Margi Nothard

Architecture is Not a Crime
Will One Designer’s Plans for A Miami Beach Skate Park Ever Become a Reality?

By Dan Brody

When Architectural Designer Margi Nothard was hired to blueprint a gazebo for Young Circle in Hollywood, she had no idea it would become a journey. As she started to contemplate the design, she realized that although the existing trees and landscape were inspiring, the flow of the park had people moving through it too quickly, right into the highway.

“If you look at the site, it is an urban center, right in the heart of a city,” Nothard said. “You have a formidable barrier to overcome [busy Federal Highway], but you need to connect the city to it, using arts and movement.” To that end, she borrowed from Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of New York’s Central Park, and carved out spaces with different heights, even raising some surfaces up to six feet. “You need as many different spaces simultaneously as possible, in order to keep the people there,” Nothard said. So a small gazebo design turned into a $26 Million renovation of the entire park.

Nothard has now set her sights on another underused piece of public land, this time on South Beach. The property sits on a quiet canal, right across the street from Miami Beach Senior High School, and just north of the Convention Center. It is currently home to the old Carl Fisher Clubhouse, across from the 21st Street Recreation Center, and its surrounding park and mini-amphitheater, the Little Stage Theater, are integral to what will become, if Nothard gets the approval, the Miami Beach 'Skate Plaza.'  

While awaiting several key city board approvals, the project has stalled in the slow journey through City Hall — but Nothard has hardly given up.

“We are in the very early days,” Nothard said last summer, when attention and support was at it’s height. “But this is a fun project. We will install a cultural plaza, or skate plaza, and revitalize the park, bringing new communities together to create a new energy.” The fact that this park sits across the street from a high school is not lost on Nothard. “Skateboarding is dramatic, performance-oriented, and we don't really build spaces for teenagers to go to. So we will take away the barriers that prevent people from seeing into the site, using elements that draw you in.”

Currently, the Sobe Music Institute uses the actual Clubhouse, at 2100 Washington Ave., for music and arts instruction, but the plaza itself seems barely used. “It's a wonderful opportunity,” Nothard said. “It's a beautiful building. But we also want to make sure that youth programs, theater, and outdoor programs are included. We want skaters, rollerbladers, and everyone else to be able to be with their families.”

Nothard’s vision of the 21st Street Community Center and Cultural Complex has been shaped by a similar light and landscape — that of her native South Africa. She studied there at the University of Natal and graduated with her Masters from the prestigious Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles. She moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1996, and established Glavovic Studio in 1999, an architectural and urban design firm, while teaching at the FAU School of Architecture. Her major projects, other than Young Circle, have included The Girls Club, a female-only art gallery for Fort Lauderdale art collector and artist Francie Bishop Good, whose exterior draws patrons in by turning into a massive projection screen; Young at Art, and the Broward County Children's Museum and Reading Room.

A rendering of the proposed skate plaza.

According to Nothard, however, this project is different. “It's a difficult shape, so I'm using urban design principles to attract attention to the site, and making sure there are enough elements to accommodate both an active and passive environment for children, teenagers, and their families to use this historic resource. The piece of land is long enough and big enough, certainly, and there will be works of art included as well.”

It also won't be a 'Star-chitect' vanity project, she says.

“Like Eames said in 1952, 'the goal is to make design a part of the average person's life.' I may not have much of a history with Miami Beach, but I hope to be a part of its future, and the future of its youth.”

To that end, as the project has evolved, Nothard emphasizes the "holistic cultural environment in the heart of the city. It is important that the site be organic, as permits change over time." She has seen that happen firsthand, especially at the first rancorous community meeting last summer, that pitted rowdy skateboarders against even rowdier music and art aficionados.

"I am thankful that our design approach really does accommodate a broad-based programmatic use of the site, enabling a tenant like SoBe [Music Institute] to be able to operate its unique programming throughout the park," says Nothard. And while this places less emphasis today on the skate plaza component than it did perhaps a year ago, Nothard just wants to move forward. "The skate plaza element is approximately 6,000 to 8,000 square feet of a 2 and ¼-acre site," she said, including "multiple plazas, environmental gardens, a dock, a renovated clubhouse, the Little Stage Theater" and many other elements.  

Although, since the park was conceived, she has seen several planning meetings cancelled, "we are anxiously awaiting the go-ahead from the city to meet with the commissioners to get the necessary approvals," Nothard told The Lead, in the end she remains "excited to move this project forward as quickly as possible."

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