Voters in Miami-Dade County will find a referendum question on Tuesday's primary election ballot: Should Miami Beach build a new fire station at the western edge of the Flamingo Park track?
Even though the question affects South Beach residents, it’s on the ballot for all county voters, regardless of party affiliation, because of county rules regarding parks.
The park suggested for the proposed fire station is between 11th and 12th Streets, along Alton Road, a major thoroughfare in Miami Beach.
The city wants firefighters to get to emergencies quicker, since they also serve the city's southernmost point and also the more isolated Star, Palm and Hibiscus islands.
Currently, Fire Station No. 1 is located at 1051 Jefferson Avenue and it's the busiest station on Miami Beach. The department has outgrown this 57-year old building designed by famed architect Morris Lapidus.
“Most of our trucks can’t fit into the garage because of the size of the trucks we now have to serve the area,” said Colette Satchell, senior project manager at the city’s capital improvements office, speaking to members of the city’s Historic Preservation Board in 2022.
She said the truck's tires require deflating to fit in old bays to park them. For nearly 10 years, Miami Beach has been working towards a new station to accommodate truck sizes and a modern facility for the staff.
This building is also prone to flooding because the floor is beneath base flood elevation. What’s more, it isn’t large enough. The Fire Department has said it needs at least three-quarters of an acre, making it not an option to destroy it and rebuild there.
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The 6th Street property is large enough at about one acre.
“It’s city-owned land. Some of the private properties that we looked at were not ¾ of an acre,” said Satchell, making the case for building the new one at 833 6th Street, owned by the city. She said private properties they looked at were too expensive.
Money for this building originally came from $439 million in general obligation bonds authorized by voters in 2018. Of that money, $10 million was set aside for the new fire station.
Historic preservation
Preservationists have long disagreed with that site on 6th Street, citing the narrower streets around it and the stop signs, instead of traffic lights, making the area ill suited for fire trucks.
“We will also substantially alter one of the most historic neighborhoods in Miami Beach by taking an acre, a third of a block, and totally transforming it,” said David McKinney, a retired architecture historian who lives behind the Jefferson Avenue fire station and has been speaking up over the years against using the 6th Street location.
Here's the main catch — this site already has a building on it, the South Shore Community Center. It was also designed by Morris Lapidus, the same architect behind the glamorous Eden Roc and Fontainebleau hotels on Miami Beach. He also designed a commercial pedestrian street called the Lincoln Road Mall.
When he was tasked with the community center, Lapidus had a different purpose in mind: the retirees who dominated South Beach in those years.
“Architectural history is not just about the buildings of the rich and famous or the great resorts. It’s also about the people that make and shape the city,” he told WLRN. “And seniors in the 1960s were reshaping Miami Beach and this building was built and designed to address their needs.”
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The Florida Trust for Historic Preservation added the South Shore center to a list of buildings to save in 2021.
Today, the center is used as a daycare for roughly 40 children, whose parents live and work on the Beach. A senior lunch program was stopped in 2019.
Firefighters’ needs
Former Miami Beach Fire Department Chief Virgil Fernandez continuously brought up the importance of agreeing on a site for his staff.
“I have to advocate for the men and women that run out of that fire station and it’s really not fair to them either,” Fernandez told the Historic Preservation Board meeting in 2022.
“I can tell you that from the very beginning, we have tried to look for a location that causes the least amount of pain, but at the same time, meets the demands and the future needs of our city and our current needs of the firefighters — of the men and women that respond out of that fire station.”
"We have tried to look for a location that causes the least amount of pain, but at the same time, meets the demands and the future needs of our city and our current needs of the firefighters."Former Miami Beach Fire Chief Virgil Fernandez
Fernandez pointed to the need to be prepared to serve all of the new condo and hotel projects across the city. He retired earlier this summer.
City commissioners recently proposed the western edge of the Flamingo Park track as a location, to avoid demolishing the community center.
Divisions over Flamingo Park
“People who want to see it here, the main reason is, is because it saves the 6th Street community center,” said Scott Needelman, who was born and raised on Miami Beach and has always lived here. He facilitates the meetings for the Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association, and has been on the Historic Preservation Board in the past.
He said the association is made up of members who live around here and are divided over this issue of putting a fire station in the park versus on 6th Street.
“It’s not that I don’t want to save the community center, but I just can’t see putting a huge building in a park," Needelman said. "You look at it now and you can see to Alton Road, and people playing there in that area, and I’m just envisioning a rather large building there taking away all those trees, and all that green space, people looking at the wall of the fire station or the side of the huge ramps.”
The ramps are part of the new station’s design for the fire trucks.
Officials estimate it will cost approximately $20 million more than originally planned over time to put the station at the park. The track, soccer field, the field house, bleachers and scoreboard would be shifted east to make room.
Needelman says if the city is willing to spend millions on building it at the park, he suggests they reconsider buying a private property.
“Because 6th Street is not ideal. The park is certainly not an ideal location, so maybe they should take that $20 million and look to buy a private property in a perfect spot for the fire station and do that,” he said.
For now, if voters don’t approve the park, the city will likely go back to the South Shore Community Center.
Commissioner Tanya Bhatt led an effort to scout for a number of locations that led to the Flamingo Park proposal.
“It is taking a small 3% of park space away from its current use, but it is park space that is currently underutilized,” Bhatt said. “It's not smack in the middle of the park. There's no playground on it."
She said the location has the approval of the city’s former and current fire chiefs.
Said Bhatt: "We can get the fire department the facility they need, we can get residents the response times they require and demand, and rightly so, and we can protect our legacy. And that is what I'm asking you to do."
Now, voters will have a say but it’s a straw vote — meaning the question is non-binding.
Commissioners said they will let the vote of Miami Beach residents weigh more than that of voters in the rest of the county, since the park belongs to the city. They plan to discuss the next steps in their September meeting.
