Climate Resilience Committee Meeting

city of miami climate resilience committee it is APRIL 30th 2026. Thank you for joining us. All right. We have a packed agenda today. Pretty excited. Let's start with our first item roll call from my right please. Good evening grant musser. Allison weinstock. Sarai perez. Aaron dimeo. >> silvio pupo. Miriam flores resilience, sustainability. Sonya brubaker, chief resilience officer, city of miami. All right. >> and we will let uh assistant city attorney. Can we could. So um all right we'll move to item two. Which public comment? Would anyone from the public like to make a comment. Know at this time. There's none submitted online either. All right okay. I don't know if anyone here in the public wants to make a comment but there's none online. I guess not. Okay so we'll move to item three approval of the minutes from the APRIL 6th meeting. Do I have a motion to approve those minutes. Move to approve. And a second. Second second. All in favor? Aye. >> any opposed or abstain? No I believe that was unanimous. All right so item four we have three presentations this evening and uh pretty full agenda. So we have two presentations on some incredible local examples of of parks and resilience and urban uh urban development. Very excited to see these presentations this evening. And I chose these tonight as um, kind of a precursor to our discussion on on a budget recommendations last year we approved seven items. The seventh of the of the items was about stormwater park retentions and um I'm going to request again that we all consider that same item maybe with some adjustments for this year's budget recommendation should we move to to pass something related to that. So I think it's great that we have some some awesome examples right here in our backyard and there's um, this has been a concept for for a while now and these projects will hear about the history of getting them to this point in time. But even just today I was forwarded an article about sponge cities and a couple weeks ago there was a very interesting um. Event with the king and queen of the netherlands with uh, miami-dade county talking about collaboration between uh, the two areas and the shared challenges between the two areas and one of the one of the focuses of the event was actually sponge parks. So it's a very relevant topic to to today and to also, um, if we look at the, the 2025 annual report that we passed in JANUARY, we we started that with the background of of our committee and the first couple paragraphs are all about the weather events with multiple paragraphs about the cloudbursts. So I think this is very timely and poignant kind of continuing the work that we already did last year, uh, this evening with with these great presentations. So, um, our first presentation can be parker are you ready? Yeah. okay. Great. Welcome. You guys can see if anyone can see. Oh, there we go. We got one. Well good evening everyone .My name is ben hutchens. I'm a landscape architect and principal with architectonica geo super happy to be here. Really admire what you all are doing and um yeah just happy to be a part of this. So tonight, uh, we'd like to share, uh, some of our work at canopy park. Uh, this was an interesting project. It was in fact a public private partnership with the city of miami beach and uh, our client tara group and the site, you know, they own this they own a pretty large site about five acres and as of right, they were able to build mostly mid-rise developments and you know, in exchange they worked with the city closely and in exchange for the park for the city which they own and operate today, uh, the developer developed it, paid for everything, gave up the land and then donated it to the city. Uh, and so and it became what it is today and this is this is kind of pre-development you can see in this this was laying vacant for a long time. I mean I lived on miami beach in the area and it was like constant eyesore. So it was nice to see that it got developed took took a good while. Um and as you can see here actually the majority of this of the land, the property that they owned became public park which they donated since they were able to get more efficiency out of that smaller footprint which is where the residential tower went. Um and I believe you know, they're by right allowed to develop up to 1015 stories across the board. So you would have had multiple kind of mid-rise buildings in exchange and now it's kind of in exchange for this larger tower with a smaller footprint and here's kind of an overlay of the site plan in context. You can see um you can see the macarthur here. They're still working on this pedestrian bridge. They found a lot of artifacts I would say uh underneath that they're still trying to work around. So um that's happening. It's just taken taken more time than anticipated. Um, and then I think what we really wanted to look at today was some of the more stormwater oriented moves that took place. I mean what was really cool about this site is that on the top corner you can see city lift station that was there uh, since since you know, pre-development and this was handling about 30 acre watershed in the area. So all the runoff from the right of ways were directed to this site and unfortunately a lot of the water ended up going into the bay through this system. And um, what this project really did was was capture that water before getting to the bay, making sure that that water got cleaned and there was a lot of different layers almost like a belt and suspenders approach to the stormwater here you have the city wells which do the heavy lifting because again it's 30 acres it's a ton of water but also interconnected was this uh ston which is about 25000 gallon tank and that's used for irrigation for the park and also this kind of swale that kind of wraps the whole perimeter and kind of gives it a little bit of an identity and also starts to expose some of the stormwater features for the public to see. Here on the you can actually see the the the cistern and then the the swale kind of in during construction. And this is during construction also you can see the swale coming into place. We had some large trees that we were located on site. You can see some dewatering happening for the sales center that was for the tower and also the cistern kind of in the middle there. And this is just a model kind of illustrating that how that resiliency swell and this is this is sitting kind of above a lot of those wells and and the drainage network and if anything were to back up it would it would fill up the the swale to my knowledge this swale hasn't filled up. I think those kind of intentional it was like the last line of defense for some of the stormwater and of course if the roads were to flood you could imagine they might make their way to a. To a high degree they might make their way into this swale. Here's kind of a cross section through there. So I kind of just pulled together a lot of graphics that we accrued over time and the trees I mean it's called canopy park so we really wanted to have a nice healthy tree canopy as we know that can contribute a lot to offsetting urban heat island storing water holding water, carbon sequestration. So this is kind of a layout showing you know how many trees we had but also their anticipated growth over about a ten year time frame. And we used a tool called I-tree tools to help generate some data regarding carbon and