The future of Miami Beach’s North Beach neighborhood is up for grabs. People who like the sleepy, low-rise neighborhood that stretches from 63rd Street to 87th Street call it funky, but those who want change call it faded.
In February, North Beach residents, city officials, town planners and even some developers met at a “charrette” or design workshop to hash out ideas for a future North Beach. The workshop was organized by Dover Kohl and Associates, the town planning firm that’s been selected by the city of Miami Beach to develop a master plan for North Beach.
The workshop took place just months after Miami Beach voters rejected zoning changes for a portion of North Beach known as Ocean Terrace. It’s a historic district where developers asked voters to change something known as floor-area-ratio. That would allow for increases in density and height--and more people and more businesses. But neighborhood activists organized quickly and successfully to defeat the proposed ordinance.
“There were many viewpoints in opposition to the high-rise that was proposed for Ocean Terrace,” says Kirk Paskal, who helped lead the fight to defeat the ordinance and says the proposed Ocean Terrace development was too big for the neighborhood. “The height was out of scale and out of character and incompatible with the nature of the surrounding neighborhood,” he says.
But other residents saw the defeat as a lost opportunity, and they say North Beach has lagged when it comes to attracting businesses and retail of the sort that residents want and need. “There’s no doubt it is blighted,” says Richard Hull, president of the Normandy Shores Homeowners Association. “I think a way to fix it is you’re going to have to allow people to come in and develop and you’re going to have to say I am going to give you height and I am going to give you size,” he adds. “Not everybody is going to want to spend the money if you are not going to allow them to develop.”
The city of Miami Beach has made plans for North Beach in the past but now developers are also focused on the area. Once Dover Kohl was selected to develop a master plan for the neighborhood, the firm and the city decided to hold the weeklong workshop as a way of getting the public involved in the process. Jason King, a project director at the firm, says there were concerns the residents were too divided to talk to each other. “It isn’t what we found though,” says King. “The reality is people in North Beach know there is room for improvement in North Beach, so our job was about identifying consensus issues,” he says.
More than 800 people showed up at the workshop to look at various proposals for the area. Hundreds more packed two public meetings. Residents polled by Dover Kohl say they want a new urban core or town center for the area. They also want better parking and transit options and protection against sea-level rise. Piet Dircke, a Dutch water engineer, says North Beach can use its mix of beaches and dunes to protect the urban environment. “That means we combine soft or natural solutions using the forces of nature, sand with strong and civil engineered solutions,” says Dircke, who says that could mean hiding dikes under dunes and using parking garages to store storm water runoff.
Planners also say turning 71 st Street into a pedestrian and bike friendly neighborhood could serve as a catalyst for the rest of North Beach. But to do that the city would probably have to increase floor area ratio to allow for more density and height – something preservationists like Kirk Paskal say they are wary of. “We value the character of our neighborhood,” he says. “We value that character and we value that history and we want to see it protected.”
Dover Kohl says it expects to have a master plan for North Beach completed within the next few months.
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