Museum Park Fact Sheet

Miami Needs Museum Park
Museum Park is the City of Miami's urban redesign vision for the area now known as Bicentennial Park, an underused 29-acre property on Biscayne Bay, in downtown Miami. The Park, a catalyst for the transformation of downtown Miami, plays a key role in the City’s efforts to make Greater Miami a global capital in the twenty-first century. A vibrant mix of green space and cultural offerings, the project includes a premiere public park anchored by landmark new facilities for the Miami Art Museum (MAM) and the Miami Science Museum, which will host a branch of the Historical Museum of Southern Florida.

Notice to Professional Consultants

• Request for Qualifications (PDF) – Preconstruction Services (12 MB)
  

Goals of Museum Park

• Restore the park's waterfront land to public use
• Revitalize downtown Miami and its surrounding neighborhoods
• Build first-class educational and cultural resources for the region's residents and visitors
• Affirm Greater Miami’s unique geographic position and cultural role
• Strengthen the economy by contributing to tourism, the region’s number one industry

Museum Park: An Engine for Economic Development
Studies show that over the course of their first decade, MAM and the MMSP at Museum Park will have a $2 billion economic impact and will create 1,700 jobs in the community annually. This is a significant return on investment.

Museum Park: A Private/Public Collaboration
The plan to transform Bicentennial Park into Museum Park is the result of an extraordinary private-public partnership with four stake-holders: the Miami Art Museum and the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium, both private 501 (c) 3 institutions; Miami-Dade County, the source of the General-Obligation Bond that will provide funds for the envisioned art and science museums; and the City of Miami, owner of the land and one of 30 municipalities in Miami-Dade County.

Museum Park Chronology:

• 1995: During a community-wide planning process, the public sets the creation of a new landmark building and a sculpture park as a key goal for MAM.
• 1996 – 1999: With nearly $1 million in private support, MAM assembles a national team of experts and maps out the Museum ’s growth in the 21st century.
• March 2000 – May 2001: The City of Miami conducts a comprehensive public process to determine the future of Bicentennial Park. By overwhelming majority, citizens participating in the process select the Museum Park vision for this underused waterfront land.
• November 2001: City of Miami voters approve, by an unprecedented 57 percent majority, the Homeland Defense Neighborhood Improvement Bond, which includes seed funds for Museum Park.
• May 2004: Following an international call for qualifications, the City of Miami’s blue-ribbon committee selects the respected New York firm Cooper, Robertson & Partners as the master planners for Museum Park.
• November 2004: Miami-Dade County passes the Building Better Communities Bond Program, which provides funds to construct and improve cultural and educational facilities, including Museum Park. Passed by an overwhelming 65 percent majority, the cultural and educational component of the historic Building Better Communities Bond Program promised to be an important initiative for generations to come.
• January 2005: MAM begins work with the Paratus Group of New York, project management specialists, and by year’s end completes a comprehensive draft of the functional building program for its new facility.
• April 2005: The City of Miami initiates the Park ’s master-planning process with Cooper, Robertson & Partners.
• June 2006: The City of Miami presents its master plan for Museum Park.
• September 2006: MAM selects Herzog & de Meuron to design its new facility in Museum Park.
  

MAM: Private Funding Matches Public Support
The Museum anticipates a total cost for the building project of $208 million, the largest portion of which—$120 million—will be used to cover the costs directly associated with the construction of the building and sculpture garden. The total cost also includes $70 million for the Museum’s operating endowment and $18 million in transitional expenses related to the project.

The largest single source of funding for the project is the County’s General-Obligation Bond. In November 2004, Miami-Dade County voters overwhelmingly approved a bond that includes $100 million for the construction of the Museum building. The trustees of the Museum are committed to raising the remainder of the project funds from a combination of public and private sources, and has begun the fundraising process.

MAM’s New Building and Sculpture Garden
MAM's new building will include spacious galleries that will permit larger, more diverse, and more expansive displays of the Museum’s permanent collection and special exhibitions of international art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Also key to the project is an education complex with a library, auditorium, classrooms, and space for hands-on workshops for children, enabling MAM to further develop its education program, already the largest art-museum education program in Miami-Dade County. Included as well will be a bistro/café, a museum store, and other amenities for the public.

MAM’s future building is estimated at 125,000-square feet. The Museum anticipates a total cost for the building project of $208 million, the largest portion of which—$120 million—will be used to cover the costs directly associated with the construction of the building and sculpture garden. The total cost also includes $70 million for the Museum’s operating endowment and $18 million in transitional expenses related to the project.

MAM's Campaign Leadership
MAM trustees Ambassador Paul L. Cejas, Jorge M. Pérez, and Craig Robins are co-chairs of MAM's "Art for All People" campaign to raise private donations for the new Miami Art Museum.

The Hon. Mr. Cejas, former U. S. ambassador to Belgium, is chairman of PLC Investments, a real-estate and venture-capital investment firm. A former chairman of the Miami-Dade County School Board and a former member of the Florida Board of Regents, he currently serves as a trustee of Florida International University and the University of Miami.

Mr. Pérez is chairman of The Related Group of Florida, South Florida's premier multi-family housing developer. Co-chairman of the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, he is a trustee of the University of Miami and serves as vice chairman of the Miami-Dade Cultural Affairs Council and as a director of the Miami Film Festival. He is a past member of the National Council on the Arts.

Mr. Robins is founder and president of Dacra Development, an innovator in creative real estate development. He is also principal of Design Miami and Design Miami/Basel, invitational events featuring galleries of modern and contemporary museum-quality design. Mr. Robins’s long-term commitment to design has most recently earned him the 2006 Design Patron Award from the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The award recognizes an individual’s patronage of design within the business and civic sectors.

09/19/06

Click for instructions and free download of Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Please note that you must have Adobe Acrobat* to view the application.