Since late 2019, under the leadership of the Mayor and Commission and with robust participation from our residents, NBV has begun to re-envision the physical design of our community, with an eye toward making the village more livable, prosperous and resilient.  These recommendations, dubbed NBV100, are meant to transform and improve our 75-year-old village so that it thrives for at least the next 25 years.

One of the principal recommendations of the NBV100 public involvement process has been the potential transformation of the Kennedy Causeway (NBV’s portion of the 79th Street Causeway) into a Complete Street.  This is one that better accommodates pedestrian travel, bicyclists, mass transit users, and drivers and promotes NBV as a more attractive living/shopping/dining destination.  Potential improvements include wider sidewalks and wider bike lanes, pedestrian-scale lighting, enhanced transit shelters, additional native landscaping to provide shade, and on-street parking, to support a broader range of businesses along the causeway.

In summer 2020 Miami-Dade County featured the NBV Complete Streets concept in its North-South Transportation Needs for the Coastal Communities Feasibility Study Report (miamidadetpo.org/library/studies/coastal-communities-north-south-transportation-needs-feasibility-study-report-2020-06.pdf).

Then in fall 2020 Miami-Dade County awarded NBV a Smart Moves Grant for $60,000, to study the impact of the potential changes.  The county is preparing a contract for the grant, for NBV commission consideration at either the February or March commission meeting.

IN addition, Miami-Dade County and the Florida Department of Transportation, through their County Incentive Grant Program, awarded NBV $25,000 in FY2022-2023 to design Complete Streets improvements to the Causeway and $207,010 in FY2024-2025 to construct some of the improvements.  Before any design or construction can commence, the Smart Moves Grant study must be completed, but the awarding of design and construction funding for improvements to the causeway reflect both Miami-Dade and State of Florida support for a vision to re-envision the Causeway from a cut-through connecting the mainland and the beaches, to a grand boulevard that is a destination in its own right.

Thanks go out to the Mayor and Commission, for their staunch leadership to improve NBV, and to Grant Writer Lakeesha Morris, for her diligence in pursuing funding for our projects, but most importantly to our residents, for advocating for so many of the ideas that went into the NBV100 plan, including the revitalization of Kennedy Causeway.