As the city of Miami's new all-in-one civic center reaches a major milestone, city officials have secured a $20 million bond to build a pedestrian bridge connecting the government center to public transit, WLRN can reveal.
City officials gathered Friday at the construction site of the new civic center at Miami Freedom Park — the same site as Inter Miami CF's Nu Stadium — to celebrate the "topping" of the site, marking the halfway point in the building of the city government's new home.
As things stand now, Miami's commissioners and the mayor have offices at City Hall in Coconut Grove, while administrative departments like building and permitting work out of the Miami Riverside Center near downtown. Police and fire department offices are housed in two additional buildings near Overtown and Little Havana.
The new center, which began construction in 2025 under former Mayor Francis Suarez, will create a single public building for Miami's elected officials, administrative employees and public safety personnel. City officials said the center will make government services more accessible to residents by concentrating operations in one place.
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" The beauty is that you're gonna have not only the administration side, but you're also gonna have all the elected officials in one location. So this is truly gonna be a paradigm shift for the city because we're all gonna be under one house," Miami's Assistant City Manager Asael Marrero told WLRN.
The project is projected to cost $350 million funded by a mix of taxpayer dollars, proceeds from the sale of the Miami Riverside Center and bond money. Construction is projected to finish in late 2027 or early 2028, with an expected move-in date in the Summer of 2028.
Mayor Eileen Higgins told WLRN the building will have an additional element of resident accessibility thanks to a recently approved grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The $20 million from the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) Grant Program will be used to connect Miami International Airport's Intermodal transit center to the new government headquarters.
" That means that residents who visit the new Miami Civic Center will be able to ride public transportation and have a much safer way of getting across the street and the canal. And then also the employees that will be working here will have a safer, quicker, drier and less sunny way to get to work on a daily basis," Higgins said.
Miami-Dade County will serve as a regional partner on construction of the 1,450-foot pedestrian bridge by providing the non-federal match dollars and supporting compliance and quality assurance. The Miami Freedom Park Development Team will manage design, permitting and construction under city and county oversight.
Work on the bridge is expected to begin in 2027 and finish in 2029, after the civic center is complete.
