MIAMI – Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez stood in front of a colorful mural depicting a former resident of the Liberty Square public housing project -- who went on to become Miami's first black city commissioner.
M. Athalie Range went from having a job collecting trash from railroad cars to becoming a civil rights activist. She was tenacious. To protest lack of equality of garbage pick up service for African-Americans, Range once asked her neighbors to bring bags of garbage and dump them on commissioners' desks.
Range knew a thing or two about failed promises to revitalize the public housing project with a dark history of urban racial segregation. After the riots to protest the 1980 acquittal of the four Miami-Dade police officers in the death of Arthur McDuffie, she met with President Jimmy Carter.
"He might have mentioned something about five million or more dollars coming into the community to overcome the ruin that had been in our neighborhoods," she told a historian in 1989. "Perhaps some of it did get out here, but I think that the greater portion of it did not filter down to the people who were hurt most."
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Eight years after Range's death, Gimenez stood in front of her image to make promises of working with "federal, state and local governments to transform Liberty Square into what we all know it could be."
Gimenez announced a new $74 million redevelopment project. And he said he has grand "Liberty City Rising" plans to "revitalize" the crime-ridden area -- which marks a 78th anniversary Friday.
"We'll be improving the standard of living for everyone residing in this community," Gimenez said. He added that he is committed to making sure no area of Miami-Dade "is left behind."
The Department of Public Housing and Community Development will oversee the $74 million commitment -- $48 million for the construction of a "New Liberty Square" and the other $26 million to "revitalize" a section of the neighborhood, said Michael Liu, the county's public housing director.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Audrey M. Edmonson, who said she grew up in the neighborhood, was also at the community center for the announcement. The plan promises to create 2,290 jobs and $285 million in economic output, a press release said Friday. On Monday, the promise of new jobs went up to 2,300.
The residents of the 753 units will not be displaced, but will have to move out, according to the plan. To appease fears coming from the James E. Scott housing complex fiasco, Gimenez said that before the demolition of the first phase, new units will be built on vacant land to accommodate the first group of residents. The county is aiming to complete the project in 2019.