Greynolds Park Faces New Threat

At a meeting on July 5, 2016, the North Miami Beach City Council once again took up the matter of rezoning a 4.2-acre parcel immediately south of Greynolds Park for the purpose of development. Still in its early stages, the new plan would allow the construction of eight-to-ten-story apartment buildings on the adjacent site (known as the Braha-Dixie property) located at 17400 West Dixie Highway, which is currently zoned for structures of no more than three stories in height.

The construction of a tall building on the site would adversely affect the park, blocking or altering historic viewsheds and damaging its fragile ecology. Designed by William Lyman Philips, the 265-acre regional park is a significant cultural and ecological resource, whose estuarine mangrove forest and tropical hardwood hammock provide a habitat for a range of species, including the American Crocodile, Manatee, Florida Softshell Turtle, and a wide variety of bird species, making the park one of the few well-protected wildlife areas in northern Miam-Dade County. The park is also steeped in history, as the area was once home to Tequesta and, later, Seminole Indians, who used it as an outpost to trade with settlers.  

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TCLF enrolled Greynolds Park in its Landslide program in the summer of 2014, after the city council had approved the rezoning of the parcel, in 2012, to accommodate a high-rise hotel and office complex. Following a chorus of opposition from the local citizenry and subsequent lawsuits, the council’s action was thwarted by Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, which ruled in December 2015 that the City had failed to apply a key provision of its own zoning code, namely Section 24-174(B)(2), which mandates that “[a] proposed change would be consistent with and in scale with the established neighborhood land-use pattern.”

Although the 2015 ruling was a decisive victory for park advocates, the City’s latest efforts would skirt the court’s decision by extending the West Dixie Highway Mixed Use Neighborhood Center zoning (enacted in 2015), farther south, to include the Braha-Dixie parcel.

The Save Greynolds Park Committee, formed to preserve the beauty, historic character, and peaceful nature of the park for all park visitors and park inhabitants, asks that all those concerned about these latest rezoning efforts express their objections to the City of North Miami Beach.

Send Comments To:

Mr. Richard Lorber (Richard.lorber@citynmb.com)
Director of Community Development
Community Development Department,
City of North Miami Beach
17050 N.E. 19^th Avenue
North Miami Beach, Florida, 33162
TEL: (305)-354-4441
FAX: (305)-957-3517

The Save Greynolds Park Committee may be contacted at SaveGreynolds@ymail.com.