2022
A Big Year For The Commodore Trail
The master plan process began and design will be complete in Spring 2023! and ready to present to elected officials next Summer. You can continue to share your opinions through the master plan section of this website.
Detailed surveys of the Trail corridor’s historic features and trees have been completed as part of the pre-design infrastructure surveys. It’s super important to know what needs must be addressed. No one likes surprises.
Community input sessions were held to gather feedback on preliminary design solutions to some of the Trail’s most challenging issues.
Early construction projects along the Trail are already funded and queued. They’re just waiting for the design and engineering.
The Trail redesign was featured in a front page Miami Herald article. On May 9, the Miami Herald published an article about the redesign and rebuilding of 1.5 miles of South Bayshore Drive between Darwin St. and Mercy Way. This Miami-Dade County project has been in the planning stages for many years, but now it’s on track to be completed by 2026. Please click here to read the article.
FCT board members meet regularly with County and City elected officials and staff professionals to ensure continuing budgetary support and departmental attention to urgent safety problems.
The Friends continued community-building events to create understanding and connection between neighbors and support the Trail’s development. The Secret Garden Tour, a neighborhood dog show, history walking tours, pop-up block parties and neighborhood volunteer recruitment drives – all built on past successes.
We launched the Commodore Trail Tree Initiative – a proactive tree stewardship program along the Trail. The Initiative strives to implement the Miami Canopy Coalition recommendations. Environmental stewardship is a cornerstone of the Friends. The Miami Canopy Coalition is led by the Dade Heritage Trust.
Board recruitment and volunteer development accelerated through 2022 with a strong candidate pipeline ahead. There’s a valued place for you and your talents within your busy schedule. Say “Count me in!”
2021
Event Programs Accelerate
As the community began to emerge from the constraints of Covid-19, we organized several successful events focused on outdoor gatherings, bicycling, and walking. They include:
Secret Garden Tour A biking-walking tour of several outstanding and little-known private gardens in Coconut Grove.
Trail Mixer Friends and Commodore Trail supporters came together for an afternoon get-together and social event at the Barnacle. It was enhanced by delicious BBQ cooked onsite and Grove-made key lime pies.
Commodore Crawl Local historian Iris Guzman Kolaya led this informative walk along the Commodore Trail that highlighted important historic sites. The event helped to raise funds for our organization and was completely sold out.
2020
Adding Building Blocks
Covid-19 delayed or slowed many of our projects and plans. Nevertheless, we continued to move forward on many different fronts. They include:
Development of a long-term strategic plan, including outreach to community leaders and local businesses and homeowner associations.
Continued planning for our Public Space Challenge project at Douglas Rd. and Ingraham Highway. We have received an extension from the Miami Foundation and are working with the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County to develop specific steps to complete this project in the next year.
Expansion of our board of directors. More here.
Development and expansion of our new website, informational materials about the Commodore Trail, and an expanded social media presence. We launched our new website in October 2020 and will continue to expand it and add new features.
A fundraising initiative to support staff for our organization who will carry the work forward for years to come.
2019
Early Partners
An important step forward was our partnership with a studio class in the Landscape Architecture Department at FIU led by Professor Ebru Ozer. The students’ semester-long project was to design creative approaches to improving the Commodore Trail. We met several times with the students, both on the Trail and at FIU, and we participated in the review and assessment of their projects.
One of our leading partners, the Kampong, agreed to host an event featuring the FIU students’ presentations. Many community leaders attended the event, including Mayor Francis Suarez, District 2 Commissioner Ken Russell, and key members of the City of Miami staff. Two days after the event the Miami Herald published a front-page article about it. To read the article, click here.
The Miami Foundation awarded $25,000 to our proposed Public Space Challenge project. The project, currently under way and delayed because of Covid-19, will redesign and rebuild the intersection of Douglas Rd. and Ingraham Highway, one of the most dangerous places on the Commodore Trail.
Miami-Dade County District 7 Commissioner Xavier Suarez pledged $1.2 million in County transportation funds to improving the Commodore Trail. Subsequently the amount was increased to just over $2 million. Agreements linking Miami-Dade County and the Cities of Miami and Coral Gables were developed to create funded projects, including development of a Framework Plan to guide Trail planners over the long term.
Friends of the Commodore Trail was incorporated as an independent nonprofit corporation. Previously, we had been a project of Bike Coconut Grove.
2018
First Steps
We launched an online petition to gain support for improvements to the Commodore Trail. Nearly 1,200 people have signed. View the petition here and sign it if you haven’t done that already.
Our first meeting of community leaders and supporters took place at the Coconut Grove Sailing Club. Co-chair Hank Sanchez-Resnik talked about the background of advocacy for the Trail. He started to focus on the Commodore Trail in 2005 when he became aware of a 2003 study that identified the Commodore Trail as the highest priority for trail improvement in Miami-Dade County.
For the first several months we focused on creating a core group of community leaders and supporters. We met mainly in each other’s homes and in local cafes. This was an intense time of building our base for action and making presentations to a variety of local organizations to familiarize them with the need to improve the Commodore Trail and enlist their support.
