Miami Beach’s quaint Espanola Way has been under renovation to become a permanently pedestrian street since significantly earlier than when I last wrote about it–October last year, “Espanola Way to be Permanently Pedestrianized”–and from the looks of things pretty much zero progress has been made since then. So, what’s going on here?
According to signage accompanying construction fencing, new water mains and storm drainage is being added, all of the current pavement and sidewalks are being removed, and new decorative pavement, landscaping, and lighting is coming in.
When completed, the renovation will effect the block between Alton Road and Drexel Avenue. The old asphalt has been ripped up, damaging portions of historic buildings on either side. A colonnade outside a restaurant on the south side of Espanola is in particularly bad shape. And a few months ago Pitbull shot a music video on the site, taking advantage of the old-world look of what is basically now a dirt road.
[…] Anywho, now that the history lesson’s over, back to business. We originally wrote about the pedestrianization of the Spanish Village section of Espanola back in October, when The Big Bubble was still called Sean of Miami, and construction fencing surrounded the block. It took the City of Miami Beach months and months to really begin work though, ripping the asphalt street bed out, and then basically doing nothing, with construction stalling and the road being in shambles straight through the middle of the tourist season. In March we pointed that mess out. […]