South Miami's stretch of The Underline is open. Its best features sit within a short walk of Sunset Drive and City Hall, and the part of the trail that runs on toward Dadeland is mostly plain path. On September 21 the city commission voted to keep its full $300,000 contribution to run the park in the coming fiscal year. For anyone who lives here, The Underline is now a downtown park that also happens to be part of a 10-mile trail. Its upkeep is a line in the city budget.
Friends of The Underline and Miami-Dade County held the formal opening on Saturday, August 15. A band played and vendors sold food beside South Miami City Hall, the Miami Herald reported. People had been using it well before that, because the construction fences came down earlier in the summer. With that segment finished, seven of the trail's 10 miles are open.
Where the Features Actually Are
The Underline runs under the elevated Metrorail along U.S. 1, on the corridor that was once Henry Flagler's rail line. On the South Miami end, the places worth a stop sit close together.
Where | What's there |
|---|---|
6130 Sunset Drive, beside City Hall and behind the South Miami Branch Library | Nikki Spoelstra Play Forest |
Next to the trail, at South Miami Hospital | Baptist Health meditation garden, which stayed locked until this segment opened |
Near the butterfly garden, and again just past SW 70th Avenue | Two micro-forests of native trees and shrubs |
The SW 80th Street entry, near Ludlam Road and U.S. 1 | Mariposa Gardens butterfly garden and a village of green birdhouses |
SW 80th Street | Underline bike repair stand with tools and a tire pump, next to SOMI Bike Shop |
According to Friends of The Underline, the main trail is open 24 hours a day, every day. The micro-forests will look thin for now. As the Herald described them, they are compact plantings of native species meant to grow quickly into dense clumps of green. They should shade the path, support wildlife and cool the air along one of the county's busiest traffic corridors. The micro-forest you walk past this fall is meant to look very different in a few years.
The Play Forest Is the Anchor
The busiest corner of the new segment is the one next to City Hall. The Nikki Spoelstra Play Forest is a playground made from natural materials. It has log balance beams, stepping logs, climbing and balancing pieces, musical chimes and a sensory trail. The Herald also lists an outdoor reading room and covered seating for parents. Spoelstra is a South Miami resident and a former Miami Heat dancer, and she gave $500,000 to sponsor it.
The location matters as much as the equipment. The library is just behind it and the Sunset Drive restaurants are a short walk away, so one outing can include a playground, a library stop and lunch without moving the car. A trail planned for commuting has given South Miami's downtown a new park at its center.
South of SW 80th, the Trail Gets Plainer
The SW 80th Street entry is where the gardens start. It is also where the trail stops feeling like a park.
The Herald walked the segment in July and described the stretch between the two Dadeland stations as landscaped but "mostly utilitarian," with none of the gardens or features the trail is known for. The rail corridor is narrow there. At Dadeland North, the old M-Path connection behind the station garage was closed for construction. A path through the station is marked with green Underline circles, but signs tell cyclists to dismount and walk the tenth of a mile through. The last piece before Dadeland South was still waiting on station work, so the route ran through a narrow alley between fences and past traffic cones. The county expects the Dadeland South Intermodal Station renovation to finish in April 2027.
The crossings also need care. The Herald reported that drivers at Kendall Drive and at the State Road 878 exit ramp often missed stop signs and lights and stopped in marked crosswalks, even though the intersections have bright-green crossings, signs and, in some spots, no-right-on-red signals. Eulois Cleckley, CEO of Friends of the Underline, told the paper the group works with Miami-Dade and Florida Department of Transportation engineers to improve crossings as problem spots become clear.
The SW 80th Street entry also has the clearest sign so far of business along the trail. Trail users have been stopping at SOMI Bike Shop, next to the repair stand, for service, gear, snacks and drinks, employees told the Herald. Construction also replaced a canal bridge just north of SW 80th Street that dated to the Flagler rail era.
The City Voted to Keep Paying
Because the park is built around City Hall, it makes sense that City Hall is helping pay for it. In the City Manager's FY2027 budget memo, $300,000 is the yearly amount for Underline operations. FY2026 included only $75,000 because the South Miami segment wasn't finished until July. At the September 21 budget hearing, a roll-call motion to cut that to $200,000 failed, and the budget passed with the full $300,000, according to Citizen Portal's account of the meeting. The city signed the underlying agreement in 2025. Under its terms, which the Herald reviewed, the payment goes up 5% a year until it reaches $364,652 in FY2030.
Those figures make more sense next to the neighbors' share and the total cost:
- Coral Gables redirected $500,000 from city projects toward Underline operations for FY2027 and got a seat on the Underline Conservancy board.
- The full trail is expected to cost about $9.5 million a year to run once it's finished.
- Miami-Dade County agreed to several million dollars a year in operating money for three years, tapering each year, with no promise beyond that.
- Friends of the Underline aims to cover 60% of estimated operating costs next year through private donors and sponsorships.
So South Miami pays a fixed, rising amount for the park outside City Hall, and the rest of the bill depends on fundraising and a county commitment that steps down each year. Underline Conservancy Chair Meg Daly said she hopes the three cities' support will only be needed for a while.
The Middle Piece, Expected by December
What South Miami still doesn't have is a continuous ride north. The remaining section runs through Coral Gables along the University of Miami. In the Herald's October 3 report, construction was expected to wrap up by December. North of that gap, the trail already reaches the Miami River, including the Gables stretch north of LeJeune Road with the Chewy Bark Park near Douglas Road, which opened January 31.
The middle section has some of the trail's most elaborate planned features. Pineland Courts will have four pickleball courts and a regulation basketball court. The Fitness Room is an outdoor gym with body-weight stations and a half basketball court. Rock Ridge Plaza is planned for performances, classes, food vendors and community gatherings. Once it opens, a ride that starts at the Play Forest on Sunset Drive can continue on the trail all the way to Brickell.
Daly has said the park's completion will get a celebration to match. As she told the Miami Herald:
"There is still a lot more to come, but it's really exciting to go from dream to reality."
When the middle section is done, she has promised "a 10-mile-long party." South Miami's piece is already built and in use next to City Hall, and the city's payments toward it are scheduled through FY2030.
If you're thinking about how a park two blocks from your door changes daily life, or what it could mean for a home near Sunset Drive someday, Miami Signature Homes is happy to talk it through, in English or Spanish. Schedule a private consultation and complimentary home valuation, and we'll walk the South Miami blocks closest to the trail with you.
