After intense negotiations between FIU President Mark Rosenberg and Miami-Dade County, FIU has claimed Tamiami Park’s roughly 1.7 square miles as an official annex to their MMC campus. The park will be the location of FIU’s newest parking garage, appropriately dubbed “Tamiami Parking Garage” or “TPG.” This new super-sized garage will be large enough to fit over 19,000 student parking spaces as well as nearly 12,000 Faculty/Staff and Admin spots with its interlocking six floors – essentially doubling the already available on-campus parking within itself.
“I’m really excited about this new addition to our main campus,” President Rosenberg told Bacon reporters at the Reagan House, where a deal signing event with Miami-Dade County was being held, “Finally I’ll be able to find parking!”
We pointed out to Rosenberg that he had an official spot already reserved in the Gold Garage, but he waved us off in dismissal, “You think students don’t steal my spot too? Sometimes I think they purposefully take my spot even when other spots nearby would clearly be less dangerous to steal. Plus the spot’s in such a weird angle it’s impossible to get a truck in to tow them away, so I tell Parking and Transportation to just leave the cars that park there alone, aside from issuing them thousands of tickets of course.” Rosenberg was quickly whisked away by some officials nearby, and we were unable to continue our interview with him.
In addition to thousands of new parking spots and a separate wing just for scooters, motorcycles, and Smart Cars, the new garage will house a myriad of new restaurants. Among the new restaurants are a “to go” version of the popular Italian restaurant chain Olive Garden and a FIU themed Chuck E. Cheese’s.
An artist's rendering of how Tamiami Parking Garage will appear via satellite
We spoke with the designer of the new garage, FIU School of Architecture graduate Terrence Stein, to gain some more insight into the project, “The garage will contain a new student housing complex set in a modern dodecahedral structure at the center. Completely green – smallest carbon footprint – made of recycled human waste and old cardboard boxes.” Terrence showed us a scale model of the garage he constructed to display at the deal signing event at the Reagan House. He pointed out a notably bright colored area on the model, “There will also be a space to house an indoor version of the Dade County Youth Fair. So all those Fair lovers out there will be glad to know that the Fair will still be running, except it will be indoors now.” We asked Terrence how long it would take to build a structure that was nearly the length of the campus itself, however he declined further comments.
“It is also important to note that with the addition of this new garage we will also be able to raise the admission cap to well over 80,000 students,” said Rosenberg with a twinkle in his eye as he addressed the crowd during the closing speech for the deal signing event.
We will have more on this story as the new garage project progresses. For now we can say for certain, as we were informed during the deal signing event, that during the time in March when the Dade County Youth Fair is running in its new indoor location, the rest of the nearly 1.7 sq. mile garage will be shut down due to contractual obligations.
