Miami Beach is moving to resurrect one of its most visible LGBTQ symbols — this time in a park, not the middle of a state roadway.
City Commissioners directed Mayor Steven Meiner’s administration to allocate up to $120,000 from Miami Beach’s 2025 year-end surplus to design and install a replica of the city’s former rainbow crosswalk, which had been located at the intersection of Ocean Drive and 12th Street, in Lummus Park.
The project will reuse pavers salvaged from the original installation, which the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) removed last year.
A resolution sponsored by Commissioner Tanya Katzoff Bhatt and co-sponsored by Monica Matteo-Salinas, which the Commission approved last week, waives a requirement to send the item to the Finance and Economic Resiliency Committee, despite its estimated fiscal impact exceeding $75,000.
The funds will cover design and installation costs. The goal is to create a permanent version of the crosswalk within the park.
Miami Today reporter Kelly Sanchez first reported on the allocation.
The original rainbow crosswalk, designed by Savino & Miller Design and installed in 2018, became a landmark in the Art Deco District and a tribute to Leonard Horowitz, who introduced the district’s signature rainbow pastel palette.
FDOT notified Miami Beach in August that it would have to remove the crosswalk and all other “artistic” thoroughfare flourishes as part of a statewide push to eliminate roadway markings associated with social, political or ideological messaging.
Commissioners Laura Dominguez and Alex Fernandez, both Democrats like Katzoff Bhatt and Matteo-Salinas, said at the time that the city would appeal and resist the order, arguing the crosswalk was safe and reflective of Miami Beach’s values of inclusion.
Commissioner Joseph Magazine, an independent, called the state’s directive “complete and utter bullshit” and vowed to support the LGBTQ community while fighting to keep the crosswalk.
Miami Beach Republican Rep. Fabián Basabe, who voted in 2023 to expand Florida’s restrictions on classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual preference, requested a public meeting on the matter from FDOT Secretary Jared Purdue.
He also accused local officials of engaging in “performative politics,” recommended Pride Park as a more appropriate site for decorative markings, and called for equal crosswalk dedications for rape victims, first responders, Israeli and Jewish people, teachers, local businesses, single mothers, veterans, seniors and Alzheimer’s patients, among others.
Days after the city lost an appeal to keep the crosswalk in October, FDOT crews removed the decoration amid protests.
City leaders have since worked to reclaim the salvaged bricks.
The new Lummus Park installation would relocate the symbol to a setting city officials view as historically and culturally significant and beyond the reach of state roadway rules.
The city hopes to have the replica in place before April’s Miami Beach Pride festivities.
Other colorful crosswalks and roadway decorations removed by FDOT previously stood in Boynton Beach, Coral Gables, Delray Beach, Key West, Orlando, St. Petersburg and Tampa.
The Orlando crosswalk drew especially strong outrage, as it memorialized the 49 murdered and 58 wounded in the 2016 mass shooting at the gay nightclub, Pulse.
Last June, state lawmakers agreed to set aside $394,000 to build a permanent memorial for the Pulse victims.
