Despite years of grassroots pressure and a few hard-won improvements, Grove residents still face a daily struggle with unsafe streets, lax enforcement, and development disruptions that often ignore basic resident needs.
Editor’s Note: Hank Sanchez-Resnik, a resident of Center Grove, has been actively involved in promoting bicycle and pedestrian safety in the Grove. He is active in Center Grove Neighbors and serves as a member of the Miami-Dade County Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Substitute “traffic” for “weather” in that timeless quip, and you have a good description of where things stand today in Coconut Grove.
To say that nobody is doing anything about the Grove’s traffic problems isn’t entirely accurate, however. It just seems that way because the Grove’s traffic is an integral part of our lives and a constant threat to what makes Coconut Grove such a special place.
What follows is an update on both the progress the Grove is making with traffic and the formidable obstacles that block Grovites’ efforts to address the problem. First, some small victories.
Slowing Traffic
Several months ago, pressure from community activists led to a reduction in the speed limit on Tigertail Avenue from 30 to 25 mph. There’s more to come. A comprehensive traffic calming program, with speed cushions and raised crosswalks at several intersections, is under way for Tigertail Avenue between Kirk Street and Aviation Avenue.
Residents of South Bayshore Drive believe their street is the worst offender. The speed limit is 30 mph, but when motorists transition from the single lane between Mercy Way and Aviation Avenue to two lanes in each direction between Aviation and McFarlane Road, they pick up speed like wild horses. That’s a problem for the thousands of residents on South Bayshore who want to cross the street.
Members of the South Bayshore Drive Condo Alliance, whose pedestrian safety committee is led by Grovenor House resident Henrietta Schwarz, are seeing some progress. Soon, flashing crosswalk lights will be installed at both Mary Street and McFarlane Road.
Schwarz says these are important improvements, but the main problem is lack of enforcement of the speed limit. She’s hopeful that the Grove’s new police commander, Freddie Cruz, will make enforcement on South Bayshore a priority.
Schwarz also hopes the county will consider raised crosswalks, which would force motorists to slow down a bit.
“These things take a lot of time, effort, and persistence,” she says. She should know. Only after two years of unrelenting effort did Schwarz and her neighbors prevail on the county to repaint faded crosswalks.
Preventing Cut-Through Traffic
Motorists looking for a way to get through the Grove faster than they can on the congested main roads often take to smaller neighborhood streets that were never intended for fast, heavy traffic. In response, transportation planners have begun to focus on comprehensive, area-wide traffic calming initiatives.
The recently completed South Grove traffic calming program is an important example and a major success. Years ago, cut-through traffic was a plague in the South Grove because of cars headed to and from the private schools on Main Highway. Pressure from South Grove neighbors led to the initiation of a traffic calming study and plan. The whole project took several years and millions of dollars. Leading the charge was former Miami District 2 Commissioner and current Miami mayoral candidate Ken Russell.
Prior to the South Grove project, Russell explains, neighbors who wanted just one speed hump on their street had to go through a neighborhood balloting process that could take several years. That was the case with the traffic circle at McDonald Street and Day Avenue.
The South Grove project started with a survey of the community to identify the streets and intersections most in need of improvement. Community meetings were held to review and discuss the findings of a preliminary report.
Next came a final report specifying the streets where traffic calming devices would be installed in several phases. Finally, a unanimous vote of the City Commission (minus one absentee) on October 14, 2021, allowed the plan to go forward.
The South Grove program is a model for the Little Bahamas/Center Grove traffic calming program, for which an initial study was introduced in March 2024. The required approval of the program from Miami-Dade County came through on June 6, 2025.
Now, the real work of implementing the program can begin. If the South Grove example offers a reliable timeline, the Little Bahamas/Center Grove traffic calming program will take several years to complete.
Important changes are also underway for Charles Avenue between Douglas Road and Main Highway, where several traffic calming devices are being installed. The street is noteworthy not just for its historic significance but its position as a key access corridor for the Coconut Grove Playhouse.
So much for the successes. They’re greatly outweighed by systemic problems and the inertia of how things are usually done in the world of traffic planning and engineering.
Pedestrian Safety and MOTs
Increasingly in Coconut Grove, pedestrian safety has become an urgent priority. The issue came to a head during the spring of 2025 with the elimination of sidewalks adjacent to the construction site of The WELL on Tigertail Avenue.
For much of Tigertail between 27th Avenue and Mary Street and part of Mary Street between Oak and Day Avenues, fences announcing the forthcoming project made pedestrian access impossible.
Representatives of Center Grove Neighbors (CGN) began meeting with the project team at Terra Group to negotiate improvements. So far, their main achievement has been a midblock crosswalk on Mary Street between Oak and Day.
According to Paris Wallace, a nearby resident, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Wallace has regularly photographed, and documented, alleged code violations of not just The WELL but a project on Oak between Mary and Virginia near the fire station. He and others in CGN hope to see improvements as these projects move forward, but, so far, they’ve been frustrated.
Center Grove resident Nathalie Manzano, an urban planner and environmental designer, is one of the leaders in the Grove’s push for pedestrian safety. She was involved in the negotiations with Terra Group for the midblock crosswalk on Mary Street.
“There’s been no other progress,” she said a few days before this article was published. “Just today, I saw somebody almost get hit in the midblock crosswalk because people are speeding down Mary as fast as they can and not really paying attention.”
Other than the crosswalk, she says, nothing has changed. “I and others have sent over a hundred emails about these issues,” she says, “and there’s been nothing. We’re being stonewalled.”
Manzano emphasizes that she is referring primarily to what’s known in the development field as the “MOT” for each of the two projects on Tigertail and Oak. The acronym stands for “Maintenance of Traffic,” and it’s required for all major projects affecting traffic flow.
“I’m not sure they were reviewed with the interest of the people who are living and walking in Coconut Grove in mind,” says Manzano. “To shut off sidewalks the way they have with very little oversight is troubling.”
“MOTs don’t get created according to code,” says Wallace. “They just get rubber-stamped by the city. Six weeks ago, we told them the temporary signs were not to code, but the temporary signs are still there. The bus stop on Oak was blocked six weeks ago, but they still haven’t done anything about that. It’s not a question of whether or not developers have a right to make things more convenient for themselves by blocking off a sidewalk. They’re breaking the law.”
A nearly identical, and seemingly insurmountable problem, has been the demolition site of the former Kaufman Rossin building at 27th Avenue and South Bayshore Drive. The sidewalks on both sides of the lot have been blocked by fencing for more than a year. Recently, heavy equipment on the site dug a trench on ground that once supported a sidewalk.
Chris Lunding, president of the Ritz Carlton Executive Residences condominium association, has made the issue a personal crusade. In a May 22, 2025, letter to the county Department of Transportation and Public Works, Lunding pointed out that the county-approved MOT promised “at least 7 feet of sidewalk would be maintained along both SW 27th Avenue and along South Bayshore Drive. Instead, the developer simply has destroyed the sidewalks.”
Lunding included among several other specific requests that “the County should require the owner of the lot at 2699 South Bayshore Drive to rebuild and reopen all sidewalks along SW 27th Avenue and South Bayshore Drive immediately.”
Lunding is still waiting for a response.