water storage. Here's kind of an aerial of the of the built park and these are just some photos and you can see the swale kind of there and we have these little bridge moments that happen as kind of gateway features into the park used a lot of native plant materials pretty biodiverse. There's a lot of different species that we used. Some more images. And we had uh I think the city the city played a major role in in making some good demands for the park, one of which was requiring specimen trees. So you can see this ficus here they had the criteria was they had to be 24in in diameter. So we have a approximately seven of these throughout. And there is an art component and a better kind of shot of the swale and some of the walkways. And there's a really cool playground too. I don't know if you guys have seen it. There's an elephant that was made by a group called monstrum uh out of europe really a fantastic playground designers and that's what we have. Any any questions or thoughts? Thoughts are it's incredible. I've been there a few times and I really enjoy it. Um so thank you so much for the great presentation and sure. Um, besides just doing stormwater management, I think also it's really important to highlight what ben was talking about of the development capacity that was on the site and how it was adjusted to allow for this park to be built. The floor area was tilted upward allowing for a tower in exchange for the stormwater benefits, which is very similar to what we passed last year with the flora proposal adjusting canopy right on a much smaller scale um as well as with the green roof uh that we did in 2024. Um again incentive based climate resilience. So also when we look at what just passed earlier this year with the resilience trust fund for edgewater, again adjusting development capacity in a specific neighborhood for contextual specific interventions. And so this park just kind of showcases a number of of unique features from development capacity to innovative infrastructure. Um, that I hope we can we can try to proffer with our budget recommendations more solutions like this. And it's great that we have this type of expertise and in our community and we get to benefit from this type of infrastructure. Um, I did have one comment, uh, not necessarily per se about this but more more in general. Um, you know, are there are there any best practices or innovative things you guys are working around the world on so many projects what's on the boards now? Like where are you going from here? What kind of innovative things are you doing? How are you pushing the envelope? And you know, as far as also like trees being on site, um, you know, the conversation around trees is is happening a lot at the moment. Um here in the city of miami. How are you you know, are there any things you're seeing as far as moving trees on site managing around trees development capacity techniques like what you showed here? Yeah, I mean there's so many there's so many ways you can you can make a positive impact. But I think it's really the layering and and really trying to overall you're really trying to reduce runoff. You're trying to reduce uh, impervious impervious, uh, areas. And I think we have a project I wish I would have brought it today. It's it's uh, it's at university of miami and it's lakeside village project and what's really cool about that is you know, you have green roof which helps, right? So like there's almost no impermeable moment on the project in a weird way like the pathways and stuff. But like you have the green roofs then you have nearly every rooftop rooftop is planted so that at least slows things down and then we slow slow it down at the green roofs and then we send it we coordinate with the plumbing engineer and they send it to ground level bioretention so we have rain gardens at ground level. So it's that is like a belt and suspenders approach from at least from a landscape architecture perspective and what we can provide. And so hardly any of that runoff that hits the roof or the or the stormwater that hits the roof makes it to the gray infrastructure or the, you know, conventional stormwater system. So I think it's just depending on the site and it's so complicated, right? Because there's so many every project is different and you have silva cells and you have all kinds of things that can help hold water. But it's really like depending on the project, depending on its opportunities ,what are the opportunities that can help alleviate pressure on the conventional systems and slow things down? That's I mean that's really what you want to do slow it down so it's not everything's not racing together and and reaching and pushing on capacity. You know. I read that it was called resist delay store discharge. It was like the the sequence. Yeah. And if you have a chance and maybe you could have some, you know, uh, documents on on that project that you could share with us. Yeah. >> yeah for sure. Any other any other things that come to mind later and you could share with miriam? Yeah. >> we can provide like a list. >> of. Everybody be happy to do that. And I just want to use this as an opportunity to to talk a little bit about the first layer in the city, the requiring the first layer to be paved all across the board. Sorry, this is just something that like really kind of I think it's really problematic particularly in our urban. Core first layer. So first layer is about ten feet in from the property line. Um we're required to pave everything up to a building and even when the building and I understand the intent is that uh, it gives it activates you have active frontage and then pedestrians can go up to a building and engage in the storefront or that sort of thing. The problem is these these storefronts are now built 4 or 5ft sometimes above street level. So there is a wall there effectively. And you know, in a city like miami, given what we're talking about with resiliency and the botanical potential for this city to, you know, look like singapore or have have that kind of green identity, I think it's just a missed opportunity a little bit and it's just something that we should we should really look at and more specifically specificity to again encourage natural percolation. It's something so simple but it's something I think we can we can improve. First layer being again a zoning term when you're designing a building the the area between the property line and the facade. Yeah, yeah. So there's a first layer there's a second layer. Um and yeah, we're just we're we're being, you know, directed to pave pretty much that whole front edge. The paving extends essentially from the curb to the property line and then property line to facade and there MAY be swale interventions right? Or just think there should be a little more. I think so I think we could I think we could do a better job. MR. Chair for that. So that is a requirement. Yes. right now there's no other option if you come in with a creative option. >> there's no planting option. There's no planting. Yeah there's no planting option. So that's part of miami 21. Yeah no I understand yeah it's it's miami now we're in 2026 so maybe we need to revisit that. That's a great idea because these little things all over the place like if everyone does a little bit these little bits accumulate to a lot. Mhm. >> you all design the streetscape standards for wynwood. Did you are there any adjustments to the question that asked related