County grants River Landing 1.5 acres for linear park

River Landing riverwalk
Rendering of the River Landing riverwalk

The Miami-Dade County Commission gave 65,340 square feet of waterfront land to a nonprofit affiliated with the developers of the $300 million River Landing so that it can be turned into a 50-foot-wide linear park.

The land transfer occurred around midnight on June 30 following a busy day at the Stephen P. Clark Center that dealt with sheltering downtown Miami’s homeless, making marijuana possession a misdemeanor offense, cab drivers protesting Uber, and an appeal over the historic designation of the circa-1958 Bay Harbor Continental.

Located at 1280 Northwest 11th Street, the land given to the River Landing project, now used as a parking lot, has been appraised as high as $4.9 million, according to a county memo. But for the transfer to be final, River Landing’s developers, Andrew Hellinger and Coralee Penabad, must invest $4 million within three years on greenway and seawall improvements. River Landing’s lobbyist, Brian May, said his clients also will be prohibited from developing the donated land.

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“It can only be used as a park,” May promised. “There can be no building, no Starbucks, no nothing. This is meant to be a riverwalk.”

When completed, River Landing will include include 426,000-square-feet of retail, 475 apartments and more than 2,200 parking spaces. The project had already received $7.5 million from the county’s Economic Development Fund on March 4.