There is a Waterfront Advisory Board meeting on Tuesday, November 8 at City Hall, regarding the visitors center planned for the Grove waterfront.
Mark Lewis, Superintendent of Biscayne National Park, will be attending and speaking of the project. The BID and other interests are very into the project and feel it will be good for business, they believe the center will draw 100,000 people per year and that this will trickle down to the Grove. I think the Grove needs to fill in all the empty storefronts, get rid of paid parking, maybe just weekends and do things like that if they want to see visitors.
I personally feel it is the beginning of the "Baysiding" of the Grove and the Grove's waterfront. This is not part of the Waterfront Master Plan and I am ambivalent about this project being erected on the Grove waterfront. But again, we'll go to the meeting and see what Mark has to say. He must have read my past story on the project because he sent me the plans or a diagram or something via email, but it didn't open correctly and I didn't see it. I just thanked him, but I suppose they'll have the diagram at the meeting on Tuesday.
I am curious about the visitors center simply because it's a building on the waterfront and while it would be cool to draw those many visitors to the Center Grove, it's been very difficult over the years to even draw the thousands of sailors to visit our Grove waterfront each season for the many regattas held in Coconut Grove, that is where Sail the Grove came in -- their job was to woo the visitors from the waterfront up to the Center Village to spend time and money. I don't see how these visitors who will be going to the center to see the bay and Biscayne National Park, which is the bay, would come up into the village since the sailors don't during regatta season.
The meeting is at City Hall, 3500 Pan American Drive, at 6:30 pm. We'll see how it goes. Hope to see you there, too.
What are your feelings? Comments are open (and moderated) for this story.
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