It was a glorious day at International Links Melreese Country Club. Bright sun lit up the vibrant green lawn under a perfect blue sky as golfers teed up, cool breezes swirling around them.
This public course near Miami International Airport has been around since the 1960s, and generations have been coming here for years to play golf, forge friendships and teach children the game. Many assume it will always be here, because it always has been.
Now, it might not be.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Through multiple management changes, renovations and redesigns, Melreese Park has evolved into a 18-hole championship course.
In 2018, city officials announced that Melreese would be developed into a commercial complex with a soccer stadium in a plan known as “Miami Freedom Park.” The City of Miami Commission is scheduled to review a proposed lease and construction agreements for the project March 11.
To local golfers, Melreese is a reasonably priced, scenic course off the tourist track, wedged between the airport, a neighborhood, a highway and the historic Tamiami Canal.
To the rest of Miami, it’s a secret garden. Few know that beyond the gateway lies a vast expanse of wide open lawn and undulating hills – a rare, contiguous green space of 147 acres that still exudes serenity amid the surrounding bustle.
As Miami has changed and grown through the years, so has Melreese. Through multiple management changes, renovations and redesigns the property has evolved into a 18-hole championship course.
And though it lies above toxic soil – more on that in a minute – the land has caught the eye of developers who covet the large swath of property.
“It could be the most important piece of land in the Southeastern United States,” said Miami attorney David Winker, a vocal opponent of the commercial development and stadium project.
City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is pushing the no-bid 99-year lease that gives brothers Jorge and Jose Mas, two politically well-connected developers, the right to develop this public land. The Mas brothers have teamed up with retired global soccer star David Beckham to build a 25,000-seat soccer stadium for Inter Miami CF (Club Internacional de Fútbol Miami) on 73 acres of Melreese property.
It comes with the side hustle of a $1 billion office complex, a massive mall and a hotel on the northern end. Before building anything, however, they’ll have to deal with toxic waste from incinerator ash dumped on the land as fill that’s buried up to four feet deep. They say they’ve budgeted $36 million for the estimated remediation and cleanup costs.
That price tag may be a bit ambitious.
What Lies Beneath
(Blanca Mesa for Biscayne Times)
Below the Melreese Park greens that would be bulldozed to make way for a soccer stadium lies toxic waste – buried up to four feet deep from incinerator ash dumped on the land as fill – that developers have budgeted $36 million to clean up.
A Biscayne Times’ review of files at the Miami-Dade County Department of Environmental Resources Management (DERM) revealed that city officials had been grappling with the legacy of that toxic ash for decades before the unsolicited Inter Miami development proposal came to light. (Redevelopment of a water park at the adjacent Grapeland Heights Park required removal of 80,000 tons of soil at a cost of $10 million.)
A 2001 letter from city consultant Petro Hydro described the arsenic contamination at Melreese as “statistically similar” to arsenic contamination at five other municipal golf courses in the county – not unexpected, as this was the byproduct of “agrochemicals” applied over time, and typical of golf course maintenance.
Soil tests conducted by DERM in 2006 showed elevated levels of several contaminants, including barium, copper and dioxins. That was “remediated” by covering it up with clean fill, mulch and other barriers to keep golfers and park workers from being exposed. When some barriers eroded or went missing, DERM flagged those areas for more mulch.
At some point, city environmental consultants seemed to be calling for DERM to lay off: “Since the city intends to maintain this property as a golf course in perpetuity” they asked DERM to consider potential closure options on the contamination case.
Of course, development of Melreese would reopen those investigations and bring remediation, particularly in areas with more traditional public park uses, like playgrounds and playing fields.
Yet soil contamination is not the only concern at the site. Inter Miami’s environmental consultant, EE & G Environmental Services LLC, also has documented ammonia water and arsenic water plumes in the groundwater.
(Blanca Mesa for Biscayne Times)
Officials at the Miami-Dade County Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources (DERM) contacted by the Biscayne Times were unaware of past environmental impact studies at Melreese Park, as well as the need for one as part of the permitting process necessary to move forward with any development plans there.
“The city and the developer will be required to address this, too,” said Wilbur Mayorga, chief of the Miami-Dade County Environmental Monitoring and Restoration Division. “One of the options is to leave it in place as long as the groundwater isn’t used for irrigation and is contained within the property.”
The groundwater plumes, found 3-5 feet below the surface, are connected to the Biscayne aquifer, the source of Miami-Dade’s drinking water. One of the county’s five municipal drinking water facilities is located 2.02 miles away from Melreese, near Hialeah. So far, says Mayorga, ground monitoring wells don’t show the plumes migrating in that direction.
At least, that’s what the historical data shows. Once the land is excavated and altered, conceptual plans have shown that the filling in of Melreese’s five natural lakes – as well as the creation of a new water feature – could move those plumes in new directions via underground streams flowing through Miami’s porous limestone.
