Environmentalists Fight Plan To Build Miami Wilds Theme Park

Environmentalists are mobilizing to oppose a move by the county commission that would allow the Miami Wilds theme park to be built.

They are rallying against a plan that would declare an area near Zoo Miami as blighted, which would allow for a special taxing district to help developers build the park.

It wouldn’t be possible to maintain healthy pine rockland in the area with a theme park there, say the environmentalists. They plan to hold a demonstration on January 17.

Federal officials also sent a letter to mayor Carlos Gimenez earlier this month warning that Miami Wilds would harm protected species and require a lengthy review from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

20th Century Fox and Sony Music want to build a $930 theme park on county-owned land. Parques Reunidos of Madrid is also on the development team, which plans a 70-acre amusement park, a 400-room hotel, 500,000 square feet of retail development and a theater.

(via Miami Herald)

PreviouslyMiami Wilds: Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox Proposed Theme Park


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Yet Another Anonymous
6 years ago

$930 for an amusement park. That’s some pretty special taxing! lol a typo of course.

To be honest, the forest around that area including the sensitive pine rockland UM sold for a Walmart does not seem that dense and healthy as it is, though that does not mean that unique species do not exist there. I do not want to see the whole thing developed, it would be nice to see the park and possibly even the walmart condensed a little to spare room for the specific piece of pine rockland that is considered sensitive and unique.

6 years ago

It would not be possible without hurting the pine rockland area…animals can’t just hop from parcel to parcel without running into the buildings and people they are trying to avoid.

Yet Another Anonymous
6 years ago

Yeah that’s true. I was thinking only about plants. Not animals. Given the profile of that are already, I wasn’t thinking there could be many larger animals anyway.

6 years ago

I wonder if Disney, Bush Gardens, Sea World, and Universal Studios had this much opposition when they decided to build their parks near Tampa and Orlando.

6 years ago

Certainly not Disney, as they petitioned the FL legislature for the creation of a “special taxing district” for their massive holdings, sometime in the middle 1960s. This allowed them the legal equivalent of a private domain or something akin to an incorporated city, which meant that Disney had total control over all the land and any related issues, including any possible environmental challenges.

Busch Gardens in Tampa was built on private property owned by Anheiser-Busch, adjacent to their Tampa brewery, starting in 1959. In those days, environmentalists were fewer and further between (than today) in any case.

6 years ago

Thanks Frederic, I for one would welcome a park like Universal Studios, it is one of the main reasons why I visit Orlando and it would be great to have one right here in Miami.

Jorge Morales
6 years ago

I think this would be great for the local economy. This sounds awesome.

6 years ago

Are we pimping pieces of the Earth to the highest bidder? Earth is not wh***, don’t pimp it. Pimps don’t care what happens to the land. They care about money, power, materialism. Earth is a minority, the only one like within light years around us, like a grain of sand in a desert that has the perfect temperature and bodies of water to sustain life. If we keep destroy it in 100 years or 1000 where will we go?

Young generations are already being educated on green and sustainable living, and they will cringe when they find out the billions going into projects like these. North Miami and Biscayne Landing is another example of destroying a land and using people for money. We are all responsible for the Earth. All these billions of dollars in the real estate industry can take us into the next greeN era.

greeN or greeD (N= Noble, D= dump). Choose.