Latest Updates	"What was the Miami Circle?" September 28, 1999

December 1, 1999

"We won!" screams a banner floating across the page at www.miamicircle.org.

Down to the wire, Miami-Dade County accepted a loan Monday from the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land to the tune of $8.7 million to purchase the Miami Circle.

The 8.5% interest rate makes the county's commissioners sweat, but the conservation organization's eleventh-hour offer was too good to pass up.

Now the county will pay the full $26.7 million to developer Michael Baumann up front. Miami-Dade will have two years to repay the loan.

November 23, 1999

Desperate Times...
   With a few days to go and the money nowhere in sight, city officials voted November 16 to sell Brickell Park, an oasis a block south of the Circle, and funnel $2 million of the proceeds into Save-the-Circle coffers. Complicating potential purchase and frustrating preservationists, archaeologists believe Brickell Park contains Native American burials.

Back

© 1999 by the Archaeological Institute of America archive.archaeology.org/online/features/miami/updates.html