Should park gym stay or go? Joe Carollo digs in, defers decision a fourth time

The tug of war over an outdoor gym in Maurice A. Ferre Park has become a symbolic measure of Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo’s grip on power: Is it slipping, or tightening?

In the case of the city’s downtown waterfront parks, Carollo is holding on.

A decision on whether to rip out the gym Carollo installed or let it stay was deferred for the fourth time at Thursday’s commission meeting and postponed until May, six months after a city board heard residents’ complaints about the unwanted exercise equipment cluttering the park’s green space and ordered its removal.

“Joe is trying to wear us down so we will give up,” said Michael Feuling, who lives in a condo across the street from the park he visits twice a day. He is opposed to the gym and Carollo’s other pet projects, such as the Dogs and Cats Walkway, a $900,000 menagerie of 52 giant animal statues leading up to the Perez Art Museum of Miami. Next on his list, Carollo wants to build pickleball courts on Ferre Park’s great lawn.

“He thinks we can’t keep showing up at city hall meetings because we have jobs and have to work,” Feuling said. “But we’ll keep fighting. We want Carollo out before he destroys the park completely.”

Carollo is chairman of the Bayfront Park Management Trust and its nine-member board, which oversees operations at Bayfront and Ferre parks and the Trust’s nearly $3 million annual budget.

The gym — which consists of a dozen pieces of equipment on a concrete and rubberized pad in the center of Ferre Park — went up within a span of days in October much to the surprise of park regulars. But Carollo points out that it was discussed and approved at a Trust meeting two years prior.

Downtown residents filed an appeal, and the gym has been sitting there since, sweat-free, weights untouched, pull-up bars unused, surrounded by fencing.

“Only a handful of people are opposed to the gym and that’s because they hate me,” Carollo said Friday after the commission meeting. “How can a handful of people with private gyms in their luxury buildings stop something in a park that belongs to all the people of Miami, including our Black and Hispanic residents?”

City board votes to reverse gym’s approval

The gym was not installed according to proper permitting and design procedure and is not included in the city’s master plan, members of the Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board ruled in November. They voted 5-2 to reverse the planning department’s approval of the gym.

“Here’s something that was thrown together without community input, and it’s a slap in the face to every resident in the city,” board member Adam Gersten said at the time.

The gym must be removed, the board said. Residents suggested it be relocated at another park, community center or Boys and Girls Club.

Commissioners can overrule board recommendations and Carollo has vowed to do so since December, when he encouraged people to “bring your popcorn” to a debate on the issue. But each time the gym’s fate has come up on the commission agenda, it’s been deferred.

Since Carollo was appointed Bayfront Park Management Trust chair in 2018, he’s made changes that have upset many residents who live nearby.

“Joe has spent a lot of taxpayer money turning Ferre Park into an embarrassment while inhibiting the master plan,” said Brian Kern, vice president of the HOA board at the 900 Biscayne Bay tower. He said he’s spent “countless hours” preparing for and attending meetings at city hall to stop or undo Carollo’s plans.

Carollo: He’s improving the park

Carollo counters by calling the residents who live across Biscayne Boulevard “elitists” who don’t want people from other neighborhoods using the city’s premier bayfront park. He asked “what kind of Grinch” wouldn’t want exercise equipment.

“Show me a public park anywhere, even in Moscow, where exercise equipment would be canceled,” said Carollo, who is proud of his record on park improvements in his District 3. “They don’t even like the world-class sculpture we’ve put on display. Or the flowers. They want to throw everything away that we’ve worked hard on and invested in to make the park beautiful. They want to hurt me and the Trust board members. But they can’t.”

Carollo’s opponents unsuccessfully tried to get him removed from the commission in June after a jury found him liable for $63.5 million in damages for using city resources — such as code enforcement officers and attorneys — to harass the owners of Little Havana’s Ball and Chain nightclub in a political vendetta that shut down some of their properties and cost them millions in lost business.

Carollo faced eviction and the sale of his Coconut Grove home at auction to pay some of the judgment before winning an appeal of the case. Carollo and city employees are named in two more lawsuits by the business owners.

“You would think he’d have his hands full with the lawsuits but he doesn’t let go of what he controls,” Kern said.

New director of park trust

In fact, Carollo appointed Jose Suarez as the new executive director of the Trust on Wednesday and the commission confirmed him Thursday. Suarez is the sixth director or interim director in seven years, since Timothy Schmand resigned in 2017. Suarez was Carollo’s chief of staff for four years until 2022, and since then has been global director for XWECAN public relations, according to his LinkedIn account.

“How another Carollo crony was chosen is absurd,” Kern said. “It will be more of the same. Suarez will take orders from Joe until Joe throws him under the bus. The dysfunctional Trust board will continue to rubber-stamp whatever Joe wants at meetings with no notice and no agenda that start two hours late.”

Suarez replaces Miguel Ferro, who resigned last month. Ferro, also appointed by Carollo, served as “artistic director” for Carollo’s district and was involved in the contested conversion of Little Havana’s Tower Theater from an arthouse cinema leased and operated by Miami Dade College to a city-run exhibition and performance space. Ferro is a co-founder of Microtheater Miami, which held performances in cargo containers at Ferre Park until they were removed because they did not have permits, and he was a co-producer of Cuba Under the Stars, a show held at Bayfront Park.

“Ferro was another political appointee rather than a qualified professional,” Kern said. “As a result, the degradation of our parks is laughable.”

The most recent example of an unsightly addition noted by Kern and other park-goers is a new 7-foot tall black fence that was erected with no notice along the south side of the boat basin between the Miami Heat arena and Ferre Park.

“No explanation and it completely obstructs the view of the water,” Kern said. “Everything they do is amateur hour.”

But in a decision applauded by residents Thursday, Commissioner Damian Pardo picked Steve Smith to replace Anne Russ on the Trust board. Smith, president of the 900 Biscayne Bay HOA, has been a leader in the effort to confront Carollo on park issues and relocate the gym.

A Downtown Neighbors Alliance petition to remove Carollo from the chairmanship has more than 900 signatures.

James Torres, alliance president, says residents are fed up with Carollo running the parks “as almighty king,” and want Pardo to take the position because the parks are in Pardo’s District 2.

Before taking any action on chairmanships, commissioners said they want to see the results of forensic audits of the Trust, the Downtown Development Authority and community redevelopment agencies (CRAs).

The alliance petition states that Carollo has paved over parts of the parks “to build controversial amenities that only Joe Carollo seems to want,” such as the hot and stinky artificial turf at the dog park; executed no-bid contracts, such as the one for construction of the Dogs and Cats Walkway; ignored the city’s $10 million master plan drawn by a prominent landscape architecture firm; cut down trees without permits; allowed projects without permits or safety measures, one of which resulted in a child falling into a cement pit, and supported LED advertising billboards on park property that Carollo says will generate $800,000 per year for the city.