The Tequesta's Miami Circle: is it only a dog park now? By Geniusofdespair

Blanca Mesa has written a beautiful article reminding us about the Miami Circle in the Biscayne Times. Here is an excerpt, read the whole article it is worth it:

On a recent dry, sunny afternoon, a dog walker and a few tourists were at the Miami Circle. None of them realized they were at the site of a 2000-year-old archaeological site, the very cradle of Miami civilization.

“Is it here?” asked a woman, her eyes darting across the landscape of dried grass and limestone rocks that hid the Miami Circle.

The air smelled faintly of dog excrement and marine life, the Miami River lapping against the seawall. Across the narrow dark river, mega yachts were anchored. On the Brickell Bridge, the iconic statue of a Tequesta warrior stood, his arms outstretched toward the blue sky, now obscured by the concrete and glass of a new downtown real estate boom.

Perhaps we have forgotten about the Miami Circle because we buried it. Perhaps we have forgotten because we are a city that redefines itself every few years, and waves of newcomers roll in with every tide, like seaweed, with no memory of what the Miami Circle meant to the community when it was discovered in the summer of 1998.

We have lost touch with what it means to contemplate a connection to 2000 years past, when the hands of an ancient people carved the very bedrock that would build a city in the 20th Century.

But because we saved this place where the river meets the bay, we can still imagine what it was like to live under an open blue sky, close to the sea, at a time when it seemed the world had no end.

Transparency, please: who is MDM Development Group? … by gimleteye

There certainly has been a lot of ink spilled over the discovery of an ancient Tequesta Indian site, including the line that will follow Miami white stocking attorney Gene Stearns, "Hokum".

"Hokum" sounds like a perjorative from a native American vocabulary, but the best I could tell from a quick search: it only has roots stretching back to segregationist era entertainments. Who knows what ancient enmities Gene Stearns was channeling when the word came to mind.

And who is the MDM Development Group?

If corporations are people, who are the people of MDM Development? I've argued for years  -- but probably for a shorter period of time than "hokum" was in Gene Stearn's vocabulary -- that the Florida legislature must stop allowing individuals to hide their identities in limited corporations. We could all benefit from transparency in knowing the players in proliferating sprawl and condo canyons in South Florida.

It's the same thing with dark money in political campaigns. All should be in the sunshine.

But back to MDM. A few years ago, during the housing and real estate bust, we touched on MDM and its downtown activities.

By the way, if the City of Miami and the developer sends archeologists to dig in a prehistoric village site, wouldn't you expect those archeologists to find signs of a prehistoric village? And wouldn't you know those signs had been there all along? And wouldn't you know that forcing a development off one culturally significant site in downtown Miami cost Florida taxpayers about $50 million?

Some of us have long enough memories to remember both the controversy over the Miami Circle (check our archive) -- the inspiration! for Jorge Perez' idiotic Easter Island like sculptures at the ICON summoning meso-America --  and the handsome payoff for a developer who walked away from property he owned with tens of millions in taxpayer money so a site could be protected; a site that has never opened to the public and sits at the mouth of the Miami River like a forlorn comma dropped from a sentence that no developer misses unless it is in his own contract.

Readers, we don't know the half of the truth about insiders shielded by corporations pushing around chips on the Miami development scene but the half we do know is hokum compared to the rest.

The Miami Circle is Jorge Perez's $26.7 million Doggy-Shit Park. By Geniusofdespair

The controversy  continues, the friggin dogs are still roaming on the Miami Circle proberty. I took these 2 photos on March 18th, I saw 4 dogs on the Miami Circle property. We forked over $26.7 million of our hard earned tax dollars to buy  friggin' Jorge Perez a dog park for his building, Icon Brickell.  They also use the Miami Circle property for trucks to turn around after making Icon Brickell deliveries. Why isn't there a fence around this property History Museum??

I want my money back!!! The History Museum and Jorge Perez, they both suck!

3 dogs on the Miami Circle Site March 18th

2 Dogs unleashed on the Miami Circle site. Icon Brickell in Background.

To The Idiots From IconBrickell Walking Dogs on the Miami Circle Site. By Geniusofdespair

This is a message to the residents/IDIOTS at IconBrickell who walk their dogs on the Miami Circle Site:

STOP!

We should change the guardians of the site. History Miami should NEVER have allowed this in the first place. WHY?