Regional Planning and El Portal's 1999 charrette

Eastward Ho

El Portal successfully submitted a proposal to a competition held by the South Florida Regional Planning Council's Eastward Ho competition to fund design charrettes on "Revitalizing South Florida's Urban Core." Our charrette, held jointly with Miami Shores Chamber of Commerce, had three important results:

• It established El Portal as a community that valued sound planning with strong citizen participation, paving the way to such accomplishments as our second charrette in 2013 and current comprehensive planning and urban code.
• Charrette meetings and work identified and proposed a plan to alleviate adverse conditions on the eastern part of 87th Street: wide pavement with no sidewalks which had become a hazardous speedway for traffic shortcutting through the Village. The result over the next years of effort was the traffic calming roadway, tree planting, and sidewalks we have now. before after
• It identified the Little River as a key feature uniting neighboring communities over common concerns about environment and quality of life. This gave a boost to the Little River cleanup and advocacy for the river which has been going on the past 30 years and is essential to meet the challenges of sea level rise while maintaining quality of life in our area of the county.

ElPortal 1998 proposal to regional planning council for design charrette

flyer to El Portal residents about resulting El Portal/Miami Shores CoC charrette

Charrette draft report PDF 7.5 MB