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Museum Park Trial Balloon BurstsFiled Under: Culture After months of closed-door negotiations and planning for Museum Park (a.k.a. Bicentennial Park), the city held a public meeting this past Wednesday to show preliminary plans and take comments. More than 100 people jammed into a meeting room at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, with more spilling out to the hallway. Architects and designers with Cooper, Robertson dreamed aloud of a heavily landscaped waterfront park complete with terraced gardens, "rain curtains," waterfalls, man-made islands, and "floating walkways;" a home for the Miami Art Museum and the Miami Museum of Science; Miami's ticket to becoming a "great international city." Then the balloon popped. Why so many nonnative species, one guy asked. Why such an apparent lack of hurricane planning? "It feels a little over-programmed," one man said of the multiple garden areas. The overarching concern, however, was open space. The two museums would occupy too large a concrete footprint in one of this city's last remaining open spaces, several people said. Judy Sandoval, a member of the citizens' group Neighborhoods United, lit into the planners, museum directors, and the mayor. "The public has been hoodwinked," she said, practically shaking. "This is the most formal and contrived [design] that I've ever seen in my life." What's more, Sandoval said, the whole thing ignores the will of the people who, Neighborhoods United claims, expressed a desire for smaller buildings and more open space in a 2004 charette. Groundbreaking is set for early 2008, while planners hope to have the park and museums operational by 2011. — Rob Jordan