Office of Neighborhood Development

Performing Arts Center Trust, Inc., (PACT) d/b/a the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County

Funding Received: 2013
Miami, FL
$250,000
Funding Period: 1 year and 5 months
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August 4, 2013

I scream, you scream, we all scream for the arts in downtown Miami!

To encourage Miami to give up its car habit and flock to downtown Miami, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County and its new Office of Neighborhood Development recently teamed up with the car-sharing service Car2Go to host a “Great Ice Cream Crawl” that took drivers of the SMART cars on a three-hour tour of the city’s ice cream shops.

The July 13th summer treat doubled as a promotional effort for Slava’s Snowshow, an interactive theater experience that will run at the Center July 31-Aug. 25, 2013.

The one-time city crawl, using the Arsht Center as its home base, emphasized the Center’s role in creating a vibrant downtown for greater Miami in a neighborhood historically associated with abandoned lots and warehouses. Members of Car2Go, a free-floating network of 250 SMART cars that residents pay by the minute to use, turned out en masse for the fun event, which was tracked on the Car2Go Miami and Arsht Center Facebook sites.

The parade of environmentally-friendly cars to Miami ice cream shops was the latest in a series of events this month signaling the Arsht Center neighborhood’s shift to a more walkable, inviting community.

Earlier in July, a nearby planned downtown condo tower, Centro Lofts, reported that it had already sold half of its 253 units, even though the building has no parking garage – something once unthinkable in this auto-centric city. Instead, the tower will have a Car2Go auto-share hub, valet service, covered bicycle parking and, possibly, a station for Miami’s upcoming bike-share program. Residents will live within walking distance of the Arsht Center.

Also in July, Miami Commissioner Chairman Marc Sarnoff announced tentative plans for a non-profit conservancy to operate and maintain the city’s soon-to-open Museum Park, enabling the city to create a “Central Park” for its downtown just one block from the Arsht Center’s campus. The idea still needs to go before the City Commission for a vote. If passed, it will ensure several acres of park land near the Center, fulfilling part of the Center’s visionary master plan that calls for green spaces to help create a thriving, new urban center for Miami.