to wynwood? Wynwood is unique because it's a 50 foot right of way. There's not a whole lot to work with there. So it's and it's you know it I mean it's it's it's pretty tough to to you know, everyone wants to build to their to their limit line and then you have a very you have barely enough room for sidewalk and have street trees. So what we try to do there was have a permeable streetscape along that verge. Um so that's something that we're encouraging but it's it's just not there's not a whole lot of room there to work. Um, but certainly in a t six zone or in our area here downtown, I think we could we can improve that a little bit. It would be great maybe if you don't know like either now or if we followed up if there were if there were certain uh, specific aspects of that that code that you thought should be. I'll hit you up after this for sure. For sure. I'll get you that and then some of the bmps best management practices that we were talking about [Laughter] Before. You guys agree. We uh if you're going to speak, I gotta invite you to the to the mic but um, maybe we do it during a presentation. Is that cool? Okay. Any other questions or comments? I was just curious. Thank you so much for the presentation. But I was just curious like a little bit of the conversations and processes that had to take place so that um, the developer was able to build above the the story limit. Um. The city of miami beach was amazing. I mean they were like they worked so hard together between the developer who works his tail off and the city as well, they were in constant communication and I'm not just saying that this is a fact. Um and that was that was just witnessing that process and also the community I mean you have a very engaged community on west avenue. So they were informing the program the city was really pushing for for this stormwater piece. And then the developer understood frankly and really made it happen. So I think it was there was a lot of discussions, a lot of back and forth negotiating and and it took time but they they did a fantastic job. I mean, this is a it's a great it's a great example of what could be done. Thank you. That that developer david martin um ,he's done a lot of innovative work also for instance we saw last year I believe it was 2025 the jungle island project, um with bjarke ingels group where it had the whole jungle trail with all the different kind of recreation of different native environments, which was quite impressive. Um, and he actually just launched a documentary that I went to last week called um, uh, the the future we build I believe. Um, and during either the documentary or in the panel after he mentioned exactly what you just said of when ben said that he heard from the community what their what they were looking for, he david said that that was one of the things he did when he brings ideas that he he tries to hear what the community wants and then pivots and it seems like that worked pretty successfully here. Yeah. Okay well thanks so much. Thank you. This was amazing. Thank you. Appreciate the uh the insights on the other ideas. Thanks so much for joining us. >> my pleasure. Thank you. All right. >> we have um our second presentation is uh bayshore park, a model for climate resilient public spaces and coastal cities. Very excited for you all to be here. Thank you for coming. How do you work these things? Um, while we're setting up? Um. Yeah, we want to jump in on what what ben was talking about. Um, I'll introduce ourselves. This is adriana savino savino design studio. I'm barry miller. Is kelly hitting our parks lead? Patty, MADAME Maurice is here with us today. Just a little closer to the mic. Did you get kelly? Kelly is our parks lead. Adriana savino, barry miller, uh, with savino miller design studio and patty matamoros is our resilience lead. So we're really thrilled to be here today in front of you all to talk about our project. I do want to follow up on what ben said though if I could if I MAY, uh we've been sending in amendments to the miami 21 code to the urban design folks grant ,matthew everyone there to try to get that first layer amended. Uh, try to get building setbacks further setback by the time you have the curve and you have the required uh, pedestrian public zone which is expanding over the years I've used to be three feet now it's six and a half. By the time you do all these things you put in all the infrastructure you have no more room for street trees, street cafes, everything else. So the sacrifice in the canopy park project that the developer did by what the city did they give them a basically a trade of trade uh with tdr they let them go up higher okay to to allow for the land that's all we're doing in a very asking for in a very minuscule scale push the buildings back five feet, ten more feet and you'll completely change your streetscape. You'll allow more pervious spaces permeable area allow more street trees and you can completely change the character of a city. So we are all for that and I just wanted to get that in before we start the presentation. Undergrounding is another one. Of. >> no that doesn't show up for them no no no no. It sure big. How do we make this big? Give us one second guys. Are you guys seeing two. >> no they just. >> see the big thank you from. Let's just start thank you for inviting us again. My name is adriana savino and uh we are super excited to show us show you our work in regards to this park and in general our approach to this type of projects. As we all know, um, south florida's urban metropolitan region has historically been tied to the water due to its location between the atlantic ocean and biscayne bay. South florida's economy has depended traditionally on water for sustenance tourism, recreation and transportation. I'm kind of giving you a little bit of a background. So where we we started from and you can see this is a miami beach original ecology. It was a mangrove forest and then little by little we started carving to to and changing the ecology to um and in general we transform our land use development models have been historically neglected our natural systems impacting surrounding water bodies and aquifers and the land that we inhabit you know, of course introduction of cars and streets etc. And uh, our design approach in general today is designing cities and projects as urban ecosystems indicating complex interactions between human and natural systems, emphasizing material cycles, energy flows and feedback loops, the importance of policy and planning in shaping sustainable urban ecosystems. Barry. So um, we're miami beach residents. We've been in this fight. Uh, activism is another thing we can talk about for some time now the uh and we all know about the effects of sea level rise. Uh, we presented this to the chief engineer back about 1112 years ago. The drawings on the left I think it was from um study or fiu sea level rise over the next uh 100 years or 80 years at the time one, two, three, four feet and the resultant king tides etcetera and street flooding. Okay. We we all know about that. And this is the context of where our project was at the time and the situation that was happening. So the traditional gray infrastructure engineering approach uh, was we call it pumps and pipes gray infrastructure bringing in uh, first flush water from the streets and collecting that and dumping it into the bay or nearest canal, etc. So, uh, the that's the image on the