Hotly debated Kendall Parkway getting an image makeover

It’s back to the drawing board for the hotly debated 14-mile Kendall Parkway, as planners vow in the next six months to reshape both its contested route and its complicated public image.

The design and development team aims to reconcile residents’ environmental concerns over the multimodal transportation project through a rebranding and more community outreach to involve more persons in planning.

The Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX) says it will plan how the corridor in the far west and southwest of the county is to be designed, following guidelines the authority negotiated with Miami-Dade County.

The Kendall Parkway is to be a new north-south multimodal corridor west of Southwest 167th Avenue from the current terminus of State Road 836 at Northwest 12th Street to Southwest 136th Street. The project promises a “significant improvement” in travel times, as the area’s only expressway access is via the Turnpike, MDX officials claim.

Environmental activists have long raised warnings over the impact on the Everglades and the wetlands nearby, and advocates such as the Tropical Audubon Society have said the parkway could encroach on wetlands and other environmentally sensitive lands such as the Bird Drive Basin.

“The next phase of planning of the parkway is the most important part of the work, it’s where we are going to come up with that vision that you can sell, even the branding of the facility,” Luis Ajamil, president and CEO of Bermello Ajamil & Partners, engineering consultant to MDX, told the authority’s board last week. “It’s more than just a roadway, it is really a community asset, an environmental asset.”

The challenge ahead, Mr. Ajamil said, is how to turn this mobility plan into something that is geared toward improving the quality of life for the area and at the same time protecting the Everglades, enhancing neighborhoods, and encouraging the right type of development that the county wants in that area.

“We need to make sure that people understand the value that the project brings by bringing those diverse people together, the citizens that care about the community, environmentalists that care about the environment, people that care about open space,” Mr. Ajamil said.

He explained the three underpinnings of the project.

First, “it is not just a roadway, it is a community-driven project,” he said, noting that the roadway can afford in that area access to open space, parks where possible, trails, bikeways, sports, even tourism.

“We can create something that’s so unique there that people will want to come in and see it,” he said.

Second, “it’s going to be a transportation corridor with hubs where people can drive their car, drop them off, and then a straight perfect shot if they want to go to downtown Miami or into the center part of the city,” Mr. Ajamil said.

Third, he said, “it can be designed to preserve the environment, to enhance the environment, and to engage the public in that experience with the environment.”

In October, Juan Toledo, MDX deputy executive director and director of engineering, told Miami Today that MDX has already purchased 285 acres needed for the parkway and has determined that it would need to buy about 2,000 acres.

Once completed, 600,000 residents and businesses in the area could benefit from the corridor.

Nonetheless, a timeline for completion is still uncertain as MDX still cannot issue bonds to finance its projects pending litigation over its existence that started in 2019 against the state and the state-created Greater Miami Expressway Agency (GMX).

A six-lane corridor – three in each direction – would start at Northwest 137th Avenue and 12th Street and zip all the way to Kendall Drive. A two-mile section along Southwest Eighth Street would be elevated to minimize impact to that sensitive environmental area. Finally, a four-lane section would breeze from Kendall Drive to the end of the project at Southwest 136th Street.

The parkway includes a lane for express buses, a multi-use recreational trail for pedestrians and bicycles, and a trail for horses as part of a request to MDX by the county’s Department of Environmental Resources. Once funds become available, a project of this magnitude could take about four years to build, Mr. Toledo said.

“As part of our commitment to the project, we’re going to actually purchase the right of way requirement of 1,000 [feet and] restore the wetlands to a more pristine condition, and then turn it over back to the county in perpetuity, so that’s going to be a perpetual preservation area,” Mr. Toledo told Miami Today previously.

Addressing the environmental concerns, Mr. Toledo said the alignment is east of Krome Avenue and not in the Everglades and would not impact the environment. Also, to concerns of potential damage by the project to the Bird Drive Basin, Mr. Toledo responded that the South Florida Water Management District had a project for comprehensive Everglades restoration in that area, but ultimately abandoned it in 2008 due to porous soil in the area.

An MDX presentation says the project would provide over 10,800 jobs within 30 contracts for construction and professional services, and 30% of those would be for small and local businesses.

“You’re looking at over $300 million that are going to go to small local businesses in Miami-Dade County,” Mr. Toledo said.