Blighted Lots West Of Adrienne Arscht Center To Become Park Space

February 14, 2017

Image from The New Tropic

The vacant lots around North Miami Avenue and 13th Street in Downtown Miami have been a blighted eyesore for years now, but that is changing as we speak. Brad Knoefler, the owner of Bar 1306 nearby, has made it his business to redevelop these lots into something more usable and enjoyable. With help of the Omni CRA, the area will become a 4 block park space until construction of the 395 flyover bridge begins.

Knoefler isn’t a stranger to redevelopment of park space, he is the man behind the Grand Central temporary park that was located on the site that was once the Miami Arena and near his previous bar/nightclub, Grand Central. For Grand Central Park, he invested $80,000 of his own money and used $200,000 of CRA funds to transform the lot into a skate park, according to The New Tropic. For Omni Park, he vows to up the ante by investing differently. Rather than purchasing landscaping and permanent structures that will ultimately be removed when the park closes, he is investing in structures that can be relocated at the end of the park’s term.

For shelter, they are designing cafes and restaurant spaces from shipping containers and portable chikee huts for shade outside of the trees that already exist in the space. He is working with a $300,000 budget from the Omni CRA that was earmarked for redeveloping blighted spaces.

The project was approved in mid-December and broke ground on January 16. It should open by the end of the month with an opening celebration set for early March. The park will eventually move to another space when it comes time to begin the construction of the new I395 flyover that has been in the works.

Omni Park Rendering via The New Tropic

Omni Park Rendering via The New Tropic

Omni Park February 2017

The proposed I395 flyover bridge, rendering from FDOT