Flamingo Pedestrian Safety Project to Discuss: Designation of Walk Friendly Communities; Becoming Florida's Most Pedestrian Friendly Neighborhood

Flamingo Neighborhood will meet on Monday, March 1st at 5pm, at The Seymour, 945 Pennsylvania Avenue -- to move forward on Pedestrian Safety Project.

Walk Friendly Communities Program


The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center is developing a Walk Friendly Communities (WFC) designation program, to be launched in 2010. The aim of the program is to encourage towns and cities throughout the United States to establish or recommit to a high priority for supporting safer walking environments, and to be recognized for their efforts. The WFC program will recognize communities that are working to improve a wide range of conditions related to walking, including safety, mobility, access, and comfort. It will be comparable to the Bicycle Friendly Communities program currently operated by the League of American Bicyclists. The program will promote the use of the 5 Es (engineering, education, enforcement, encouragement, and evaluation) that are needed to help communities become excited about becoming more walkable and to set clear goals and plans for achieving those goals.

Communities interested in receiving recognition will complete a WFC application form. The application process is designed to assist communities in developing and documenting their comprehensive pedestrian safety and encouragement plan. Each applicant will receive suggestions and resources on how to make needed improvements. Designated Walk Friendly Community applicants will be featured in various marketing and promotion materials, to serve as role models and inspiration for other communities.


Brainstorming to Become
Florida’s Most Pedestrian-Friendly Neighborhood

Outline Results of Feb. 1st, 2010 Brainstorming, Flamingo Park Neighborhood Assoc. (with a few additions/suggestions by the moderator, Ben Batchelder)

Flamingo Neighborhoood Meeting will include discussion of Police - Community relations raised by ACLU accusations. -- at meeting on Mon, Mar 1st at 6pm

From The Miami Herald:
Gay tourist: Miami Beach cops made up charges, arrested him after he reported to 911 that they beat a man


BY STEVE ROTHAUS, srothaus@MiamiHerald.com

The ACLU of Florida says two Miami Beach police officers yelled epithets at a gay tourist and falsely accused him of trying to break into cars after he witnessed them kicking and punching a handcuffed man at Flamingo Park.

As Officers Frankly Forte and Elliot Hazzi approached witness Harold Strickland, they didn't know he was on his cellphone reporting the beating to a Miami Beach 911 dispatcher, said Robert F. Rosenwald Jr., director of the ACLU Florida's Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender Advocacy Project.

“This is an issue that we have hoped to address for a long time. Miami Beach Police have for a long time harassed gay men around Flamingo Park without probable cause,'' Rosenwald said Wednesday.

Miami Beach police first learned of the alleged incident – which occurred last March – on Wednesday afternoon and immediately began an internal affairs investigation, spokesman Detective Juan Sanchez said.

“At this time, the department cannot comment nor is it a practice to comment on an intended issue that is going to be [the] subject of litigation by the city,'' Sanchez wrote in an e-mail to The Miami Herald.

Detective Gus Sanchez, vice president of the Miami Beach Fraternal Order of Police, also said he couldn't discuss an open investigation.

Forte and Hazzi both were hired by Beach police as new officers in February 2007. They were still on duty Wednesday, Juan Sanchez said.

The incident began about 1 a.m. March 13 as Strickland, a former Beach resident now living in Los Angeles, walked past Flamingo Park near 14th Street and Michigan Avenue.

Strickland called 911 when he saw a man being beaten by two men just outside the park.

“I saw a guy running and then I saw two, what looked like undercover cops running. And they pushed this guy down on the ground, the one cop did, and the other cop came up as if he was kicking a football … and kicked the guy in the head,'' Strickland, 45, told a dispatcher during a recorded phone call to 911.

For nearly five minutes, he talked to the dispatcher, who encouraged him to get closer for more detail “if it doesn't put you in any danger.''

A few seconds later, Strickland told the dispatcher: “Now they're coming after me!''

