Urbanism / Our Streets
The Short Street that Could
History and future of Avenue 3. By Glenda Puente and Steve Dutton
In the early days since Miami’s foundation in 1896, the two-block street known today as NE 3rd Avenue was a residential enclave where some of the city pioneers built their first homes. For example, wrote Casey Piket for Downtown News, Col. William Burdine who opened “The Florida Store”, James Leaming, owner of the Leamington Hotel, and E.A. Waddell, the city’s first real estate agent, just to name a few.
“Only a block from the city’s original shoreline, the street nicknamed Short Street was the preferred path of the coaches transporting visitors who arrived at the train station, near today’s Freedom Tower, to Henry Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel (built in 1897, demolished in 1930). While it began residential, the street quickly changed as commercial buildings replaced houses in the 1910s and 1920s, part of a building boom that changed the landscape of downtown Miami for good.”
A few buildings from the 1960s and 1970s can still be found on the street today like the Galleria International Mall. In 2005, 50 Biscayne, a 54-story condominium with 528 units, injected a significant number of residents to the street. In 2017, Hurricane Irma caused irreparable damage to the former Greyhound station building at the corner of NE 3rd Avenue and NE 1st Street and where the beloved Manolo and Rene 24/7 outdoor coffee corner operated for almost 30 years following the departure of the station, causing the building to be demolished in 2019.
Today, there is a community-driven effort to upgrade and bring back attention to this forgotten, yet historically significant, street.
According to Jane Jacobs, an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to city building, streets and their sidewalks — the main public places of a city — are its most vital organs. As more and more residents move into the high-rise towers of downtown Miami, it is clear that streets must increasingly focus on pedestrian use and Avenue 3/Short Street has all the potential to do so.
With nearly 20 restaurants facing the street or inside the mall, Avenue 3/Short Street has organically become a meeting place for workers and visitors in the daytime. However, the energy dims in the evening due to lack of appropriate lighting and sense of danger resulting in the thousands of downtown residents who live above the street, or within just a couple of blocks, seldom patronizing the businesses after sunset — most prefer to take food to go or order delivery.
Avenue 3 Miami, a grassroots initiative for the reactivation of Avenue 3/Short Street, has organized many events with local musical talent in the evenings where the scenario completely changes, people feel safe and happy to partake in the street life, which in turn results in an increase in sales for the local, small businesses, an example of culture acting as an economic driver — it is important to highlight small businesses are what power our economy, according to the Small Business Administration, small businesses in the United States account for 99.9% of all businesses.
Local, small businesses are what give any place its character and it is also where neighbors can meet. Having chosen an urban life, where daily activities and culture can intersect in ways suburban life cannot, many residents are surprised by how much effort it takes for neighbors living vertically to meet. Sometimes only a few seconds in an elevator is all one has to meet neighbors and maybe it will be weeks before the same neighbor is seen again. Therefore, we are intent on finding other ways to build a neighborhood community.
It is terrific to have a street full of outdoor and indoor restaurants nearby for interactions to happen, yet people want more. The user experience, the story of a place, the curb appeal and wide sidewalks are some of the things people look for today and something the Avenue 3 initiative has been working towards since 2018 through branding and placemaking based on local history and cultural diversity.
As a neighbor, Martin Fenton, says, “a short walk to Avenue 3, gives me my own international travel experience. I can dine in Italy, Asia, Latin and South America, even in Serbia! It’s been a lifesaver having this street of eclectic dining experiences so close by.” Another neighbor, Silvia Perez, says, “an authentic global traveler/urban explorer will head straight to Avenue 3 to feel the pulse of urban Miami.”
It will not take much effort to make improvements to the street to increase the feeling of safety at night to join your neighbors and friends outdoors or inside one of the small, family-owned restaurants. Improvements for daytime include repainting the parking lanes, removing the cars, and permitting for long-term use by restaurants for tables and chairs to clear the sidewalk for pedestrian use, a scenario that was successfully piloted for 3 days in 2018 during Taste of Avenue 3; a scenario that is needed now more than ever, for the sake of the local businesses and for the sake of a community that, like the rest of the world, is longing for connection to people and the outdoors.
Beautiful Streets make Beautiful Cities
Victor Dover, an urban planner focused on restoring healthy neighborhoods as the basis for sound communities, revealed in the opening lines of his book Street Design, the secret to great cities: “The design of cities begins with the design of streets. To make a good city, you need good streets, and that means streets where people want to be. Streets need to be interesting, and they need to be beautiful. They need to be places.”
Avenue 3, or Short Street, has all the elements to be a place.
Glenda Puente, an architect, teaches at the University of Miami and Florida International University. Steve Dutton is the founder of the Avenue 3 Initiative. This article was excerpted from DOWNTOWN MIAMI HISTORY, courtesy of DASS BOOKS.
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