A skirmish over who will run the beloved Biscayne Nature Center founded by famed environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas is squaring off between the longtime nonprofit that helped create it and Miami-Dade County park officials.
Earlier this month, park officials thanked the nonprofit for its “tireless efforts” and ordered it to pack up by November, according to a letter first reported by the Key Biscayne Independent, a WLRN News partner.
The nonprofit, led by one of Douglas’ friends and a member of a cadre of women conservationists dubbed “Marjory’s Army,” said the eviction order caught the group completely by surprise.
The group has no plans to abandon a mission that for generations has helped introduce wild Florida to school children, said Theodora Long, the nonprofit’s director for the last 33 years.
“Perhaps they just thought I was going to just pick up my purse and go out the door,” she said. “Our perseverance speaks for itself.”
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Miami-Dade County officials say the letter was sent as a mere administrative matter: the group’s programming agreement is set to expire in November.
“We are exploring ways to keep them involved in the center’s future,” Roy Coley, the county utilities and regulation chief, said in a statement in response to questions. “In the meantime, Miami-Dade County wants to assure the community that the center will remain open and all programming will continue.”
The county did not respond to specific questions about whether it wanted to take over running the center.
But in meetings with Parks Director Christina White, Long said she was told the parks department wanted to take over programming at the small center in Crandon Park on Key Biscayne, and leave fundraising duties to the nonprofit.
A proposed parks budget lists a “fee adjustment” expected to bring in $1 million in revenue based on retaining “programming revenues at Crandon Nature Center.” The proposal is part of a contentious budget battered by shortfalls in a financially tight year and scheduled for a final vote Thursday.
Long found the $1 million projection laughable.
“There’s no way, no how,” she said. “I’ve been there a long time. If I could have made a million dollars, I would have. You’re lucky to have two nickels to rub together.”
Raising money also doesn’t line up with the nonprofit’s purpose, Long said.
“We’re not in the fundraising business. I said that’s not acceptable,” Long said. “I said I’m willing to sit at the table with you and the district to talk about raising more funds, but we can’t take on that responsibility for the parks department.”
Total revenue from the center amounted to just over $525,000, according to the nonprofit’s 2023 tax exemption filing, the latest publicly available. Salaries ate up about half of that. The remainder went to programs, which include a free monthlong summer camp for kids between eight and 12.
That educational mission is rooted in the center’s creation, Long said, when a group of middle school teachers, including Mabel Miller, began running a camp out of a concession stand on the island in the 1960s. Douglas got involved when Miller invited her to speak to students. The River of Grass author soon became an ardent patron. As its future grew shaky amid yearly trips to school district meetings to plead for funding, Douglas decided to pursue a permanent nature center.
“She said I’m not going to live forever, so I’m going to start a not-for-profit Biscayne Nature Center and its task will be to build a center to educate school children about what’s in your back yard,” Long said.
A Florida Department of Education matching grant Stoneman helped secure provided $1.8 million. The nonprofit raised the other half. The groundbreaking took place on Douglas’ 108th birthday, weeks before she died.
For years, a partnership between the nonprofit, the county and the Miami-Dade school district succeeded. The county owned the land and maintained the grounds; the Miami-Dade school district owned the building with a 40-year lease on the land, and took care of plumbing, electricity and bathrooms; and the nonprofit Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center handled programming.
“Parks did paddle boarding, kayaking, etc.. We did education and so did the school system,” Long said. “These programs have mirrored each other all these years.”
That deal worked without a contract between the county and nonprofit for more than a decade, she said. Then in 2010, the county asked for a formal agreement. The deal provided a 10-year term, with a five-year rollover option. The agreement required the nonprofit to pay the county 10% of revenues from programming and concession sales. Fees were set at $12 per person for each program (they now range between $8 and $15), with discounts for underserved kids.
When the agreement expired in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and the county did not respond to requests to hammer out a new agreement, Long said the nonprofit board voted to sign the rollover option.
As the new deadline loomed this year, Long said she reached out to the former parks director. When White, the former Supervisor of Elections, was named as her replacement this spring, Long said she also sent an introductory letter, never expecting the county to so dramatically revise the deal.
“I figured she was new in the job and busy, busy, busy, and then we get the letter,” Long said. “It was like, here’s your hat, what’s your hurry.”
Long at first declined to discuss the matter publicly, hoping to work out a deal. And she told WLRN she remains optimistic.
“We’ve been staying quiet because I didn’t want to embarrass anyone,” she said. “This is a legacy to Marjory and county parks should really be proud of the work we’ve done rather than take it away from us.”
A county spokeswoman did not immediately respond to follow-up WLRN questions about Long’s account.
Long also worries that grander plans by the parks department could run counter to restrictions required by the Matheson family when it donated the land in the 1940's and spelled out in a 2000 master plan. That plan calls for no more than a single building for the nature center, with space only for classrooms, bathrooms and teacher workspace, intended to “promote indigenous passive non-commercial environmental and historical education activities.”
In a gentler time, those activities included field study, observing nature, lectures and films, and “only during daylight hours.”