The two men, later identified as officers Forte and Hazzi, approached Strickland and could be heard saying, “What are you doing here? Where do you live? Let's see some ID.'' A few seconds later the line went dead.

Strickland later told the ACLU that Forte and Hazzi grabbed his cellphone and disconnected the call.

“The officers then told Strickland: ‘We know what you're doing here. We're sick of all the f---ing fags in the neighborhood.' The officers pushed Strickland to the ground and tied his hands behind his back,'' Rosenwald wrote in an ACLU letter delivered Wednesday to Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower.

“While Strickland was on the ground, the officers continued to spew anti-gay epithets. They called him a ‘f---ing fag' and told him he was going to ‘get it good in jail.'''

Bower and City Manager Jorge Gonzalez also declined to comment.

Strickland called 911 at 1:06 a.m., according to dispatch records.

Forte wrote in an arrest report that 30 minutes later – at 1:36 a.m. – he saw Strickland trying to break into six cars at 14th Street and Michigan Avenue near Flamingo Park.

Strickland said he tried to tell the officers about his call to 911, but that they wouldn't listen to him. They took him to jail on a loitering-or-prowling charge. At a hearing the next day, a judge told him that he would get out of jail faster if he pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor, Rosenwald said.

Strickland agreed, left jail and called the ACLU. He later changed his plea to not guilty. The State Attorney's Office later dropped the charge.

Loitering and resisting-arrest-without-violence charges also were dropped against Oscar Mendoza, the man Strickland reported being beaten near Flamingo Park.

Miami Herald staff writer David Smiley contributed to this report.

Miriam Levine and John Lane: Additional courts block sight lines with high chain link fences and large areas of dark green mesh, defeating the goals of the park improvement plan.

Dear Madam Mayor and Commissioners:


Thank you for all your work to improve Flamingo Park. We strongly advise you to cap the number of Flamingo Park tennis courts at 17 for the following reasons:

Seventeen courts adequately serve the tennis playing population.

Additional courts would add to neighborhood traffic and reduce open space.

Additional courts block sight lines with high chain link fences and large areas of dark green mesh, defeating the goals of the park improvement plan.

Additional courts require an increase in maintenance and therefore an increase in costs.

More than 17 tennis courts does not benefit the Flamingo Park neighborhood residents—adults and children—rather it locks them out, restricting them to a smaller area.

While we recognize that there are competing interests for the use of the park, we believe that an increase in the number of courts favors a small minority. The park is for all of us!

Please do the right thing for the residents of our precious neighborhood.

Sincerely,  Miriam Levine and John Lane

Aaron: miami dade public school system takes more than 1/3 of our tax dollars, they can build their own courts on their own land. 17 courts is plenty

In 2000, there were roughly 16,000 residents living in Flamingo Park, with limited green-space and recreational areas.

The City just spent $22,000,000 renovating South Point Park to provide enormous amounts of greenspace for SoFi residents, while prohibiting almost all forms of recreational sports.

Flamingo Park residents have been awaiting restoration of Flamingo Park greenspace for decades, with $11,000,000 in bond funds waiting, and top on our list in this park devoted to recreational areas, is having some peaceful greenspace...

A respite in an otherwise car-heavy, fast-paced urban environment.

We are surrounded by buildings here, living here, with no bay-walk and wide expanse of greenery within walking distance. And, we have debated the Park design for years, and we have torn down the Stolz Stadium to create more green-space, and we have plans for that greenspace.

Flamingo Park does not belong to the tennis center, or the Miami-Dade Public School System which has existing land to build tennis courts at various locations, including a nearby vacant lot at 14th Place and Euclid Ave.

The current Park design plans call for 17 tennis courts, most of which, based on current usage, are empty during much of the day. 

There is no rational basis for slapping Flamingo Park residents in the face, yet again, and denying us an opportunity to have a pleasant park to relax in, with trees, and foliage, and beauty.

We can understand that the "tennis people" represent a powerful lobby, but it
seems they are never satisfied... 

Are we to continue to satisfy them, like an insatiable child, hungry for more more and more?

