Thursday May 8, 2008
Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens
Most people have heard of the Morikami but haven’t been there, because it seems so far away. Actually, it’s less then an hour from Miami, and totally worth the trip. Hours are from 10 am to 5 pm, and I’d recommend getting there on the early side, as the highly rated restaurant inside the museum closes at 3 pm. Click the photo above to see a slideshow of what it’s like.
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Wednesday March 26, 2008
The North Shore Community Garden, around 73rd Street on Dickens Avenue, Miami Beach.
Monday March 17, 2008
A new design for Museum Park has been released. Basically, they cut about $10 million out of the grove area, the southern part of the park (where a lot of the interesting stuff was, it should be noted). Current projected price: $49-54 million. All together now: yeah, right!
Wednesday March 12, 2008
First Chihuly. Now Botero and Lichtenstein. I hope Fairchild gets the obvious stuff out of it’s system asap and gets down to some interesting and non-obvious artists.
Thursday January 3, 2008
Miami-Dade has a pathetically small amount of park land, a fact that often gets over looked, because we also have one of the “biggest” national park in the country, Biscayne (which is actually almost completely underwater). Anyway, now there’s an idea to turn undeveloped lots, which will sit vacant until the housing crash subsides, into City of Miami parks. But you read that right — we’re talking about temporary parks. Apparently, adding permanent park land isn’t even worthy of pie-in-the-sky dreaming anymore in this city.
Thursday November 15, 2007
“The great lawn in downtown Miami’s planned Museum Park would be smaller but still expansive. There would be many more shade trees but cheaper palms. Concrete paving, and less of it, would replace stone paths. And some design flourishes like water features and themed outdoor ‘‘rooms’‘ would be deleted.” — Story about the proposed changes to Museum Park, but no images.
Monday November 12, 2007
Savepalms.com: bemoaning the removal of royal palms along Biscayne Blvd. I saw this website on a bumper sticker. (Not sure if they’re still sending these out — the website hasn’t been updated since February. I suppose the fight is over.)
There will be a public meeting tomorrow about Museum Park. A new master plan will be presented, because the old plan was considered too elaborate and expensive. I find this slightly depressing.
Thursday November 8, 2007
Hey, wouldn’t the Freedom Tower be a perfect spot for the Bay of Pigs museum? (From Suzy’s comment #9, here)
Thursday October 25, 2007
James Wilkins has a few pictures and some commentary on the new Hollywood ArtsPark (btw, I work across the street from this park).
Thursday October 4, 2007
The bastards changed the time of the Museum Park meeting tonight from 6 to 4:30pm! WTF — they’re claiming conflict with a later event, but isn’t this a transparent effort to make it impossible for many people to come? Why isn’t anyone making noise about this?!
Wednesday September 26, 2007
Next Thursday (October 4), the City of Miami Planning Department is having a meeting to discuss plans for the design of Museum Park. No idea what they did to publicize this meeting, but I note that their web page doesn’t even mention the time (it’s 6 pm). Inexcusable. Michelle at Museum Park Forum caught this. It’s at the Orange Bowl Stadium Athletic Club.
Update: The bastards changed the time to 4:30pm! WTF, they’re claiming conflict with a later event, but isn’t this a transparent effort to make it impossible for many people to come?? Why isn’t anyone making noise about this?!
Thursday September 6, 2007
Museum Park Forum. I love the idea of a site like this, and while this seems pretty transparently anti-museum and somewhat wrong-headed (if you give people a list of 23 community-park amenities to choose from, don’t be surprised when it looks like people want a community park). Here’s the plan for Bicentennial/Museum Park. And FWIW, I still support a soccer field on Parcel B — soccer is one of the few things Bicentennial Park is currently used for.
Monday August 13, 2007
C.L. Jahn calls for the refreshment bar in Bicentennial Park to be re-opened. Not a bad idea: while we wait for the museums, couldn’t we have some security guards and some re-opened facilities there?
Monday July 16, 2007
Bicentennial park with museum overlay
Our pal Christopher recently visited Bicentennial Park and shot some photos to try to visualize how much of the park the museums will take. I decided to try my own shot at visualizing the difference — mouse over the image above to overlay the proposed plan for the park, taken from this post, over the Google view of the site. (I’ve been elbow-deep in the JavaScript all morning to make this happen, btw.)
A couple of observations. Firstly, I think they should ditch the walkway between the museums and I-395, and push the museums as far to the north as possible. Secondly, I wonder if anyone told the American Airlines Arena that we were planning a big soccer field on their side of the canal stump. Speaking of the canal stump, the plan calls for part of it to be filled in, plus the addition of a little island, which will make the transition from the arena to the park nicer for pedestrians and actually replace some of the land the museums are taking up. I am perplexed to be reminded that the southernmost building, just north of the canal stump, actually is a restaurant. Funny how nobody seems to be making a fuss about that. Also, remember that the museum buildings as seen in this illustration are not representative as to their final shape, though the sizes should be accurate.
Update: A closer look at the AAA site reveals that the eastern edge is in fact undeveloped, so I guess the soccer field there is a real thing. Add that to added space offsetting the loss to the museum buildings.
Update: Just realized the mouse-over effect isn’t working in IE7. I guess I’ve much to learn of the ways of the JavaScripts. For now, see the alternate image here or download Firefox.
Please direct comments to this conversation, already in progress.
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Tuesday June 19, 2007
A good discussion about Museum Park has been going for the last couple of days at Transit Miami.
Thursday June 14, 2007
Miami Circle is going to be run by the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, and will probably be opened to the public at some point. It’s been nine years since the site was discovered — why did it take the state nine years to make this deal?
Tuesday May 29, 2007
“There is no annual report for the Parks Advisory Board for the year 2006. The board has had severe problems meeting quorum, and there were no accomplishments to report.” — Ed Blanco, reporting to the the Miami Commission that nobody from the Parks Advisory Board shows up for meetings. [YouTube] Hmm . . . (via Transit)
Wednesday May 23, 2007
A baywalk is part of Miami 21, but anyone who’s been down to the bay knows it’s a little pie-in-the-sky, since almost all the buildings along the bay have fence up to the water and private yards. Anyway, here’s what the Baywalk would look like if we had a baywalk.
Tuesday May 22, 2007
Rebecca Wakefield on what happened to the kite-flying event in Bicentennial park Sunday. In short: it was a disaster. It was raining, so the city decided not to clean up after a huge festival there the night before. See also Commonsense Miami’s <a href="http://common