3 days ago
Trump administration kills $60 million grant for Overtown Underdeck park in Miami
Miami received word this week that the Trump administration is yanking $60 million from the Underdeck, a planned park in Overtown designed to lessen some of the isolation brought by construction of Interstates 95 and 395 in the 1960s, which devastated what was once a prosperous Black neighborhood.
A notice from the federal Department of Transportation stated the Republican-backed legislation known as the One Big Beautiful Bill killed the remaining funds in a Biden grant program aimed at reversing damage done to neighborhoods from highways constructed decades ago.
While similar in name and concept, the Underdeck project is not related to the Underline, a 10-mile park that has partially opened under Metrorail tracks south of the Miami River.
The $3 billion 'Reconnecting Communities' program last year awarded the $60 million to Miami's Underdeck project, a 33-acre park to be created at street level under the new elevated I-395 span being built above in a separate state effort. With a budget of $82 million, the project depended on the federal grant from the Biden-era program, formally called the Neighborhood Access and Equity (NAE) program. The undated notice from the Trump administration states Miami can no longer have the money. Miami City Commission offices received the notice this week.
'The announced NAE funding has been rescinded and is no longer available,' read the notice from Loren Smith Jr., deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Transportation.
While known as the Underdeck, Miami commissioners voted last year to name the park after a late Miami civil rights activist, calling it the Rev. Edward T. Graham Greenway.
In a statement, Commission Chair Christine King, whose district includes the park site, called the news 'disheartening' but not the end of the project.
'I am not discouraged,' she said. 'If we have to do only a section at a time, that space will be representative of our struggles, our culture, and our resiliency.'
Miami Herald staff writer Andres Viglucci contributed to this report.
