The Museum of Miami wants to restore the historic Pan Am Terminal at Dinner Key, where Miami City Hall is located, build an adjacent museum building and create a public campus on Biscayne Bay under a proposed public-private partnership.
The proposal follows a city commission vote to keep commission meetings at the Coconut Grove landmark built in the 1930s as the city prepares to move its administrative operations to Miami Freedom Park.
The museum proposed funding the terminal restoration and construction of a new museum building, according to a letter of intent from CEO and Executive Director Natalia Crujeiras to Mayor Eileen Higgins, the city commission and City Manager James Reyes.
The city would retain ownership of the property and lease the building to the museum. The museum is currently located at 101 West Flagler Street in the Miami-Dade Cultural Plaza in downtown Miami.
The museum is asking the city to green light the financial, design, environmental and historic analysis needed to determine whether the project is viable.
The museum wants the city to identify whether it prefers to receive a formal unsolicited proposal under Florida’s public-private partnership law or initiate its own city-led process for reuse of the property. It is also asking for authorization to negotiate an interim agreement that would allow the museum to begin predevelopment work at its own expense.
The museum said improvements would be dedicated to the city and that the arrangement would not include a mortgage, lien or debt that could put the city’s ownership interest at risk.
“It’s too soon to know what the budget might look like,” a spokesperson for the museum told The Real Deal. “Once we have a clearer picture of what the city wants, there will be a budget in place.”
The museum is proposing limits on commercialization of the site. Food, beverage and retail uses would be restricted to a defined portion of the campus, while the proposal explicitly rules out residential development, a commercial tower, nightclub or large-scale entertainment venue.
Instead, the museum is pitching the Dinner Key marina complex as a civic and cultural campus anchored by public access to the waterfront. The museum said its concept would follow the principles of the Coconut Grove Waterfront Master Plan adopted by the city in 2008.
That plan calls for a waterfront park, continuous baywalk, native vegetation, protected water views and a pedestrian-oriented public realm. The museum is proposing to build on that framework with additional open space and an improved baywalk.
The proposal calls for guaranteed public access to the baywalk and grounds, free or nominal-admission museum days, protected view corridors and free or reduced-cost school programming for Miami-Dade County Public Schools students.
The Pan Am terminal opened in 1934, when Pan American Airways used the nearby island Dinner Key as a base for flights connecting Miami with Latin America and the Caribbean. The city later moved its government operations into the building in 1954 and have held city commission meetings there since.
The museum’s preliminary concept is intended to complement the terminal’s Streamline Moderne architecture and remain in scale with nearby buildings. The commission chamber would also remain available for city meetings and could be used for community forums, assemblies, naturalization ceremonies and youth civics programming.
The museum’s collection offers a direct connection to the site’s history, as it holds what it describes as the region’s foremost collection of Pan American World Airways artifacts, photographs and archival materials and plans to explore returning the terminal’s original Pan Am globe to the building.
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