diagram on the left on the right you have more of a best practices model collecting thing off the street off of properties and moving it into a green space. Et cetera. So that's more of the green infrastructure approach that we we uh, wanted to wanted to adopt. So, uh, shortly after we were talking with with the city, you know this in 2014 2015, you MAY remember this some of you guys, uh, uh, henry briceno at fiu, uh, came out and busted and busted the city, uh, on the plume that was coming out from the sunset harbor area. Now I'll say city of miami beach was way ahead of its time. It really deserves a lot of credit in the street raising strategy. They recognized that long ago and we've worked on a few projects for that. But there was a central issue they were doing it fast and without too much forethought and without the green infrastructure approach and it was polluting water out in biscayne bay and they they sent remember the herald? Oh yeah. The herald had these pictures of the plume going out just wiping out the seagrass beds and it was a big, big problem and these articles came out uh on the city. The city uh of course was shocked and surprised and they said well we got to change our our the way we do things we were as we asked them. So our approach on the project bayshore park was to use three thrusts of of uh, how we're going to bring this this park together. The main was to provide stormwater stormwater storage and improve the water quality both inside the the area uh, the site itself and to the canal john collins canal, the historic canal all the way out to uh all the way out to biscayne bay, uh, as well as enhance the community's cultural ecological habitat and reflect cultural historical memory and all engaged by the community surrounding community around it. So this essentially is just a diagram quick diagram of of the strategy. Uh, you see the park there at the middle where the arrows are going to the big idea and the whole thing was to take this this street raising project which has yet to be implemented and this is central south bayshore neighborhood right above de boulevard miami beach high that area right there and to and to fuze the two projects we're going to do the park project and we're going to do this streetscape project and plumb the drainage from this 85 acre watershed outside the park boundaries and bring it into the park rather than dumping it into the canal and to biscayne bay. So this is a quick little animation as to we can get it to work. On the wrong way. It's supposed to work. There we go. Oh here. >> we go. >> so there's the park right there and the dashed outline that's this is the what's been happening historically that's just bad polluted water going out from the area into the john's canal on the on the bottom john collins canal and the bay. That's the strategy. As opposed to that we're going to start taking water into the lake. We need to create a storage space. Okay into the park coming up front in this section you'll see a uh this is when it rains that lake that we dig fills up. You can see it uh, starting to fill up beyond it's it's uh, banks up to a levee. Okay. Fills up as much as possible holding water and preventing water, diverting water from going to the bay. As the sun comes out it dries up. It's fine. Any leftover goes out to the to the bay much cleaner. [Laughter] Uh, we gotta bring in kelly. Kelly coming with some details on things. Um so this is our project ended at the property line of the park so we couldn't um actually connect the stormwater system without the city doing their part in the neighborhood. And what we did is there's a a red rectangle that is the you know, the civil engineer we built a control structure that will help control the flow of water into the park. Once it fills up to its max, it'll divert it into the regular system to the canals that is now being piped. The pipe is connected to the lake and out to the street. Uh. Eventually when the neighborhood project is done that will connect and the the whole drainage system will go to there and the interim we are trying to work with the city and public works to connect to this existing pump station that's on the park site. So temporarily at least some water can come through that pump station into the park and alleviate flooding more locally to that side of the park. Even just redoing the swale on the north side has reduced flooding on that street significantly um without changing any of the piping of the drainage. The orange circle is a half mile jogging path which functions as the levee. It's at a set elevation all the way around the park and that's where the water will kind of stop when the park itself floods from the lake outward. Um and yeah, that's it for this slide I think. We'll talk about this one. Okay. Um so part of the you know, creating this lake as the basis for the stormwater collection was a big part of the park as well as it becoming an amenity, you know, for the visitors to the park and some of the thoughts around that were balancing cut and fill on the site. And that's where these big landforms came from. Another big aspect of the site as a former golf course is is contaminated with arsenic. So we were dealing with stormwater groundwater and soil contamination. Um so by building the lake and mounding the contaminated soil up, we had to bring in less clean soil to cap the site and um we had to truck out less contaminated soil which is very expensive and costly to do. So we pretty much balance the cut and fill. There was still a little trucking out of stuff but not nearly as much if we hadn't built these mounds. Um and we ended up working with durham to because of the large mature trees on the site, we worked with them to get some code changes for how they treat big trees on contaminated sites to give them more of a chance to thrive rather than capping on top of their roots, which really hampers them. Um and we also ended up doing just one foot cap with a demarcation netting. So if anyone digs they'll hit this orange net and not know that there's contamination below. And then your inspiration. Here well I mean in. Terms of design inspiration we we wanted to bring these kind of principles, uh, to to something in the city that that would be memorable, uh, an exciting, uh, so we harken back to the old, uh, central park. Uh, what what they did in terms of really earth moving land works I think and the land work environmental artists of the 60s and 70s uh, smithson, wordsworth, everybody uh, this the second one we also were involved with south point park. That's the top picture in the middle. You MAY have been there before. It's an amazing landform. Uh, what height does to a site, especially in miami is incredible. Uh, have you ever been to greenwich park? Um, there's one william lehman phillips put 122 20 foot hill 1314 foot hill. It's amazing. It's it's it's a life changing thing in terms of park experience. We we said let's just kind of amp this up a little bit and do something really special because we could really see in south point park you see the ocean here it was to get up above the lake so you can see a sunset where you never can see a sunset in miami beach. Uh, this is actually the park is set kind of in the geographical middle of the of the island a half a mile from each side. And the other aspect is that you also use that soil that we we also use the soil and we didn't have to export that soil. So that gave us all the advantages