Sarnoff Supports Port Tunnel

By Laura Morales, The Miami Herald

Dec. 12–City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff expressed support for a Port of Miami tunnel when he addressed Miami Beach’s Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club on City of Miami issues of interest to some Beach residents.

Sarnoff called the port a “$16 billion engine” that must stay in competition with Broward’s Port Everglades and a possible Dubai Ports World container terminal in Cuba’s Mariel Harbor.

“The competition is expanding and getting stronger and so must we,” Sarnoff said, adding that the port provides some of the best blue-collar jobs in the city. “I’d say 70 percent of people who make over $70,000 a year and don’t wear a tie work at the Port of Miami,” he said.

Sarnoff is the only Miami commissioner to openly support the tunnel, proposed to connect the MacArthur Causeway with Dodge Island at the port by a pair of tubes. It could help take many of the 3,600 cargo trucks off downtown’s jam-packed traffic grid.

The city commission, which has balked at paying its $50 million portion of the $914 million bill for the project, is scheduled to vote on whether to pay its share Thursday. The state has agreed to throw in $457 million and the county $402 million.

The amount of state and county money involved in the project piqued the interest of Beach residents, said attendee Frank Kruszewski, who recently ran for a Beach commission seat but lost.

“I’m all in favor of it. It’s a no-brainer that we have to get all those trucks off the streets in downtown,” Kruszewski said.

Kruszewski said he’s heard that some Beach residents aren’t happy with the idea of heavy construction delays on the MacArthur Causeway.

“That’s the price we have to pay for progress,” he said.

Shortly after Sarnoff’s appearance at the Beach meeting, project supporters from the Downtown Miami Partnership and Bayside Marketplace management gathered on Biscayne Boulevard to boost the proposal.

Marie Balbuena, Bayside’s marketing director, said people have to cross a wide and dangerous stretch of Biscayne, nicknamed “Death Valley” by some, to get to the AmericanAirlines Arena.

After the demonstration, Balbuena said, she believes the dangerous combination of increasing pedestrian activity and a constant flow of huge trucks warrant the tunnel.

“We need to alleviate the traffic and make the area cleaner and friendlier,” she said.

Miami Herald Staff Writer Larry Lebowitz contributed to this report.

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