From an aerial view, Downtown Miami stretches across the ground like a concrete desert: vacant lots, rubble, and at best, overspill parking. To the naked eye, possibilities for turnabout look bleak—especially given the area’s decades-long history of urban decay. However, Mark Lesniak (Maharishi School class of ‘98) is working on a project that will not only transform five acres of this cement wasteland into a lush, sustainable oasis, but can do so within 30 days.
On the Board of Directors for Miami’s non-profit Omni/ParkWest Redevelopment Association (OPWRA), Mark has spent the past year working with developers, municipal agencies, elected officials, and the local Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). The plan: to create a multi-purpose green space called Grand Central Park where the ruins of Miami’s old sports arena once lay. Phase I of the project removed over 100 truck loads of debris that reached as high as the royal palms on the site using over $100,000 of private cash or in-kind donations.
(Photo from left to right: Mark stands with developer/general contractor Brad Knoefler in front of the planned site of Grand Central Park)
The park’s main turf—an inexpensive, drought-tolerant microclover—will host local musical acts, open-air retail including farmers markets and artisans’ stalls. An inflatable movie screen will play bike-in outdoor movies, and a stage will transform the site into an outdoor concert venue. Neighboring businesses can hold company picnics and kids can organize soccer games. “Someone was even talking about bringing in a wave pool or an ice skating rink,” Mark says.
In addition to providing a platform for local economic and recreational activity, the park boasts multiple green features that benefit the city: alongside the no-mow microclover and a host of native flora (including a Slash Pine forest and Cypress bog), the park’s design includes rainwater harvest gardens.
“The rainwater catchment ponds are my favorite part,” Mark says. “A huge problem in urban areas today is rain water run off. After the first 20 minutes of a rain event all the oils and chemicals from the road turn into a toxic soup that drains directly in to the water supply - unfiltered. Turns out that certain plants love the toxins in that water. By using those plants in ponds, we can collect the rain water and mitigate some of the pollutants before they get to the open sea or ground water.”
But Grand Central Park is even more than a multi-purpose green space: “It's an innovative in-fill project and could be an example for other large assemblages of land that are vacant and blighted because of stalled large scale development projects,” Mark says. In other words, the park is a model for creating temporary, low-cost green spaces that make use of high-priced vacant lots until owners decide to build.
“We don’t have to wait around for someone to buy up and develop the land.” Mark says. “We can have a good quality of life now.”
And when Mark says “now,” he means it: construction of Grand Central Park, once the funds are in place, will take as little as 30 days. Once built, a small admittance fee for non-locals plus a nominal fee for parking will help fund the lease while the park exists.
“Grand Central Park is exciting to me because it demonstrates that redevelopment money can be spent in relatively small quantities and have a big impact.” Mark says. Mark himself worked on the grant proposal that garnered $200,000 from the CRA—the money necessary for Phase II of the project.
Mark came to Miami from New York, home of the country’s largest concrete jungle. However, the topography of Florida’s beachfront metropolis still caught him off guard. “When I saw the Park West neighborhood in Downtown Miami I was shocked,” Mark relates, "it looks like a wasteland."
“I got involved with OPWRA because they were one of the few groups actively trying to change the status quo in the area,” Mark explains. Now, in large part thanks to his own efforts, the OPWRA will indeed be changing the status quo.
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