that we needed. Right. All right. Next. >> we're tag team in here. Yeah. >> um I want to point out some numbers about the stormwater capacity before I do that. Do I realize after the first presentation we didn't really address the drainage that's going on underground here with the civil engineers. So the issue with the arsenic in the groundwater hampered some of what we could do underground on the west side of the park. It's a higher level and durham would not let us infiltrate stormwater into the ground there. So on the left side of the park there are lined swales that are now covered with planting. They're pretty invisible at this point. Um and those line swales lead to pipes that go into the lake on the east side of the park we have our tanks which are just kind of giant infiltration trenches under the grounds that are you see some um drains on the surface but all over that side of the park there there are a lot of these tanks underground collecting the water. Um so the site itself is designed to hold its own 100 year one day storm on site without spilling over into the streets that's within the levy area. The the grade outside of that will allow quite that much holding. Um and then it also in addition is designed to collect up to the ten year one day storm from the 85 acre neighborhood. So those two things combined will fill up that basin in the middle. There's 65 acre feet of storage capacity total for the park. Um ,some other park resiliency elements we mentioned were the balanced cut and fill the remediating and capping of the contaminated soil, the tennis building that is um services restrooms and office for the tennis courts for the city parks department has solar panels on the building that are feeding into the power grid. Uh, we use local materials as much as possible. Um, I'll get into that more when we get into some detailed photos and the parking lot has a permeable paving system. We were able to preserve 2091 mature trees, some of them very mature and large and um I'm not going to read all these numbers to you but we added a lot of new trees and palms and shrubs. Majority of that was all native planting. We have pollinator planting in a butterfly garden and we also have designated some of the open lawn space as kind of a south florida meadow. We're calling it a beneficial lawn that incorporates some native wildflowers and what some people would consider weeds that attracts butterflies. And we're working with the city to try to get a maintenance program where they don't mow that as much. That's a challenge, but that will happen. And also around the edges of the lakes there's some littoral zone planting that's designed to help remediate the water that goes through there and filter the water of the lake to keep it more clean. This is an image showing kind of some of these things I've talked about the kind of light brown color path is that levee path and it is made of a um coquina sand that's been stabilized. So that is permeable and it is a local material and that was actually came to that through the running community of miami beach. They wanted a soft surface jogging loop, um for their knees mostly. Um and then you see the lake edge this is right after it was planted. So the littoral plantings are growing in here. We have this dock leading out to the lake. There are four docks on the project and a bridge going across the planting just um can you see my mouse up there now the planting just left of that dock that first section is actually title so the water goes up into that area and out um as the lake goes up and down with king tides and just daily tides on the other side of the bridge is a recirculated um city water for the water feature. These responds also to the planting communities. This community adjacent to that levee is mostly floodable let's say and coastal planting. This is a image of the parking lot with the permeable paving system there. And these are some of the planting communities kind of a section across from the upland tropical coastal hammock down through the littoral zone and mangrove edge, the plants and our beneficial lawn meadows and then some of the plants in our butterfly garden here. Jump in there if you want. To just breathing through these. So yeah, I wanted to talk about. This one. Sure. This this kind of is the existing conditions that we found when we got into the it's a 20 acre site. Uh, it had a lot of mature trees that we preserved and also had a different conditions like the east side, uh, is a more public active site. There is a civic uses there is a the youth center, the mikvah, the hebrew academy and multi-family residential a the south side is the miami beach senior high and the west side and north side is a residential single family homes. So the the site offer different conditions and uh our response was likewise the east side is going to be the most active, uh, part of the park a and and again also the south side we place in that area the tennis facility, the dog park, the parking, the public plaza and the playground. We placed it in the north east side adjacent to the youth center and the community and the west side of the park is more passive pastoral side. And these are some some of the views the miracle is that this park is built it uh in terms of the process, it was a long time coming because uh actually barry and I live in that community and it took about maybe 30 years fighting to preserve this site as a green space and uh, and the process was long but well worth it. Yeah. >> that's a picture from that's what I was talking about before sunset hill the view from above, uh, and the lake and that that tree there that was preserved that was and we just built an island around the tree, uh, to allow for the lake circulation. So it maintains uh and this is just some photos of the kids, you know, doing what kids do just exploring, uh, the fauna has just with in within six months. It's just amazing. Uh during the geese and the herons and egrets uh, turtles everybody's come in. Uh anhinga anhinga was there. That's extremely rare. Uh, this is some other pictures here you see the um that recirculating, um non-emissive fountain that comes from the entry and and goes to the lake in terms of a design exercise that's the tidal basin that kelly was talking about uh, the playground uh, from berliner that we designed with them more or less to kind of reflect the idea that the ficus roots coming down, uh, and an amazing zipline this is this is a big time, uh, attraction, uh, right, right through the ficus .Uh, part of the idea of the of the park was to make it inclusive and uh and diverse. So we added all the things the stakeholders wanted fitness center, the tennis courts, the uh, new tennis building. They talked about dog park and the butterfly garden. Uh, that's just a close up of the the limestone ridge. Oops. Oh, we have time issues here. We should probably wrap sooner than later so we have time for questions and comments. So yeah, this is just what happens with the kids you know on the hill uh how do we do this? And this is kind of like the idea of what kids do in the in the, uh, that fountain that's also a big hit. So I'll move on. Uh, they get the idea the uh, this is uh, the levy path. That's the coquina path underneath that that canopy we were talking about along with the led lighting that uh, is supposed to go eventually up and down in terms of dimming and when people go around one thing we did want to mention in