What about the thousands of year-round and seasonal residents who still live in areas surrounding the Park, and seek solace in Flamingo Park?

Do we have a voice?  Or, should we step aside and be content to peer through the fence at the soccer field, as the last open space, and sigh, like an animal peering out of a cage?

If we are re-opening this debate, I propose reducing the number of courts to 14 courts, 7 clay courts and 7 hard courts.

I propose reducing the footprint of the Tennis Center, while increasing the amount of greenspace to provide the vast majority of the resident population, who do not play tennis, a place to relax and enjoy greenery.

The park needs more green areas, and certainly can do with less tennis courts, which are already scattered throughout the City for the many people who presently drive to Flamingo Park to play tennis.

Barry Zaid: What we want and need and support is more breathing space, space to walk, to socialize, to relax, to see the sky, to recreate.

We, the residents of the Flamingo Park neighborhood, have long fought to get the intrusions of the Property management department and the condemned Abel Holtz stadium out of the Flamingo Park.  Now that we have achieved these goals and we have opened up some green space, we hear there is a movement to expand the tennis facilities and take over the newly created "Great Lawn".

This is unacceptable.

The park as it is is filled with space dedicated to all sorts of specialized athletic pursuits. The tennis courts take up a large area of the park as it is. What we want and need and support is more breathing space, space to walk, to socialize, to relax, to see the sky, to recreate.

What Flamingo Park stopped being stopped being, over the years, is a PARK.

Let the tennis players decide among themselves what kind of courts they want. Let them do anything they want within the space they already occupy, and if they feel they must have more space, let them find it in other less utilized parks or other parts of the city, or even in the City of Miami.

We residents have worked hard to achieve more green space. We want a PARK, not more pavement.

Respectfully,   Barry Zaid

Judy Robertson: The promise was clear in September of last year, and remains clear now: The green space that has been reclaimed by demolishing the Abel Holtz stadium shall remain green space.

Dear Neighborhood and Community Affairs Committee members:


By now you will have received various emails and letters from residents of the Flamingo Park Neighborhood, standing up for our Great Lawn in Flamingo Park and speaking out against expanding the proposed Tennis Center into what is now open, green space. Tomorrow, you will see many of the faces that go with those emails. For those new to the Commission, you may not have an appreciation of the enormous effort leading up to the Commission's approval last September of the Master Plan "L", which finalized the footprint of the tennis center to include a maximum of 17 tennis courts. You won't have a memory of the hundreds of people who spoke before the Commission and its sub-committees over a decade, who took time off from work to share their concerns with City Boards, who attended the design charrettes going all the way back to 1997, who walked the Park's perimeters with planners and park staff, and who volunteered their time to sit on the evaluation committee to select the best design firm for the job.

I have a very clear memory of all that, as do many of my neighbors, colleagues, and friends. The Commission runs the grave risk of negating all that effort and alienating a huge portion of our community if it doesn't keep its promise on this issue. The promise was clear in September of last year, and remains clear now: The green space that has been reclaimed by demolishing the Abel Holtz stadium shall remain green space.

Imagine, if you will, approaching the good residents of South Pointe, and proposing that they relinquish a portion of their beautiful new, open, green, South Pointe Park, just so that a contentious disagreement among tennis players over preferred playing surface could be resolved. Would the residents of South Pointe sit quietly by and accept the City's excuse of, 'we looked for a couple of months and couldn't find anywhere else to put them, and this would settle the argument'?

Unacceptable! The burden of creating a compromise between tennis players is squarely on the City, not on our Neighborhood at large. Go back to the approved plan, look at the language the City used in guiding the planners it hired, wherein it MANDATES the restoration and creation of green space in our new Park. We worked extremely hard to bring this plan to fruition, and be assured we will work even harder to keep it.

Judy Robertson,  Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association

Ilona Wiss: Most importantly, it does not seem fair that the residents of the Flamingo Park neighborhood should have to fight this battle again when we have spent years fighting for greenspace in our "Central Park",...

