how to provide a financial
safety net for struggling businesses along the boulevard, and
over the choice of trees that should line it, have often erupted
at FDOT public meetings.
But now that most businesses seem to be hanging in there and
negotiations over landscaping seem promising (all the boulevard’s
original royal palms and new oak trees), the project appears
to be back on course. Countless months into the roadway construction,
residents, business owners, and FDOT officials alike are eager
to complete the undertaking to everyone’s satisfaction
and then breathe a collective sigh of relief.
So it’s little wonder some observers were startled when
Steven Craig James, FDOT’s landscape architect, told
the Miami Herald last month that plans to landscape the boulevard
between Northeast 37th and 67th streets would be delayed until
the summer of 2009. The rollercoaster took another unexpected
plunge. “We are reviewing our construction budget at
this time and comparing the budget to the items we proposed
to include in that budget,” James explained in the Herald
article. “We are still considering various aesthetic
treatments to be included in that project, but we are concerned
the budget will not cover all the treatments the community
would like to see.”
David Treece, president of the Upper Eastside Miami Council,
a partner with FDOT on the boulevard project, was taken aback. “It’s
not a reasonable delay,” he snapped. “Most of us
want to get this done as quickly as possible. When you’re
in the middle of a project, funding shouldn’t be one
of the delays.”
But Alice Bravo, director of transportation systems development
at FDOT, told the BT that some flexibility is necessary, noting
that adjustments have been made in the past to accommodate
community requests, such as the plea on behalf of business
owners to suspend construction during the holiday season. She
also noted that the original landscape budget, a mere $200,000,
was dramatically increased in the fall of 2004 to $1.7 million.
The recent funding shortage, she says, is the result of requests
by the community for additions to the landscape proposal.
Treece, however, was not alone in loudly objecting to a two-year
wait for a tree-lined boulevard, so by mid-April FDOT, at the
behest of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, had shifted funds
around to speed up the landscaping phase of the project. Now
the agency is estimating that the roadway construction between
37th and 67th streets will be completed by the end of this
month. Landscape construction is set to begin by March 2008
and completed by the fall of that year.
So how did FDOT come up with the funds? And could the budgeted
money eventually be exhausted, leaving the final phase of the
project undone? Not possible, said Bravo. She described the
budgeting process as a complex equation with dozens of variables.
Every year, she said, FDOT updates its work program, which
consists of all budgets over a span of five years. To keep
the landscaping phase of the project on track, the agency had
to re-examine the work program and play with the variables.
Timing problems seemingly resolved, a couple of questions remain:
decorative sidewalks and trees atop water pipes. Biscayne Corridor
residents and business owners have asked for special sidewalk
treatments that would help define and promote the recently
designated MiMo historic district (for the architectural style
known as Miami Modern) that stretches from NE 50th to 77th
Street. Commissioner Sarnoff, whose District 2 includes Biscayne
Boulevard, said he hopes to draw from the city’s Quality
of Life Bond to come up with the money for the sidewalks. He
also expects a prompt resolution to ongoing negotiations with
the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department, which objects to
having trees planted above its water mains. Sarnoff feels the
county is being overly cautious, and he remains optimistic. “They
always say no at first,” he quipped. “But you just
have to work through the nos.”
Feedback: letters@biscaynetimes.com
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