“Once you change the stormwater system, you need to monitor,” Mayorga said.
Melreese & Climate Change
When the project’s new stormwater system is implemented, Mayorga said the developers will be required to contain the water on site, “to ensure no dispersal of the groundwater plume occurs.”
The proposed development will be “relying on concrete pavement as an engineering control,” he said. Where there are no buildings, a minimum of two feet of clean fill would be required as a new cover.
“Before any development of land activity, they need to submit a final corrective action plan for us to approve the construction plans,” Mayorga said. “They need to finalize their design and present [it].”
Right now, all DERM has are conceptual plans, which keep changing. Mayorga can’t say how much the cleanup and remediation plan will cost because he doesn’t have the final plans to review. He says he has no idea how Inter Miami arrived at that $36 million budget for the toxic soil and water clean-up.
One thing he is adamant about, however, is protecting the public’s health and safety.
“It is our duty and obligation as environmental officers to ensure the safety of citizens and workers,” Mayorga said.
To some, Melreese’s fate is inextricably tied to Miami’s climate change future, and they don’t understand why Suarez doesn’t see that.
(InterMiami CF)
Arquitectonica designed the master plan for “Miami Freedom Park,” a commercial complex with a soccer stadium that developers want to build at Melreese Park.
“How does this development fit into overall plans for Miami?” Winker asked. “How does this help resiliency? It doesn’t. It’s a bad idea to be giving away public park space when we’re in a climate change emergency.”
In 2017, Miami residents passed a Miami Forever Bond to pay for climate change adaptation projects, including new flood pumps and sea walls. The city has established the Miami Forever Climate Ready Strategy and has set a goal of being carbon neutral by 2050.
Suarez even traveled to Glasgow, Scotland, last year to attend COP26, the United Nations climate change conference. As president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, he could play a leadership role in how U.S. cities approach climate change impacts.
Miami also has a new stormwater master plan, which points out that the city lacks the dedicated stormwater management lands needed to address flooding: “The City is near buildout, and little, if any dedicated stormwater management lands exist ... the City is not creating or converting existing recurrent flood areas into dedicated storage areas.”
The stormwater plan also highlights the benefits of “green infrastructure” that uses natural planted systems to collect, store, treat and infiltrate stormwater and can be “helpful for chronic flooding areas.”
Where the Wild Things Are
Green infrastructure, including park lands like Melreese, is used in other cities to absorb floodwaters caused by sea-level rise and also catastrophic rain events that overwhelm urban pump and drainage systems.
Winker would prefer to go back to the drawing board on Melreese and not set a precedent that could cannibalize park lands all over the city for more profitable private development. He fears city officials will never make good on their promise of “no net loss” of park space if Melreese is developed.
In conceptual drawings, the developers have set aside 58 acres as open park land, but it’s not clear who will control that land or how it will be used.
(AllAboutBirds.org)
Ibises – as well as ospreys, egrets, herons, pelicans and hawks – are among the many birds frequently seen by visitors and staff at Melrose Park.
Officials at DERM contacted by the Biscayne Times were unaware of environmental impact studies or the need for one as part of the permitting process. But a longtime employee said the golf course is rife with bird life, including a bald eagle that shows up each winter. Wading birds are frequently seen, including ospreys, egrets, ibises and herons, as well as pelicans and hawks. Tarpon, bass, freshwater catfish and mudfish abound in its five natural lakes. And manatees and dolphins have been seen in the Tamiami Canal, which borders part of the golf course.
The fate of the wildlife may not be an issue that concerns Miami’s current mayor but it was a passion of his father’s, former City of Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez. With the support of the Tropical Audubon Society, the elder Suarez helped set aside a portion of Virginia Key as the Sadowski Critical Wildlife Area in 1990, a manatee protection area and refuge for shorebirds, wading birds and marine life.
Later, as a Miami-Dade County commissioner, Xavier Suarez continued to espouse the necessity of nature in urban areas, calling for the protection of green spaces in cities.
He opposed putting a soccer stadium and commercial development in Bicentennial Park (Beckham promoted that location) and filling in the FEC slip on Biscayne Bay waterfront in downtown Miami.
In a 2019 Miami Herald op-ed, he lamented that the Bayside shopping mall was built in Bayfront Park:
“In another era, one could argue that an attraction such as Bayside was needed to attract people to our magnificent bayfront. Now, all we need is pedestrian flow and preservation of the flora and fauna nature has bestowed on us.”
Francis Suarez hasn’t dedicated any of his online “Cafecito Talks” to saving Miami wildlife. He did not make himself available to be interviewed for this story, nor did he respond to submitted written questions. But in January, he was adamant that he had a deal to bring major league soccer to Miami at Melreese, and that he expected the rest of the city commission to go along.
“We have concluded negotiations,” Suarez said.