For generations of Grove residents, the end of Royal Road has provided public water access and majestic views of Biscayne Bay. But when a neighbor complained about the wrong kind of visitors, city officials removed the park’s benches.
Three years ago, when City of Miami officials dedicated a waterfront speck of city-owned land a few blocks south of the village center at the end of Royal Road as its newest pocket park, Reynold Martin smiled with pride.
It was here that Martin and others who grew up a half century ago in the West Grove came to fish, swim, picnic and enjoy the tranquil views of Biscayne Bay.
The city’s designation brought with it both a name – Big Hill Park, a nod to the steep approach that thrilled young bike-riding visitors – and a list of improvements that included three hand-made limestone benches facing the water.
Martin’s smile didn’t last. Two years ago, barely a year after the dedication, city officials ordered the benches removed. Activists say calls and emails asking about their return have gone unanswered.
The benches, like much of the improvements at the site, were funded in 2018 with a $22,500 grant from the Miami Foundation’s Public Space Challenge program.
The city kicked in around $5,000 to regrade the site to accommodate seasonal flooding. Then-City Manager Emilio Gonzalez designated the site a “Play Street,” a zoning category that allows surplus right-of-way land to receive funding and maintenance for recreational uses.
The benches – oblong slabs of local limestone, each weighing about a ton – cost $2,000 apiece.
The benches’ fate remains a mystery. City of Miami Director of Resilience and Public Works, Juvenal Santana, who oversaw the park’s designation and improvements, did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the missing benches.
District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo, in a prepared statement issued by his press aide, cast blame on a predecessor, Ken Russell, for ordering the benches removed “after a nearby resident complained about the significant loitering the newly installed benches were causing.”
(Editor’s note: Pardo denies blaming Russell and responds to the Spotlight’s reporting in a letter to the editor published here.)
Pardo declined to answer specific questions, submitted in writing, about the park or the benches, but in his statement, he questioned the degree of public interest in their return.
“I can confirm that the city still has these benches in storage and can replace them should the residents want them back,” Pardo wrote. “At this time, we have not received numerous requests for the return of the benches, but if we do, we will gladly address the matter at that time.”
Brian Carson, the landscape architect who, working through the civic group Grove 2030, organized the community effort to improve the site, says there are no shortage of park visitors who would welcome the benches return. A 2020 petition to pressure the city into making good on its initial improvement promises at Big Hill Park, he points out, garnered over 1,100 signatures.
Martin’s was among them. “My community has not been a priority for the city,” he says.
Martin grew up in Coconut Grove, part of a Bahamian immigrant family with roots in the area dating back to the 1800s. He remembers fishing along the Grove waterfront with his father to provide fresh seafood for dinner. But over time development overtook much of the waterfront, save for Big Hill Park.
“The spots that we grew up fishing have been taken because of, I guess, what they call progress. It’s progress for folks making money, but it’s certainly not progress for folks that depend on places like that for lifestyle, recreation, and for food,” Martin says.
In the early 1980’s Martin became a scoutmaster to a local Boy Scouts troop. Soon after, “Big Hill,” as the locals called it, took on a new purpose – his classroom. He took hundreds of boys to the bayside to teach them how to cast a line, identify fish, and appreciate the shore.
“You should have seen the smile on their faces if you caught something to take home,” he says.
Having Big Hill only a few blocks away from the West Grove opened up new possibilities for kids who otherwise felt far from the water.
“That has meant so much to so many kids that I exposed to fishing and scouting in the area,” he adds. “And I guess since it [is now] a park, we were hoping that it will continue to be this kind of a guiding place where we can teach our kids.”
The site’s legacy – and its continued use as a public waterfront access point – is what inspired Carson and other activists to seek funding and political support for making the site more welcoming and more sustainable in the face of climate change.
From the start, the volunteers had three main goals: to ensure access, install shaded seating, and improve hurricane resilience with improved drainage and salt-tolerant landscaping.
Despite removing the benches, Carson says the city has made recent upgrades, installing what he believes to be over $75,000 in additional landscaping – an investment that he says may actually be a tactic to reduce parking, thus limited visitor access.
Such moves, Carson believes, are part of an endless appeasement strategy designed to fend off the persistent complaints from neighbors that any improvements to the site will attract unwelcome visitors.
Caroline Weiss is one of those neighbors. On its north side, Big Hill Park abuts the narrow, waterfront lip of Weiss’ 1.75-acre lot. Her 5,000-square-foot home, designed by the renowned Miami mid-century architect Alfred Browning Parker, sits on a bluff a couple hundred yards up Royal Road. Though currently off the market, two years ago the property was listed for sale for $59 million.
Over the years Weiss has not hidden her displeasure at improvements to Big Hill Park, fearing they will attract all manner of criminals and miscreants. Contacted recently by phone, Weiss catalogued her fears: “The only people that come down there is people who try to come to smoke pot, or whatever it is, and or fight, or you hear gunshots, or many times you’ll hear women, for some reason, running off the road screaming.”
Weiss claims co-ownership of Royal Road, which would render Big Hill Park something of a land grab by city officials. “That’s not a park,” she says. “Half the street belongs to one neighbor [on the south side of Royal Road], the other belongs to me.”
She offered no explanation for the claim. (The park’s southern neighbor, whose nine-acre parcel extends from Main Highway to the bay, declined to comment on the record.)
In the same phone interview, Alitza Weiss, Caroline’s daughter, seemed to discredit her mother’s claims to street ownership, instead spewing vitriol on the city for ignoring basic maintenance and security.
“The City of Miami has refused for the last 70 years that we’ve lived here to take care of the street,” she tells the Spotlight. “So, if you want to make an article, you should make an article about how the City of Miami does neglect Coconut Grove. That’s where the real article is, not about a stupid park that’s a waste of time. The real article is how the City of Miami, the city manager, and even more so the present Commissioner, Pardo, who is a complete waste of time, is not taking care of the street.”
Carson is dumbfounded by city officials’ apparent deference to a single voice (or two, as it may be) in opposition to the park and, by extension, its benches.
“I fail to understand how one individual’s influence could be greater than the whole community,” Carson says.
In fairness, Carson adds, Big Hill Park is not immune to the kinds of challenges facing any park or public space so close to a major urban area. “Of course, there’s a little bit of garbage and a bunch of old fishing line, but it really is a magical space, and people who know it enjoy it for that reason,” he says.
Two years ago, the city installed better lighting and a security camera at the park but City of Miami Police Commander Daniel Kerr, who oversees the Coconut Grove district, agrees that crime is generally not an issue at Big Hill Park, other than occasional graffiti and perhaps a bit of illegal parking, mostly associated with nearby Ransom Everglades School.
Martin’s message to the city going forward? “Show some compassion for people that only want to live and provide a good life – like everyone else – for their families.”
Tell us where to and to whom write at the City demanding answers. At the very least, we deserve to know what happened.
Put our benches back, Juvenal Santana and Damian Pardo. Thank you.