Dear Neighborhoods Committee Members:


It has come to my attention that you will be revisiting the approved Flamingo Park Plan at your meeting on February 16th, to consider further modifications and expansion of the tennis center. I am writing to express my opposition to the addition/expansion of any additional active-use features in our very busy park, including more tennis courts.

I have lived on Michigan Avenue, across from Flamingo Park since 1989. In the early 1990s, I began attending planning meetings hosted by various City departments and neighborhood groups to discuss and plan for the revitalization of Flamingo Park. It has taken all these years, many meetings, a lot of hard work, and a few false starts, to arrive at the point where we are today......ready to start the renovation of our park, in accordance with a plan that reflects the community's vision......improved recreational facilities and the addition of much needed greenspace.

The demolition of the tennis stadium and the relocation of the property maintenance facility offered us a unique opportunity.....to introduce passive-use greenspace to our neighborhood park. Anyone who knows the park and uses it knows that, until the demolition of the tennis stadium, there was no open greenspace that was not designated for sports activities. Flamingo Park is the heart of the densely populated South Beach residential community, and its residents need a place to picnic, lounge in the grass and enjoy occasional outdoor events.  The last thing we need is to expand recreational facilities that will attract even more people to the park. As it is, there is frequently insufficient parking to meet the needs of park visitors. Just today (Sunday), a car was parked on the swale in front of my house yet again, right in front of the No Parking Tow Away sign indicating that parking there is restricted to Zone 3 residents. Our historic, single family neighborhood has serious traffic congestion problems that will only be exacerbated by further expansion of the tennis center.

I strongly encourage you to focus on other options. In my view, South Pointe Park would be the perfect place to build additional tennis courts, if they are truly needed. Many years ago, there were active recreational facilities in that park....basketball courts. Further, there are many tennis playing residents in South Pointe who would be very enthusiastic about such an addition to their neighborhood park. It seems only fair that all our neighborhood parks have a balance of active and passive uses, so that no single park is over burdened. Flamingo Park truly needs the additional greenspace to bring it into balance....and South Pointe Park's serenity would not be diminished by the introduction of a few tennis courts.

Most importantly, it does not seem fair that the residents of the Flamingo Park neighborhood should have to fight this battle again when we have spent years fighting for greenspace in our "Central Park", just because the tennis community has initiated an intense lobbying effort, rekindling the issue. The previous commission understood our concerns and approved the Plan which is finally about to be implemented. Please do not undo all the hard work that we did before some of you were in office. If you are convinced that additional courts are needed to meet the high school's needs, please find another place to put them, and allow us to have the greenspace our urban neighborhood desperately needs.

PLEASE NOTE: MANY OF US ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND MEETINGS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY. IT WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL IF YOU WOULD ADJUST TUESDAY'S AGENDA SO THAT THIS ITEM IS HEARD AS LATE AS POSSIBLE. THANK YOU.

Ilona Wiss, Esq.

Wanda Mouzon: Parks and green space in dense urban areas are extremely important for the sustainability of the place.

Dear Mayor Bower and Commission,


I wish to add my thoughts for your consideration concerning the consumption of more green space in Flamingo Park for additional tennis courts. I am a full time resident of South Beach and live in the Flamingo neighborhood. I LOVE this neighborhood, as it is historic, walkable, and dense to name a few reasons. And one of the most special things about the Flamingo neighborhood is the park. So I feel we must all approach this plan with great care and thought. Making it the most desirable and useful for the most people should be the main priority. Consuming the green space that we have all already agreed upon as necessary, useful and much enjoyed by the residents, is quite troublesome. My feelings are so strong about this that I request that you reconsider and not give in to the pressure of a much smaller group of users. Parks and green space in dense urban areas are extremely important for the sustainability of the place. My husband and I have an architectural practice that is based entirely on creating Sustainable Places. You might be interested in this blog by Steve Mouzon on the subject of neighborhood parks and their role in creating a sustainable place.