terms of parks, this is truly a parks without borders that we also fought for. Uh, there's no fences, there's no gates around this whole thing. You can walk in or out anytime you want. The playground is locked up at night uh, amphitheater for events. Uh, another view from the top of the hill. Sunset hill is a popular place. There's your view. This is the tree. This this tree is you should go there and visit. It's one of the most amazing things you'll ever see. Uh, we call it big mo but other people call it the cathedral. Uh, it is really that it's almost a sacred space, really amazing space and that's just at sunset. Uh, you want to take these the key takeaways alyana well. Uh, some of the takeaways is is first of all, the collaboration with different disciplines and policy makers is crucial in the design of something like this for urban ecology to really make it, it requires a multidimensional approach that ideally includes this unique ecology history, culture, identity and resiliency. The key is to understand relationships and how these layers interact and create an urban landscape. Understanding how these layers relate and define social and spatial interactions to propose comprehensive solutions. There is not one size fits all solution design should be flexible and allow for adaptation and we are very happy that our profession is one of advocacy, education and stewardship. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Incredible work really really amazing and inspirational. Um and you know, I encourage everyone to go visit it and enjoy it and learn from it. Uh, it's incredible how you preserved all this nature and it's still performing as as infrastructure as we heard through all of those, all those details that you just walked us through that it's gorgeous space and yet it's also doing all of these performance features and you know, I think that we need to do like this also throughout the city of miami, uh, especially inland communities, uh, with with our with our recommendations for for sponge parks. Um, so you know, kudos and congratulations on a great project and also the other work you showed us like south point, which is, you know, a model for how we need to stop storm surge across the entire coastline. Uh, so thank you so much. Anyone else have any comments or questions? I think you guys did a wonderful job. It's beautiful. Um the pictures speak for themselves. The takeaway for me and something I would argue for the board to take away from this presentation is we so often we get focused on the idea that we or the concept that we want to have this park, we need to have this park and that's what the first half of this presentation was. But showing the activity and the people using the park and what happened after the fact is the sales pitch that's the argument we have to make when we're presenting this to our senior leadership to let them know that this is what it will look like at the end for the people, not just how it looks beautiful as an empty park. That was the takeaway. So really good job. To respond to you in particular that levy path. Um it functions as the levy for the water a jogging path but is also the fire lane around the park. So it has that triple function for that. So we work with the miami beach fire department to make that. Work as well. Yeah. >> the the reason why we named this, you know, the model as we think cities and municipalities can use this system and this this approach as a model for low lying flood prone areas. Uh ,we happen to have an old golf course that was abandoned here that was serendipitous for us to have that right there. But cities can do the work, the political you know, hard work to you know, put together properties, flood prone properties that we've built on over the last 100 years and and to aggregate these lands and build these parks, these stormwater sponge parks, if you will, collection parks an amazing amenity part of the money that can be that could be you hear about repetitive loss properties. That's where you look at first part of the idea is to increase the value of the land right there and values we think over time over the 50 years that the property values increase by having amenities like this uh will help pay for for the you know, long term costs and short term pain. But uh, it's a model for for low lying areas and it could be continued all the way up to coast. Yes. >> allison. Yeah. >> thank you so much. This was incredible. And the banyan tree big mo I've been there and it's so beautiful. Um, but I was just curious this is kind of a technical question but maybe not so much but how how difficult was it to change the direction of the flow of water from how it was previously diverting into canals and then you reversed it essentially to kind of go inward towards the park? Well, the work is still ongoing. Okay. >> as kelly said, yeah, we we are working now with the city to get that water into the lake when we dug that lake that's groundwater now all the water through those those r tanks she was describing goes into that right or over gravity flow through the littoral zone. >> right right. Eventually when we replumb and we do the streetscape project that's part two the big part two of the project where we replumb and in that 85 acres we send that rather than out we send [Laughter] It towards the park. Okay. >> got it. >> that's the idea. Got it. >> so that's yeah. It's a civil engineering. It's a civil engineering and pumps gravity flow. Right right. I just watched a documentary on the reversal of the chicago river um which is really an incredible engineering feat um that we could look to. A lot of the. >> a lot of the neighborhood water is already going towards that pump station and towards 28th street. A little closer. Sorry a lot of the water is already going towards the park in the neighborhood so it won't be that big of a change but. >> got. It there. Yeah we had the lowest part in the beach right. So is that location and it's interesting as soon as we build the swale on 28th street. Um the flooding is a lot better so it's it's it's interesting. Yeah. So hopefully it will be even better later. Awesome. >> thank you. First thank you MR. Chair for bringing these fabulous presentations, um, as examples of what we should be doing here in the city of miami. Um question how long did it take you [Laughter] All to work with durm to convince them. You know the. I know the answer to the question but I just need to put it on the. >> record before kelly gets on because kelly's going to give you a whole harangue of of issues but but um durham was in my opinion durham was actually pretty amenable when they heard what we were trying to do. They were very amenable and that's why we got some code changes actual things which are not easy to do with durham. Uh, the the big issue was the groundwater. You know. [Laughter] I think the answer is years but the their biggest concern was the contaminated groundwater and digging that lake and how that would change the plume of the contaminated groundwater which is still now post-construction being tested and reporting back to durham, um on that. So we had to do our team, our geotechnical engineer and civil engineer had to do a lot of modeling and then durham hired their own separate consultant and did modeling on their side. So there was reports, you know, stacks of reports and models done to to allow us to build the lake. That's the long time. Yeah. >> the the kicker was with