Miami has received $60 million for a new park in Overtown designed to alleviate some of the isolation brought by construction of Interstates 95 and 395 in the 1960s, which devastated what was once a prosperous Black neighborhood.
The city of Miami on Thursday celebrated receiving the federal grant from the Biden administration to cover most of the costs of the Underdeck, a mile-long linear park to be built under the newly elevated span of I-395 that’s divided Overtown since the 1960s.
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Designed as a 33-acre park, the Underdeck would weave bike paths and walking trails through green space, playgrounds, dog parks and other recreational offerings in a corridor stretching from Overtown’s eastern edge near Interstate 95 to the city’s museum district, blocks from Biscayne Bay.
“We are here because this expressway went through the neighborhood of Overtown and decimated that community,” Christine King, chair of the Miami City Commission, said at a press conference Thursday morning. “We are bringing that community back to its vibrancy.”
Construction of I-95 and I-395 in the 1960s is considered the end of a prosperous era for Overtown as a hub for Black middle-class residents of Miami. With thousands of residents losing their homes to eminent domain purchases, the new highways sapped the neighborhood of homeowners and renters. It also left behind concrete barriers that isolated Overtown.
The Underdeck is designed as a scenic gathering spot and pedestrian corridor along the original path of I-395, but with the highway well above the new park. It would stretch from Gibson Park to the west to an area just north of the Pérez Art Museum Miami on the eastern edge of Miami.
While similar in name and concept, the Underdeck project is not related to the Underline, a 10-mile park that has partially opened under Metrorail tracks south of the Miami River. While full construction costs are about $140 million for the Underline, a Miami-Dade County project, the Underdeck has a budget of about $83 million.
The federal Department of Transportation this week announced the Underdeck award as one of 132 recipients of “Reconnecting Communities” grants funded partially by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Lillian Blondet, head of the city’s grants office, said the federal award was the largest grant she’s seen Miami receive in her 12 years there.
The Underdeck can’t start construction until Florida finishes the $840 million “Signature Bridge” project that is elevating I-395 as a way to speed up traffic where that highway meets I-95 in downtown Miami. The state’s bridge project has a completion target of 2027.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said Florida has committed about $10 million to the Underdeck, leaving another $10 million that he said Miami should be able to cover as a construction date gets closer. “This is really, truly, a blessing for our city,” he said.
Part of the project elevates I-395 in areas from only 18 feet above street level to six stories above, creating the kind of open space that makes the Underdeck possible. The I-395 redesign also is shrinking the number of columns below the highway from 800 to 94, according to the city’s federal grant application.
A 2013 report by the University of Miami’s Center for Urban and Community Design described the impact of highway construction on Overtown’s history.
“By far the most dramatic characteristic of the existing conditions of Overtown is the discontinuity of the neighborhood and the apparent lack of a central ‘place,’” the report stated. “The highway intersection that was built in the 1960’s decimated the center of the historic neighborhood.”