year, the art museum asked for an advance from the county without living up to that agreement and was turned down. So now our green-loving! Mayor and our city commissioners will consider the use of more bond money. If they jump-start construction with the requested $2 million and let the art museum out of their money-raising obligations, it will be hard to turn back, and we could face another PAC fiscal disaster.

 

In a public meeting, the Miami Art Museum's Director, Terrence Riley, promised that the museum would pay for the architect who will design the museum, a well-known designer of museums whose fee will be over $9 million, but it seems this hasn't happened so far. The museum estimates that construction will cost $980 a sq. ft., as the non-standard construction elements will be special order. Also needed will be an endowment of $70 million, an annual operating budget of $18 million (insurance alone on the waterfront could run an additional $12 million a year). The  museum wants a building of 120,000 sq. ft. ...rather large to house a coffee shop, museum offices, a classroom for children, exhibition halls, underground parking for 750 cars (not enough), and storage for an unimpressive collection of 300 pieces. (Compare that to the collection of 3,000 pieces at the Bass Art Museum, 5,200 at the Norton in Palm Beach and 175,000 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. What would assembling a really "world-class" collection cost? In today's art market, not even millions, but billions of dollars. Who will pay for that? Scarce private money in Miami? ) Additional costs to build the art museum include engineering, more consultants for another $2 million, $18 million to move the museum from its present location, fixtures and furnishings costing $5,769,750, an endowment of $70 million, an annual operating budget of about $28 million; adding new, required federal upgrades to the sea wall (that have already taken $10 million from the city's park's trust), and the total cost of just building and furnishing the new Miami Art Museum in its first two years in Bicentennial Park, from ground-breaking to opening, will cost over $217 million; nee! dless to mention the $700,00 the museum has already spent on three out-of-town consultants and the free Bayside park land worth millions more. Meanwhile, during construction, the museum will continue spending money at its present location. And what about cost over-runs and delays like those that plagued the airport expansion, the Bass Museum and the Performing Arts Center?  The taxpayer will end of paying for all of them, too. The Science Museum, next to the art museum and much larger, will also cost the taxpayers $175 million in county GOB bond funds, but it has already raised $16 million in private funds and hopefully not have to ask for more than it is entitled to.

 

That is not all that Bicentennial will cost us if the mayor gets his way. The design of the new park by Cooper Robertson has already cost the city $1,400,000, and the designer wants $300,000 more.There will also be a video projected on the facade of the art museum, described as a work of art but is also advertising for the museum that adds to the theme park atmosphere. And this is the museum that promised a building to compliment a landscaped park suitable to our semi-tropical climate on our beautiful Biscayne Bay!

 

Add up the cost of the new Miami Art Museum with a small collection of 300 

works of art, for the construction project, and the total is over $287 million, not even counting the value of the city park land. And this is what our mayor thinks can make Miami into an instant Paris or New York, and the Miami Art Museum into a "world-class museum." Add on another $175 million in tax-funded bond money for the Science Museum, the streetcar project for $200 million and the Diaz dream for the city more and more like a very expensive nightmare, with residents and businesses, especially businesses, seeing increased tax bills, when they could be getting reduction in taxes instead.

 

Now comes the big question: how much of the required matching $100 million has the art museum raised?  "Pledges of $35 million" was all it has answered to date, but how much is in writing? Hype or cash, which is it? How many million dollars less would it cost to just fix up the existing Miami Art Museum or use other less expensive available county or city vacant land, don't mention Watson Island as that place is a mess already or some location off the bay? We could then fix up Bicentennial Park for less money in true spirit of environmental improvement and make it a place for everybody who lives here, not just people with the big bucks to buy condos. How many affordable housing units could we build instead? How many sidewalks and streets could we build or repair? 

 

When U.S. museums can't raise enough private money, they cancel building projects. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York did this just recently. Do the people of Miami, where there are not nearly enough green parks beyond the urban core with many needing improvements, want to spend our taxes on a grand, unfriendly, show-off, concrete dominated park with no sports facilities, for two museums taking up eight scarce acres? Do we want to give up better services have nothing do do with bond money and improvements in our neighborhoods so that the Miami Art Museum can spend almost $300 millions dollars for a new art museum, when it already owns a well-designed museum downtown only 25 years old, by one of America's most acclaimed architects? We should tell the mayor, the city and county commissions  whether we want a beautiful, landscaped, play-friendly park on Biscayne Bay, or massive museums.. And tell them before the City Commission meeting on Thursday, May 10th. Then come to the meeting at City Hall and tell them again!

 

Judith Hancock Sandoval

COMMON SENSE MIAMI/A Citizens' Committee for Fiscal Responsibility

Co-Chair, Parks and Public Spaces Committee, Miami Neighborhoods United

305-857-0397

mimosan@earthlink.net