Holocaust Memorial learning center squeezes parking

Parking issues at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens are arising after passage of a city resolution on the Holocaust Memorial learning center, which would take the 30 parking spaces of an adjacent lot, leaving an already limited parking availability to only 19th Street limited parallel parking.

The city commission in July 2021 voted to donate the 30-space parking lot at 775 19th St. to build a 7,000-square-foot Holocaust Memorial learning center to complement the 51-foot-tall hand sculpture. Although construction of the learning center is “very important, parking is going to be further limited,” said Commissioner Alex Fernandez at a Public Safety and Neighborhood Quality of Life committee meeting last week.

The 30 spaces lost from the lot would be replaced by only 22 parallel parking spaces at 19th Street, which cannot be converted to angled parking because the area must accommodate heavy trucks coming in and out of the facilities, said Maria Hernandez, Miami Beach general obligation bond director.

Residents have showed concern over where to park when going to the Botanical Gardens at 2000 Convention Center Drive when construction starts, he said. “A few years ago, we redid Convention Center Drive, we lost parking there. We also put the armadillos for bicycle protection on Meridian Avenue, so, we lost a number of parking spaces there. We are already at a deficit.”

Traditionally, what happens is attendees of the Botanical Gardens and the Holocaust Memorial park at the City Hall garage, said Monica Beltran, city parking director. She suggested the city create “an attractive path” between City Hall to those landmarks “and make it part of the experience.”

Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez suggested the committee “carve out” flat, green spaces at the entrance of the Botanical Gardens, pave it, and do a 20-car surface lot.

Ms. Hernandez said the department’s suggestion is to allow people to park on the 800-space helix garage atop the Miami Beach Convention Center. “If there is a way that we can have residents go up the helix and go all the way over to the south side, they can come down an elevator that pops them out right there almost in front of the Botanical Gardens,” she said. “That’s an option.”

To convert flat green spaces in front of the Botanical Gardens into parking, Ms. Hernandez said, the city would have to redesign the entire drainage system on 19th Street. “We also have a huge pump station on that street. We are close to [the Holocaust Memorial] sculpture; we just relocated giant calophyllums to the opposite corner,” she said. “It’s a major redesign.”

But commissioners were not very receptive to staff suggestions and urged them to come up with “better recommendations to safely accommodate some additional on-street parking” for the February Public Safety meeting, said Commissioner Fernandez. “Because if not, we’ve taken a facility that was accessible to elderly people, to people who can’t ride a bicycle, and we’ve made it only for a certain segment of our population. That does not serve the inclusiveness of our entire population.”