Opinion: Is the Sun Setting on City Hall?

Dinner Key’s historic seaplane terminal – and the city offices housed there — face an uncertain future.

Seventy-one years ago, Miami city leaders, complaining of cramped quarters in downtown’s Dade County Courthouse, moved its government offices to the former Pan American Airways terminal at Dinner Key in Coconut Grove. The move – always meant to be temporary – finally may be coming to an end. 

Last May the city’s Urban Design Review Board unanimously approved plans for a new city administration building at the former Melreese Golf Course near Miami International Airport. In addition to a new 25,000-seat soccer stadium for Major League Soccer’s Inter Miami CF, the 130-acre mixed-use development, known as Miami Freedom Park, will be home to an eight-story City of Miami Administration Building. The complex will replace current municipal offices at the Miami Riverside complex in downtown Miami and include a chamber to house city commission meetings which, for the past 71 years, have been held at the historic Pan Am terminal.

While city officials have confirmed for the Spotlight their plans to relocate Miami’s City Hall from Dinner Key to the Freedom Park site, the decisions over future uses of the city-owned Pan Am terminal are likely to be contentions ones: while elected city officials may be loath to relinquish their choice waterfront offices, developers will surely salivate over the prospect of gaining access to some of Miami’s most desirable public land.

Perhaps fittingly, the decision to set up shop at Dinner Key had its own drama. In a tense meeting on July 15, 1953, a divided city commission voted to move city offices and City Hall five miles south to what was then a much smaller, sleepier Coconut Grove. Even those favoring the move saw it as a short-term solution.

Some were skeptical. “If you’re going to move down there,” a dissenting Commissioner William Wolfarth said, “you are never going to get out.”

History proved him right. Despite decades of discussion and a seemingly endless parade of studies and reports, Miami City Hall has remained at the historic Pan Am terminal at 3500 Pan American Drive for more than seven decades.

Over the years, city leaders have regularly discussed the possibility of moving City Hall to alternative locations including, as one 1985 study proposed, to downtown’s Freedom Tower.  Those efforts have gained little traction, until now.

While city insiders say the move to the Freedom Park site is a done deal, the five-member city commission will have the final say. They could vote to relocate entirely or partially, taking advantage of larger offices and meeting spaces. The first option is what concerns preservationists determined to protect the historic property.

“The Pan Am building must not go the way of other city-owned historic assets,” said Chris Rupp, Executive Director of the Dade Heritage Trust, noting the city’s checkered past managing other historically significant properties. “The Miami Marine Stadium, the Olympia Theater, and Fort Dallas Park on the Miami River have been left vacant, unattended, and in a state of disrepair.”

Others point to the mixed success and legacies of larger City-owned tracts which became home to Bayside Marketplace, the Miami Marlins baseball stadium, the Miami Heat’s waterfront arena, and, just steps from the Pan Am terminal, the seven-acre Regatta Harbour  mixed-use development.

Designed by prominent New York architects William Delano and Chester Aldrich, the Streamline Moderne Pan Am terminal was dedicated on March 25, 1934. At a cost of $300,000, the terminal featured a fine-dining restaurant, a 6,500-pound rotating globe (recently relocated to the Miami Worldcenter), and an observation deck. Throughout the 1930s, thousands of visitors gathered every month along the shoreline to witness the giant Clippers take off bound for exotic locales in the Caribbean and South America. Dinner Key welcomed a who’s who of American society from Hollywood stars, including Katherine Hepburn and Clark Cable, to leading politicians and wealthy executives.

“When winter’s ice choked the harbors in Baltimore and New York, Dinner Key’s warm tropical bosom provide safe haven for the transatlantic Clippers” noted one article remembering the halcyon days of Pan Am. With flights from and to Cuba, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Dinner Key became Miami’s Gateway to the Americas.

During World War II, Dinner Key once again served as a training ground for naval aviators. New barracks were constructed for American and British cadets. In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt boarded the Dixie Clipper at Dinner Key to fly to meet British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Casablanca, Morocco.

The war’s end also signaled the end of Pan Am’s legendary Clipper service. Aviation advancements and the high cost of the seaplanes made the seaplanes obsolete by the mid-1940s. Pan Am’s final flight to Dinner Key took place on August 9, 1945. The “deserted darling of pioneer aviation,” as one article referred to Dinner Key, quickly found a renewed purpose. The City of Miami acquired the once-glamourous terminal in 1949. For a short time, the city leased the space to a series of restaurants, including Jackie Keller’s Dinner Key Terrace. By the early 1950s, a dire need for additional city offices led to the building’s current incarnation as Miami City Hall.

Depending on who you ask, City Hall’s bayfront address has been either a blessing or a curse. The elegant building offers breathtaking views, but its relatively small size provides limited space for public hearings and city business. Additionally, since 1995, city services have primarily been housed at Miami Riverside Center, at 444 SW 2^nd Avenue, with only the commissioners, city manager, mayor’s office, and main chamber occupying the Dinner Key site.

The bigger concern is not whether City Hall will remain at Dinner Key but whether the City of Miami will prioritize preserving its historic spaces, including the vacant structures already languishing in poor condition. For all its beauty, the former Pan-Am terminal was arguably never an ideal location for Miami City Hall. Now that another space is possible, how can the City best utilize and care for this historic resource to ensure its preservation in the coming decades?

As Rupp points out, the Pan-Am terminal is integral to Miami’s history and the City’s role in the aviation industry. It could be used to help tell that story to a broader audience.

“The Pan Am building is an ode to Miami’s significant aviation history,” said Rupp. “With some creative thinking and exploration of partnership potential, the City can assure that this asset continues its tradition of service to the community.”

Ironically, one of the biggest proponents of moving City Hall out of Dinner Key was former City Manager Melvin L. Reese, for whom the former golf course was named. In 1966, Reese argued that a new city hall in a centralized location would be more efficient. He estimated the city needed 175,000 feet of office space and 440 parking spots. The new City of Miami Administration Building, designed by the renowned Miami-based firm Arquitectonica, will have 257,000 square feet and room for up to 900 vehicles. Construction is slated to begin early next year, with a move-in date in late 2027.

Should City Commissioners decide to forgo their waterfront digs, finding an appropriate tenant to preserve and promote the site’s legacy should be a top priority. Preservation, after all, is not about being stuck in the past but embracing Miami’s ever-evolving story with creative and innovative uses of historic spaces.

Iris Guzman Kolaya is an historian based in Miami. She researches and writes about Miami’s past and is particularly interested in Coconut Grove’s rich history.