A long-awaited plan to revitalize Fuller Street in downtown Coconut Grove as a pedestrian promenade and public meeting space took a big step forward last month when Miami-Dade County officials approved its permanent closure to vehicle traffic.
The move followed a December vote by the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District (BID) Board of Directors to support – and partially fund – the initiative.
But exactly what a reimagined Fuller Street would look like is not entirely clear.
Concept drawings for the makeover prepared by the developer behind a massive mixed-use project planned for Grand Avenue, at the northern terminus of Fuller Street, will be presented at a community meeting sometime in March, BID Director Mark Burns tells the Spotlight. Public input will be invited.
The developer – Coral Gables-based Allen Morris Company – says the proposed design is still a work in progress and declined to share details in advance of the meeting.
But in an interview with the Spotlight late last year, Allen Morris CEO Spencer Morris described the proposed Fuller Street redesign as a portion of a larger “paseo” linking Main Highway to Kirk Munroe Park on Oak Avenue.
The proposed pathway – lined with shops and cafes – would cross Grand Avenue and pass through the company’s five-story office/retail structure.
Also unclear is who will steer the design and pay for a revitalized Fuller Street.
In an emailed statement to the Spotlight, Miami District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo said he expects funding to come from the BID, Allen Morris Company and the District 2 office. He declined to say what portion each would contribute, and said it’s too early to estimate a final cost for the project. Pardo also suggested public funding could come from the county’s Citizens Independent Transportation Trust (CITT).
An Allen Morris spokesperson confirmed by email that the company “has offered to shepherd the design and contribute to the improvements, but no agreement has been formalized with the city.”
The vision of a pedestrian-friendly Fuller Street is not new. During the pandemic, in 2020, the street was closed to traffic to accommodate outdoor dining and social distancing within the village core.
At the time, some residents and merchants feared the loss of curbside parking would deter visitors, but the opposite proved true, according to former District 2 Commissioner Ken Russell, an early champion of the closure.
“As we created this pedestrian-friendly area, we started to see more foot traffic than the Grove has ever seen,” says Russell, who served in office from 2014 to 2022.
Lee Kessler, owner of Barracuda Taphouse & Grill, which occupies a storefront on Fuller, agrees, saying that the closed street – and the pink picnic tables he placed there – became a magnet for customers and other visitors strolling the Grove.
In 2021, buoyed by Fuller’s pandemic-era renaissance, the BID, under Russell’s stewardship as chairman, commissioned the Brooklyn-based design firm Local Office Landscape and Urban Design (or Local) to propose “a concept that activates the street for everything from retail markets to weekend markets, concert artists, and buskers, to bring back some of Coconut Grove’s original bohemian roots and serve as anchor point for congregation.”
The firm, whose previous work includes the 2016 Giralda Avenue pedestrian redesign in Coral Gables, proposed an open, tree-lined promenade with enhanced drainage features in anticipation of increased rain events and seasonal flooding.
Local’s Founding Principal, Walter Meyer, describes the subterranean plumbing he envisioned: Heavy rainfall drains through porous paving and structural soil to feed the roots of trees providing shade to reduce urban heat.
Unfortunately, the innovative concept came with a hefty price tag: around $2 million for roadbed, paving, and sculptural pieces alone.
But in an interview with the Spotlight, Meyer said the project could pay for itself through future savings, arguing that sustainable roadways like these can last four to six times longer than conventional ones.
Pardo says he is aware of Local’s “living street” proposal but is unsure if there is an appetite, or funding, for such an investment. The Allen Morris Company has engaged South Miami landscape architects Naturalficial to lead the Fuller Street redesign.
With or without the drainage component, Russell is thrilled with the prospect of a comprehensive, pedestrian-first makeover that links the central business district from Main Highway to Grand Avenue. Among the features he’d like to see are raised crosswalks on each side of Fuller to slow traffic.
Needless to say, Fuller Street’s abutting property owners – perhaps the stakeholders with the most to gain by a reactivated streetscape – are keen backers of the redesign.
Joseph Harrison, whose company Cogo Corp. owns the north side of Fuller, leases space to Barracuda, H&H Jewelers, detlev salon and other nearby tenants. He says the redesign, on which he’s sharing his thoughts and input, “has the potential to become a beautiful and unique focal point in the village.”
The south side is owned by Silver Bluff Management, landlords to Chug’s Diner, Grove Grocer, and an array of tenants surrounding the historic Florentino Plaza, which has been rebranded as The Courtyards Grove Village.
“We are 100 percent supporters of the renovations of Fuller Street,” says Silver Bluff founder Grant Savage, “and we think that it could be an amazing community asset right in the middle of the Grove.”
Savage, whose firm has owned the property for a decade, says a key challenge remains finding and maintaining a synergistic tenant mix to leverage the Grove’s historic feel and year-round walkability. A revitalized Fuller Street can only enhance those selling points. “It could be a tremendous draw for the neighborhood,” he says.
To be sure, the street, even in its existing state – closed to traffic with temporary barricades – is already a draw.
In January hundreds crowded in for a King Mango Strut after-party featuring live bands performing on a small riser near Grand Avenue. A few nights later a similar setup drew hundreds more for the BID-sponsored “Gather in the Grove” street party.
Barracuda’s Kessler says such events are a proven success and the street has become a “great meet-up spot.” He’d welcome more.
And Fuller has attracted other low-key, off-hours uses – the kind that might struggle to find space on a promenade dominated by café tables tied to nearby businesses.
Students from Coconut Grove Elementary School occupy the picnic tables for an early morning chess club, and 30 students from Commodore Plaza’s new micro school, Motivating Minds, will soon be eating lunch there during the week.
Grove resident Davey Frankel has been monitoring, as a Coconut Grove Village Council member, the on-and-off-again efforts to revitalize the street.
He argues that Fuller should serve more than just restaurant/retail property owners and patrons. Grovites, he says, especially during the community-input phase of the design process, should start thinking of it as a unique asset for everyone – a “centralized community space in the Central Grove.”
During a recent visit to Fuller Street, Cristelle Saint-Pierre, an artist who moved to the Grove in 2019, expressed a similar view. She worries that the village center’s accelerating embrace of the upscale will leave the less affluent with few places to shop, dine and simply hang out.
Saint-Pierre, a regular at the popular but no-frills Barracuda, worries how long such places can last at a time when recent arrivals to the Grove “care less about what is local and more about the location.”
Nearby, a young shop assistant on her break, who asked not to be identified, agreed, “I hope [the Grove] doesn’t end up being a place where only the ultra-rich can afford to live.”
Kessler, whose 30-year-old Barracuda Taphouse & Grill remains one of the few holdouts of an earlier era, hopes the plans for a revitalized, pedestrian promenade along Fuller Street take into account the economic diversity of the Grove’s residents and visitors.
“You have to have the balance,” he says. “People who work here need to go somewhere to have lunch every day. I believe in keeping it real.”
