Rather than quell an ongoing dispute over the future of a beloved nature center named for Marjory Stoneman Douglas and her namesake nonprofit, a move by Miami-Dade County to extend eviction talks over its idyllic location on Biscayne Bay has only deepened the mix-up.
“She would say this is ridiculous,” said Theodora Long, director of the Biscayne Nature Center nonprofit that Douglas founded after the two became friends in 1987. “She’d say get the governor on the phone!”
The confusion stems in part from a longstanding arrangement stitched together by a patchwork of legal arrangements over the years.
For decades, the nonprofit, the county and Miami-Dade school district happily co-existed in a district-owned building on county land in Crandon Park, providing free summer camps, nature walks and other environmental education for students. But in August, Miami-Dade ignited the fight when it notified the center that its programming license expired this month. A county letter ordered the nonprofit to pack up and vacate the building it had occupied for more than three decades by Nov. 23.
Miami-Dade County insists the letter was simply a matter of following rules for county vendors. Last week when it issued a 45-day extension following growing criticism, officials essentially declared no harm, no foul.
”This is not intended to be some type of adversarial eviction,” Roy Coley, the county’s Chief Utilities and Regulatory Services Officer who oversees the parks department, told WLRN. “We did not ever want to evict, and we've never said that. This is somebody who we think a lot of.”
But the nonprofit suspects the county is not showing all its cards. It argues the county programming license does not hold the powers of a lease, nor give the county authority to kick the group out of a district-owned building. Furthermore, said Mark Diaz, chair of the center's board of trustees, the county has refused to provide details about its expansion plans at the center - which the county estimates could generate up to $1 million in fees - or what it wants to negotiate.
”This threatens the existence of an organization that has been a longstanding provider to the community of incredible work in the name of the environment,” Diaz said. “It forces us to defend ourselves.”
That has left Long and her backers scrambling to find legal documents signed decades ago.
“I’ve learned that all those old files that everybody wanted to throw away when the internet came along, they've come in handy,” she said.
Dating back to the late 1960s, according to a 1999 Miami Herald story, a group of teachers began running a summer camp out of a hotdog stand at Crandon Park. The camps, Long said, were intended to teach kids about the sprawling bay, its connection to the Everglades, seagrass meadows and mystical seahorses. When the popular program outgrew the hotdog stand, the school district and county signed a deal in 1987 allowing the district to install a portable for teachers to use. After Douglas became involved, they hatched plans to construct a building and started the nonprofit in Douglas’ name.
“ I personally raised the $4 million for the building,” Long said. “I went to every construction meeting there was.”
Building was not easy. It had to adhere to strict limits outlined in the Crandon Park Master Plan - a blueprint orchestrated by the Matheson family as part of its deal to donate park land to the county and protect its undisturbed wilderness. Only educational programs could be run from the center and the nonprofit Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center was specifically referenced. Even before it was built, a 1991 report on the park’s natural areas advised the county to “develop a working relationship with appropriate government and civic agencies concerned with resource management.” The list included the nature center.
In preparation for construction in 1991, Miami-Dade County and the school district signed a 40-year, rent-free lease for nearly three acres at the north end of Key Biscayne. In minutes from a school district meeting that same year, provided by Long, officials said the district would be “permitted to sublease to the [Marjory Stoneman Douglas] Biscayne Nature Center for operation of other educational programs that will be offered to the community.” The center finally opened in 1998, renamed in Douglas’ honor just weeks before her death.
Over the years, Long said district and county staff running environmental programs out of the building worked comfortably alongside the nonprofit. But occasionally questions would surface over maintenance or supplies. So in 2006, the district and nonprofit signed a new agreement. The deal, with no termination date, remains in effect, Long said. Then in 2010, in a move to organize vendors at parks around the county, the nonprofit and the county signed a separate programming license, with a 10-year term and one five-year option to renew. In 2020, after failing to schedule a meeting with the county to discuss the renewal, Long said her board voted to sign the renewal and sent it off to the county.
“No one, I guarantee you, foresaw the possibility that this could be what in the future is going to be invoked as something that that can really put the partnership at risk,” Diaz said. “No one thought this is gonna be the thing.”
If the agreement remains in effect, Coley said it could change the county’s position.
“This is the first I've ever heard of such an instrument, so if there's something there, we would certainly like to see it,” he said. “I can promise you if our administration has misinterpreted or made an error, we'd be the first ones to fix it.”
If not, Coley said a new licensing deal would have to be issued that would also be open to other bidders. He said only the county commission could waive that requirement to negotiate an agreement.
”State law requires us to do a competitive solicitation for any future agreements unless our board of county commissions by super majority wanted to do something else," he said.
Coley said the county’s goal is to expand programs at the center, including camps during holiday school breaks and more overnight camps. He said 49 parks positions were eliminated in this year’s budget and services cut, including hours at public pools, so the department is looking to increase revenue.
”We don't have an exact list of what we have to have or don't have to have,” he said. “It's just about finding a way to bring as much value to the community as possible.”
He also said county staff had estimated profits could increase to $1 million.
”By adding the extra events and the extra opportunities they've estimated, they think they can generate a million dollars a year,” he said. “Now that's an estimate.”
But that could conflict with the park's master plan designed to protect wild areas and limit development.
“There's an ethos in that compact where the profitization of Crandon Park is looked down upon,” Diaz said.
On Thursday, county staff notified Long that it hoped to schedule the first of the negotiating meetings next week. Long remains hopeful the legal documents and her persistence will ensure the future of the nature center.
”What did [Marjory] say? Same story, different dress.” she said. “She would tell the same story over and over again, and eventually they'll get the message.”