http://www.originalgreen.org/OG/Blog/Entries/2009/3/18_Parks_and_Sustainable_Places.html

Thank you for your time and consideration!  Local Resident,  Wanda Mouzon

Flamingo Tennis Courts: 17 No More! -- Neighborhoods Committee Meets Tues, Feb 16th -- Flamingo Issue is 16th on the Agenda

The City of Miami Beach Neighborhoods Committee is scheduled to consider the composition of Tennis Courts at its meeting on Tuesday, February 16th, starting at 2:30pm.  The issue is the last item listed on the Agenda  -- Number 16 --  and is framed as follows:  

Discussion of the revised masterplan recommendations for the Flamingo Park project to provide for seventeen (17) clay service and an additional five (5) hard surface courts at Flamingo Park.

The Neighborhood has participated in scores of meetings, workshops and City Finance Committee meetings and also City Commission meetings before passage of the Flamingo Park Masterplan in Sep 2009.  Now, instead of moving forward to implement the plan, the City Commission apparently recommended that five additional tennis courts be added to the Tennis Center and referred the matter to the Neighborhoods Committee.

The City Manager memorandum describing the issue can be accessed at the following link:

http://flamingomb.org/1Q2010/FlamingoPkTennis_NCAC_February_16_2010[1].pdf

It remains crucially important that the Flamingo Neighborhood fully engage this issue.

CMB Neighborhoods Committee: Choose -- Clay Courts or Hard Courts; But Don't further Erode Flamingo Park's other role as an important Urban, Green Space Amenity

The City Commission Neighborhoods Committee will meet on Tuesday, February 16th, at 2:30 pm.  The Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association has consistently advocated an increase in passive green space for Flamingo Park as an important green space amenity for the neighborhood and the City.  Already Flamingo Park is the most intensively used active recreational facility in the City -- with players who come from throughout the city and the entire region. 

After months of planning the decsion was made that the 17 tennis courts at Flamingo would be clay courts.  It was planned that hard courts would be installed at other facilities, i.e., at Polo Park and at the site of the Par 3 golf course.    There is now a call to install hard courts at Flamingo Park either by replacing the clay courts or by adding additional courts.  It has long been the position of the Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association to contain the dedicated special uses in the park, including tennis uses and to make available increased passive green space. 

As reported in The Miami Herald ........

After 18 months of public meetings and a dozen designs, Miami Beach residents probably thought the plan for a revamped Flamingo Park was finally complete last September when elected officials signed off on a redesign.

Think again.

On Feb. 3, the City Commission opened the door for additional changes to the $10.4 million park master plan after tennis enthusiasts again butted heads over clay versus hard courts.

At issue: All 17 tennis courts in the plan approved in September were clay, leaving players who want hard courts out of the 36-acre park.

Miami Beach Senior High's tennis team, mothers whose children play tennis, recreational players and even School Board member Martin Karp packed the commission chambers for two hours. They either lobbied for all clay courts, changing some clay courts to hard courts, or adding additional hard courts at the old Abel Holtz Stadium site, where the current plan calls for an open field.

Commissioners eventually agreed to either convert five clay courts to hard courts or add hard courts in the green space near Meridian Avenue and 13th Street, though they did so with the prediction that building more courts would irk those who aren't as enamored with tennis.

They were right.

"That's the worst possible outcome. That is just the pits,'' Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association co-chairman Jack Johnson said in a phone interview Feb. 4. "We have been working with the commission for so long on this issue. I can't believe they don't get it. We advocated for the demolition of Holtz Stadium because we wanted the green space.''

The City Commission has already made the decision to add a skate park to Flamingo Park -- over the opposition of the great majority of the Flamingo Park neighborhood community.  There is a practical limit to the amount of active, attractive uses that the park and the neighborhood can adequately accommodate.

The number of tennis courts in Flamingo Park ought not be increased above 17!

