ALBERT PALLOT PARK -- CITY OF MIAMI

TOO MUCH PAVEMENT CAN DESTROY A PARK – SOME IS NEEDED TO PROVIDE BARRIER-FREE WHEELCHAIR ACCESS FOR ALL

Albert Pallot Park is a three-acre oasis on Biscayne Bay in the Edgewater Neighborhood.

It is immediately north of the Julia Tuttle Causeway, two blocks east of Biscayne Boulevard at Northeast 38th Street.

The urban park features a wheelchair-accessible paved path along the bay front and through the park.

When a developer paid more than $2 million for improvements, including a sea wall, many neighbors and activists complained about the amount of concrete.

We have fought to protect historic William Jennings Bryan Park for being paved over, so we empathize.

However, there are two sides to the story.

Much of Miami’s bay front is off limits to all and even less of it is accessible to people with disabilities.

A grand, wide, flowing path from the two accessible parking spaces to the water’s edge is exactly what is needed to make the park welcoming to all people of all abilities.

There is a huge swatch of pavement along the entire bay front of the park – and it is deep, maybe 30 feet deep.

That might be overkill. Perhaps something 12 to 15 feet deep would have left more natural grass. But paving from edge to edge of the bay front is not problematic – as it provides one of the few locations where people in power and manual wheelchairs, or scooters and rolling walkers, can all enjoy barrier-free access.

There also is a giant M made of dominoes.

We’d like to think it stands for Miami, the Magic City.

It perhaps memorializes the surname of the developer family, whose late founding father had a history of federal discrimination complaints/cases that goes against everything we believe in, in terms of equality, inclusion and diversity.