Sombrero Beach Park

Sombrero Beach Park, located in the City of Marathon, has been for years the core of the City’s civic spaces. The park has been used for daily recreational uses as a beachfront park and for seasonal events, such as the City’s Fourth of July Celebration. Additionally, the beach park is a designated turtle nesting habitat, utilized by four predominant species of turtles. CGA was approached by the City and the Community of Marathon to redesign the park to expand its programming for recreational uses, enhance its environmental condition as a turtle nesting habitat, and provide new on-site amenities that were sensitive to the architectural character of the Florida Keys. More importantly, the redesign for the park preserved and strengthened the role the public space had with the aspects of the community’s identity. CGA expanded the program for the park to include extensive, walkable circuits for pedestrian use, children’s playground and play equipment, restroom facilities, new gateway and controlled access features, added picnic shelters, volleyball courts, and multiple-use open public spaces that lend themselves to the personalization of the park by the visitors. The design reestablished a beach dune habitat in a manner that would be conducive to the promotion of turtle nesting and the protection of the nests from tampering or neglectful destruction.