Our Colleague, Wanda W. Mouzon, shares the following discussion on the role of the Sidewalk -- urban amenity vs. social equity

Sidewalks: Conflict and Navigation Over Public Space
By Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht
MIT Press, 2009, 341 pp., hardcover $28
Review by Philip Langdon

Sidewalks in Anaheim, California, legally need be only four feet wide — which is too narrow for couples to pass each other while strolling. Los Angeles requires sidewalks at least five feet wide, which is more comfortable. Oakland mandates a six-foot minimum.

Some cities have extensive guidelines aimed at making the sidewalks a pedestrian-friendly public environment. Others cities do relatively little in that regard. In just about every respect, sidewalks are treated in very different ways from one municipality to another.

Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space, by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris of the UCLA Department of Urban Planning and Renia Ehrenfeucht of Planning and Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans, is described by its publisher as the first book-length analysis of the sidewalk as a distinct social space. It traces the historical evolution of sidewalks in the US, examines conflicts that have arisen over their competing uses, and discusses some of the municipal standards now applied to these public rights-of-way.

Long ago, Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte showed how city sidewalks could be useful, enjoyable, sociable parts of neighborhoods and downtowns. The authors of this new book are not oblivious to enjoyment and sociability, but they seem more concerned about how to create “a just city.” This leads them in directions that will disconcert quite a few readers. Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht want people to think about whether panhandling should be allowed, whether the homeless have a right to sleep in public spaces, and whether protesters have an overriding right to demonstrate, among other issues.

They contend that activities currently prohibited by some cities or business improvement districts — such as asking for money or sleeping on the sidewalk — cause discomfort for middle-class people but do not inflict harm on anyone. Indeed, the authors at times suggest that seeing distressed homeless individuals may be useful because it can motivate people to solve a social problem. Perhaps so, but the argument seems one-sided. We know for sure that when sidewalks accommodate too much troubling activity, those who have choices stay away. The city becomes a dismaying place. Its economy is hobbled. It’s hard to see how this ends up being anything other than bad for most of a city’s inhabitants, the homeless included.

Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht oppose design interventions that might cause “the nonconsuming public” to feel it is being excluded from public spaces. They point out that some cities, in encouraging sidewalk dining, have either allowed café owners to place fences around outdoor areas or have mandated them. “Whereas in Paris the private space of the café blends seamlessly into the public space of the sidewalk, in US cities, fences create an abrupt border,” they observe. Some cafes and restaurants in this country “extend their control over public space” by posting signs that order people not to skateboard, loiter, tie their dogs to the fence, or engage in other forms of “inappropriate behavior” on the sidewalk, the authors say.

The book contains a moderately interesting chapter on “sidewalk as urban forest,” which looks at how cities deal with street trees. On the whole, though, Sidewalks seems geared more to social justice advocates than to people who are trying to bring vitality and prosperity to urban locales.

Evaluation of Residents Guide -- Ch 1, Problem Identification; Ch 2 Who Can Help

Over the last six months the Flamingo Neighborhood Association has participated in a testing of the Resident’s Guide for Safe and Walkable Communities, under the auspices of the Pedestrian Bicycle Information Center PBIC within the University of North Carolina.


PBIC has requested that we respond to a survey to evaluate the first two chapters of the Resident’s Guide. A copy of the survey instrument can be accessed at the following link:  

http://flamingomb.org/1Q2010/Survey_ResGuide.pdf

Please provide any of your own personal responses which you want to be incorporated into our response to the survey. We will submit the Flamingo response by the deadline target date, February 10th. So please submit any information you wish be included as soon as possible – and no later than February 9th.

If you wish to discuss the Readers’ Guide or the survey response, give me a call at your early convenience or you may join me on this Saturday morning at 9:30 am for a quick discussion about the project. If you let me know that you’re coming, I’ll do something about providing the coffee.

You may want to refer to the relevant information in the Resident's Guide.  You can access Chapters One and Two through the following links:

http://flamingomb.org/ResidentGuideCh1ProblemIdentification.pdf 

http://flamingomb.org/ResidentGuideCh2WhoCanHelp.pdf