Text by Chris Morris
Photos courtesy of The Underline
Ten years ago, the area beneath Miami’s Metrorail near Brickell Avenue was not the sort of place you’d want to spend a lot of time. Today, it’s fast becoming one of the city’s most popular gathering spots.
The Underline, Miami’s revitalized outdoor space, opened the first of its three phases of improvement in February 2021, near The Brickell City Centre. “Brickell Backyard,” as it’s called, is the first phase in what will ultimately be a 10-mile-long linear park, loaded with bike lanes, world-class urban trails, 120 acres of green space and public art displays. It’s Dade County’s version of New York’s Highline or Atlanta’s BeltLine. And it all got started with a bike accident.
Meg Daly, president and CEO of Friends of The Underline, broke both of her arms after she lost control while on a ride. Biking was out – and she certainly couldn’t drive – so she did a lot of walking. One day, as she made her way to a physical therapy appointment, she found herself below the train track and inspiration struck. It quickly became a movement and a mission.
“I hope this helps build a better city,” says Daly. “I hope it builds a city that is accessible, connected, and serves its residents, guests and visitors. I hope it creates the city of the future. I really believe we’re not making a park or a trail, we’re building a better city. That’s our vision: Using the Underline as the spine to that better system.”
Daly is technically a volunteer, but she’s unquestionably the driving force behind the Underline. For eight years, the 61-year-old has led the nonprofit in its negotiations with city officials and overseen the fundraising efforts, gathering funding from a combination of federal, state, county and city sources, as well as private donations, like a recent $5 million gift from Citadel hedge fund founder and CEO Ken Griffin.
It’s a daunting task, but Daly says the sheer size of the job has actually worked in her favor.
“If the project had been smaller, it would have been more difficult,” she says. “It’s such a big project and it solves so many problems, from pedestrian and bicycle safety to green spaces to tree canopy to connecting communities and stitching them together. It has all these boxes you can check.”
Phase one, “Brickell Backyard,” runs half a mile from the Miami River to Southwest 13th Street near Brickell Ave. It was the hardest to complete and includes an art gallery, a dog park, sports and exercise areas, a sound stage and four butterfly gardens. Scattered along the way are restaurants and food trucks.
Work is now underway on Phase Two, which will cover another 2.25 miles. Some 100,000 plants and trees will be planted. There will be a four-acre nature-inspired playground. Bioswales will be installed to convey storm water and remove pollutants. And the transit station will be transformed into a multi-modal transportation hub, incorporating buses, trolly lines and the train. It’s all scheduled to open in the Spring of 2023.
Phase three, which will cover a seven-mile stretch, is expected to open in 2026. James Corner Field Operations, which also designed New York’s High Line, is responsible for the look and flow of the Underline.
One unique feature of the Underline: All 120 acres of the park will be imbued with broadband WiFi coverage, making it one of the only large parks in the country to be able to make that claim. That’s a feature that not only will make it a park people can work in, but it will bring high-speed internet to some areas of Miami/Dade County that don’t have it right now.
Building and promoting any sort of major project is tough, but making it happen amid a pandemic is even more challenging. Daly, however, says the coronavirus and the isolation it forced on people were actually almost a blessing in disguise for the Underline.
“What it did was validate what we’re doing,” she said. “The numbers tripled during COVID. The outdoors really is the new indoors. People dusted off their bikes. They learned how to ride. They found the hypnotic and health benefits of walking and reconvening with nature. I think that appreciation for the outdoors is here to stay.”
The Underline, for now, is Florida’s only large-scale linear park, but it won’t be like that forever. Fort Lauderdale has already approved the master plan for a $90 million, 31-mile project that’s modeled on what Daly and her team have put together.
Daly says she’s happy to share what she’s learned with the team in charge of that project, just as she leaned on people in Atlanta and New York when planning the Underline. It all supports the larger goal of reclaiming urban areas and making them areas that are accessible to everyone.
“Like the sister project in Atlanta, like the HighLine, if you have a bold vision and embrace beauty, it’s like a magnet, especially when we’ve built something from nothing,” says Daly. “[Many areas along the Underline are] dirty. There’s no infrastructure and it can be scary. But you can create beauty from that—and then it’s everybody’s backyard with 250,000 people living nearby.”
