Patricia Menendez/ Staff Writer
From the Rickenbacker Causeway Toll Plaza to CocoPlum Circle lies the five mile Commodore Trail, a resource for runners, bikers, walkers and a focal point for nine University graduate students from the School of Architecture.
In Spring 2019, FIU Professor of Landscape Architecture, Ebru Özer, dedicated her graduate design studio, “Community studio” to the improvement of the Commodore Trail. Each of her students chose a specific problem area of the trail and developed their own unique solutions.
The students involved were Christopher Vierbergen, Patricia Fabregas, Bryan Mcneil, Mara Stegaru, Natalia Lopes, Daniela Rodriguez, Beatriz Alchalaby, Kacey Parrales and Alex Stauber.
“Students love it because they have a real client, a real project with the potential to be built or potential to impact decisionmakers ideas,” said Özer.
Özer is known for her work on the Ludlam trail, a 6.2 mile trail that runs north to south from 67th to 72nd avenue and from Perimeter Road in the north to US 1 in the south.
Through her involvement with the Ludlam trail, Özer met Mark Heinicke, senior park planner at the Miami-Dade Parks, Recreation and Open Space Department. Heinicke recommended Özer to Hank Sanchez-Resnik, co-chair of Friends of the Commodore Trail, to help improve the underserviced Trail.
“Whenever they heard something related to trails that has potential to be studied by students, they contacted me. This is how the Commodore Trail came about,” said Özer.
At the end of fall 2018, Sanchez-Resnik and Özer did a walkthrough of the trail and discussed what students will be looking at and what they could work on. From there, Özer developed her syllabus and in spring 2019 the students began their projects.
The Commodore Trail runs along some of Miami’s historical landmarks including Vizcaya, The Kampong and the Barnacle Historic State Park.
The trail is named after Ralph Munroe, also known as Commodore Ralph Munroe because of his 22-year presidential position at the Biscayne Yacht Club. Munroe’s family home is the Barnacle.
Friends of the Commodore Trail is a project of the parent organization Bike Coconut Grove, who Sanchez-Resnik founded. Friends of the Commodore Trail came about when co-chair Mary Munroe Seabrook, the great granddaughter of Ralph Munroe contacted Resnik.
“We said there is not enough happening with the Commodore Trail, people are not aware enough, we need to build a movement. That’s what we started to do and that’s what we are continuing to do,” Resnik said.
The project was officially founded in April 2018.
Resnik describes some parts of the trail to be “very dangerous” because they are too close to the roadway and the surface of the trail is not well maintained.
“The Commodore trail itself is very heavily used even though it is not in good shape. It needs a great deal of work. A lot of it is not really improved. A lot of it has actually not been built, just marked off,” Resnik said to Student Media.
The trail runs alongside two major roadways: the Main Highway and South Bayshore Drive.
This is one of the reasons, according to Sanchez-Resnik as to why the trail remains underdeveloped, because Miami-Dade county focuses more on mitigating traffic and maintaining the roads than improving the trail.
“[Friends of the Commodore Trail] recognizes that these are very important highways. What we are saying is that cars are not everything,” said Resnik. “The county is growing up now. We are maturing as a region and we are starting to realize that moving cars around is not going to solve all of our problems.”
Another reason for the trail’s underdevelopment according to Resnik is that there was no advocacy group for it prior to Friends.
Three of the students’ projects were submitted to the Miami Foundation’s Public Space Challenge, a contest open to the public for ideas based on the mobility of Miami.
Daniela Rodriguez’s project focuses on creating an “eco-friendly pathway” on the trail where stormwater and runoff from the roadways can be filtered by native plants.
Meanwhile, Alexander Stauber’s project is based on the history of the Commodore Trail and aims to add features along it that highlights said historical sites and landmarks, like the Kampong.
Nathalia Lopes’ project tackles the lighting concerns of the trail and proposes to add “interactive light elements” along it to aid users of the trail during dark hours.
“Our goal is to make things visible, to highlight things and to show them the visions and possibilities,” said Özer. “Once we show them how the trail can be transformed visually with explanations, it becomes more convincing, and people like decision makers can say ‘hey there is a good potential, maybe we can invest some money.’”
The nine students presented their projects at a reception organized by the Friends of the Commodore Trail on Tuesday, May 7th at the Kampong.
There they presented to elected officials such as City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and District 2 City Commissioner Ken Russell.
“Our mayor and commissioner were very positive. They said some of these ideas could be implemented,” Özer said.
Aside from the three University submissions, Friends of the Commodore Trail also submitted six other projects to the challenge.
Both Özer and Resnik are currently waiting for the announcement of the finalists of the Public Space Challenge scheduled for late June. They hope that one of their projects will be in the running for a portion of the $250,000 investment from the Miami Foundation.
Özer is planning on continuing her design studio on the Commodore Trail either in fall 2019 or spring 2020. However, this time she is thinking about focusing more on the connectivity of the Commodore Trail to other trails, like the Rickenbacker trail and Old Cutler trail.
“The Commodore Trail is potentially one of the most beautiful places to walk, run and bike. But that beauty has not been realized because not enough attention has been paid to this wonderful resource,” Resnik said.
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