Project City: Miami Beach

Miami Beach Recreational Corridor Phase II

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CGA designed and permitted an on-grade, ADA-accessible pathway that supports the use of pedestrians and cyclists and an integral component of the City’s overall resiliency and climate adaptation plan, directly supporting the City’s investment in strengthening the dunes for storm surge protection and by providing a critical component of its alternative transportation network. The project is a part of the greater Atlantic Greenway Network, and comprises a critical component of the bicycle facilities throughout the City of Miami Beach. It connects Indian Beach Park on the south to the North Beach Recreational Trail at Allison Park with a 2-mile paver walkway, continuing the City’s unique branding qualities.

The path was permitted in accordance with the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection’s and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s regulations, as the entirety of the project lies within State-owned lands. The scope of work included extensive public outreach, branding and site design, coastal engineering, dune planting plans, lighting design, and bidding and construction administration. The project connects business districts, cultural/tourism centers, parks, residential neighborhoods and the beaches, and it completed a major portion of the essential north-south connector of the AGN to facilitate pedestrian and non-motorized transportation throughout the City.

Urban Forestry Master Plan

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In partnership with Davey Resource Group and Calvin, Giordano and Associates, Inc. (CGA) has developed an Urban Forestry Master Plan, focused on managing the City’s trees into the future. The plan establishes a clear set of priorities and objectives that aid in the management, maintenance, and future planting of trees throughout the City by providing a sustainable and strategic framework.

CGA’s primary contribution to the master plan was the development of an implementable ‘Tool Kit’ that advances the recommendations in the master plan to generate standards that guide the roll-out of these. The ‘Tool Kit’ includes specific case studies of unique conditions in the City that address the intersection of urban forestry considerations with issues such as historic preservation, sea-level rise, and community/neighborhood identities with a focus on satisfying the City’s goal to have strategies in place to increase resiliency and climate adaptation. Additionally, the ‘Tool Kit’ establishes acceptable plant palettes and the species’ most desirable use-situations, as well as constructability standards for balancing adequate root-growth zones with green infrastructure and urban streetscape build-out conditions. Finally, the ‘Tool Kit’ establishes a street-tree prioritization plan to guide future streetscape projects, examines and establishes a metric of measurement to define “success” in future-planned City projects across several different departments, and it establishes parameters to facilitate the cost estimating and planning for these during the budget cycles and scope processes of each project.

North Beach Oceanside Park

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Miami Beach issued a simple request: to re-design a park. Specifically, the Request for Qualifications stated that the work products for the North Beach Oceanside Park would include conceptual drawing(s), surveying, geotechnical, design development, estimate(s) of probable construction cost, construction documents, permitting, bidding/award, and construction administration services. Embedded within the expectations of the City was a critical design component – the final design must define a new identity for the North Beach community by tapping into and revealing established values and qualities present in the site.

The resultant design took the densely-vegetated, 30-acre park and conceived it as a series of carefully orchestrated thresholds where park users will never feel secluded, inactive or unengaged. The design resulted in a necklace of ‘pods’ that operate as a spine to the project and serve to protect habitat and increase the City’s management of these natural resources. The walkways are scaled so that they foster continuous activities in potentially endless configurable ways and augments the opportunities for resiliency design by strengthening the dune, utilizing passive green infrastructure and LID stormwater management strategies. The project also incorporated a rebranding of the City’s established beachfront with an on-grade beachwalk destined to be a terminus to the City’s overall transportation infrastructure. The product developed for the park is one that will provide an immediate transformative quality for the North Beach Community, it will enhance cultural celebration, and it embodies the City’s values of good, environmental design and access to great public spaces.

South Florida DMS Improvement and Replacement

South Florida DMS

Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise; South Florida DMS Improvement and Replacement; Project FM # 435605-7-52-01:

Consists of the construction of new ADMS structures and demolition of existing units along the approach streets to Sawgrass Expressway, Homestead exits at 288 Street and 137 Avenue, and Lake Worth Road. New CCTV poles will be installed with ITS cabinets with transfer switch and generator pads. The project also consists of fiber installation using open trench and directional bore, splicing new power services, and replacement of Large walk-in DMS units over the Turnpike mainline.