wilbur and company and tom was the fact that we have a little bit of an advantage in miami beach because we don't dig wells here. So we're not using drinking water. We're not using irrigation water from the groundwater. So when they realize that they they that's when they said okay, we're okay. We'll put some monitoring wells and find out what happens. But there's really no public health threat, you know, in the plume moving out. So it MAY be different in the city of miami and. That's why. >> I brought it. If you have if you have groundwater if you have groundwater pollution uh yeah, that's another issue. Something for us to consider. Yeah. >> when the way I suggested it last year and we put together a document which I now realize I probably should have requested to be sent out um in in um just reference to the item, uh the budget item that we identified some different areas when you look at the stormwater master plan, there's some areas that are pretty far inland that won't technically be planned for adaptation until phase three. So that's you know, over a decade away potentially and and billions of dollars away. So this could be a solution for those inland neighborhoods in a shorter term, uh, timeline both for repetitive loss properties. So looking at the bottom of a slew in a neighborhood and helping those people have an out where they MAY also be having challenges with, uh, simply keeping their property dry with insurance with maybe selling it. So it's a solution for that and I think it might even have a higher roi than trying to come up with a great solution for those slu areas. But there MAY also be opportunities that it's not just a sponge park at the lower end of the slough, but there MAY be other ones slightly higher up the block at the midpoint or even high point adjacent because if there's not enough room as you just described and you showed us how you had to do cut and fill for smaller sites, there MAY not be enough room to actually do that kind of a topographic change. So there it's this is a good example, but it doesn't technically perfectly apply for the smaller scale sites that I think also MAY need interventions like this. It's going to it's going to take a lot of a lot of research and a lot of people to to kind of figure out. Um, sure. >> I want to comment on you know, you requested something uh, the stormwater master plan and maybe there's a way for us to overlap in the stormwater master plan, uh, with some of the different parks conversations we've been having. So it makes it easier for us to understand how do we prioritize what kind of sponge areas I'd actually be, um, open to also considering this as part of our budget recommendations it my um my question to to the presenters by the way, amazing amazing presentation is is really about uh, what what the additional cost of goes into in terms of like design and the pumps and, and getting those flows and potentially what are the perceived savings that you generate as well from not needing additional, you know, hard infrastructure in, in surrounding areas. Um, and then finally what happens with that water flow in that change of water flow, does that increase water contamination at all? Is there any water quality um testing or component that that that is considered as part of this? >> I just went over. The groundwater. That yeah, I it I'll work from backwards the in terms of water quality, we think the planting and littoral zone there will help filter it acts as a filtration the sands down below it's we it's a deep lake. It's 1415ft deep lake that's a good lake health etc. I won't go into the morphometry stuff but uh that's the idea of that filtration around the lake and through the sands of the uh so that's that by itself should help. Uh we don't know exactly that's why the monitoring stations are there. What's going to happen with the the arsenic in the groundwater? We think over time it's going to be dispensed and diluted over time. So that remains to be seen and that's a good thing for a feedback monitoring system which I think that's what durham is involved with right now. Uh in terms of hard cost in terms of it's it's hard to understand exactly what the total economic benefit is in terms of property value around in terms of just pure how do you value recreational value? how do you value a kid's playing and discovering when you know, going climbing up something that's that's that's something that's kind of uh, amorphous. Um, so, uh, I think it's just a matter, you know, we just got back from san francisco, we went for the first time and we were stunned at how much of that city is park and and green space. Uh, I'm not sure if you've all been there or been there lately. It's just incredible. Uh, in the middle of the urban infrastructure and that MAY end up being what's happening 100 years from now when the water is up 2 or 3ft. Yeah, there's you MAY not be able to build around it. Uh, and that's where your real costs MAY come in, uh, trying to put infrastructure into, uh, incorporate, you know, if antarctica's glaciers all melt down soon. So, uh, these are the fundamental questions exactly. And the pump the pumps that you mentioned you put some pumps in there and I'm sorry, just just fyi I wasn't able to open up the link to the presentation. There was some security issue. Um, I got like a phishing alert so I wasn't able to like, uh, dig in as much as I'd like to. Um, did you have mangroves? Some mangroves? Yeah. Mangroves are being planted as we speak. I'm trying to think if there's any telemetry between the pumps and how what your thought process was between you know, how many pumps and how long maybe those pumps will last and you know how you think about the maintenance going forward of of something like that for the life of of that asset? >> I don't the one pump the big pump in the corner was there already before we built the park as part of the city's pump system. And then the only thing we inserted is a it's a non it's a it's not a pump it's just mechanically open and closed valve and that big box under a hill that leads into the lake, the lake itself does have um to help with the lake daily cleaning and circulation and algae. There are some circulators under the docks that move the water and kind of a counterclockwise motion all the way around the lake to keep the water moving and pushing it through the littoral zones. And they're also injecting ozone into the lake to help with the water quality there. So those I don't know the lifespan of them, but they're it's a pretty the same designer that did like the lake system on lincoln road. The water features on lincoln road in miami beach botanical garden worked on this lake as well. So thank you so much. Uh amazing presentation really inspirational. Um and uh, probably going to be following up with you all with some more some more questions as we think more about these specific recommendations, uh, that we'll be working on over the next, uh, over the next [Laughter] Month. So really appreciate your time this evening. >> and we'd be happy to help. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We do have a third presentation today. Um the item five four c is the fifa fan fest. It's a purposeful delay to build suspense. All right. My name is chief grant musser. I'm also the emergency manager for the city of miami. So I've had the pleasure of working with fifa and all the federal partners and local municipalities in planning for the bayfront event, which is the fifa world cup fan festival. Every host city that has matches playing in their state or city or country also has a fan festival built into it. So those those members or or civilians that don't have tickets can come to this event. It begins JUNE 13th and ends JULY 5th and it's at bayfront park. Technical difficulties there we go. Second slide sonia please. So uh, fan festival is free to the public. It's the way I like to describe it is it's a a american football tailgate where the families can come and enjoy the festivities and also watch the game. So there's going to be three screens there. They're going to air all of the games that are on during the times that the the fan festival is open. They're trying to stream three matches per per day for 23 days. They're also going to have live shows and performances food trucks and we're expecting about 30,000 people per day. For 23 straight days. Miami dade county the at the miami stadium they're going to have seven matches. Five of those matches are going to be during the same period of our fan festival. Um 30,000 is a very rough number. This is something it's a first in the world for the miami world cup to do such something like this as a grand scale. Um I know new york and new jersey closed down decided not to do their actual fan festival at one site due to security reasons. Everything that's going on nationally um there's a lot of concerns so they decided to split it up into multiple venues here in the city. We decided that since we're used to having ultra festival bayfront park albeit three days but the same amount of people so we feel confident that we can make sure it's safe and secure for the residents. Um some other numbers there um 33 local businesses are contracted to participate within the event. Now how do we prepare for such a large scale event 23 continuous days takes a lot of people a lot of planning. Um we were fortunate that city of miami didn't have anything going on last year when the club world cup came into town for miami dade county, but they began early last year starting planning for that and for this because we knew it was coming the year after. So miami dade county was was hosting biweekly meetings, um for preparedness about uh, communications public safety. They had a whole bunch of working groups that a lot of the departments were sending representatives to participate in. We've now streamlined it down to monthly meetings as we're getting closer to the event because we feel like everybody's nailed in on the same page. Um, a lot of what we're doing in the city is based off of plans that we've already had in process, right? But plans are only good on paper. You have to test them right? You have to make sure they're operational. So how do you do that? You got to get everybody in the room and discuss the plans and make sure we're on the same page. So JANUARY 28th of this year was basically me coming out to the city saying this is the event that's coming on. It was real early. We didn't know how many days it was going to be. It was talk about two weeks, 21 days. We landed on 23 days after JANUARY 28th. But what is it going to take for us to put on this event and what are the concerns we have to worry about not just city of miami folks but miami dade emergency management federal, the florida department of emergency management, all federal partners all in the same room talking about the what ifs and the what ifs were it's JUNE 13th through JULY 5th. That's heat season begins MAY 1st. It's in hurricane season, right? Um we have thunderstorms, lightning floods .We have all these things perfect trifecta. It's not just over a weekend like ultrafast this is three weeks. So what do we do if the worst case scenario happens? We did a complex coordinated terrorist attack. Um we had drones dropping unknown chemicals. We had vehicle rammings going in this scenario and it was a very engaging conversation and the takeaway from it all was we were all in sync on what we were going to do. There was no question about it. There was i'm not going to say it was perfect. There were some takeaways and some preparedness items we needed to do, but it was great to see that without testing all these plans for a long time we were all in a cohesive group together. Then we did a cybersecurity tabletop exercise uh a couple months ago, um where our city department of intelligence or do it department of it, um participated in and the feedback that we got of all the municipalities was that our city I.T. Department was the best prepared. So that was a great takeaway from there. And then now coming up on JUNE 3rd, I hate saying this, but family reception center, what happens when we have a mass casualty incident that affects the lives of hundreds or thousands of people? We have people coming from all over the world speaking different languages. Something happens they're all going to be calling 911 asking for answers. Where do we set this up? How do we prepare for that so that we can reunite families together and hopefully all positive reunite uh reunions? So during the 23 day event we're going to have our family reception center staged and set up at the james l knight center. So all we got to do is push the button, call out the people that are supposed to sit in those seats. They show up and we can open the doors and we can provide that service to the residents and their families. Um on site we have public safety. We have fire rescue um doing what they do day in and day out firefighters paramedics staged for all 23 days. They're all treating heat treated in heat response. Uh, we have our hazard hazardous materials teams on standby decontaminating trailers. The police department is going to be out there in full force but they're limited in their in their capacity. There's only a finite amount of miami police officers. So we're we got coral gables, miami dade and other municipalities coming in as a force multiplier no different than what we do in ultrafast to make sure that we have a safe event and then the city wide support we're going to have the city miami emergency operations center opened. We have the national weather service embedded. We're going to have miami-dade emergency management and florida division of emergency management on site in case we need additional resources. Um we're just over preparing but we're preparing for the worst. So I already touched upon heat seasons MAY 1st through OCTOBER 31st. Um, the national weather service criteria is that if the heat index reaches 105 degrees, that's the humidity plus the actual temperature that reaches 105 degrees. We send out a heat advisory and just letting everybody know it's hot out there sweating to hydrate and and you know be cognizant if it gets to 110 that's extreme. You've only got a certain amount of time before you're going to overheat and and need to call 911. Um, the fan festival has three cooling centers. They're going to have a bunch of tables and chairs and picnic tables with umbrellas, um, misting fans free water all that out there ready to go. Um, we talked about extreme heat hurricane season thunderstorms and lightning. Uh, national weather service is going to be there in our emergency operations center. We're going to be dialed in to everything checking checking the weather daily three days ahead, seven days ahead if something significant happens like a storm is coming, the hard decision to shut down will be made. Um even though it's a fifa sanct