Walk the Baywalk past Margaret Pace Park most evenings and you'll see the same rotation: someone in the small-dog side of the fenced run, a pickup basketball game running long past sunset, a kid on the splash pad, a couple sitting near the mosaic throne chairs watching the lights come on across the bay at Opera Tower and Icon Bay. It has been Edgewater's default answer to "where should we go" for years, in the low-key way an eight-acre park just becomes part of a neighborhood's muscle memory.
That routine is about to get interrupted, and not by one project. By three of them, landing in the same season, after years of sitting stalled.
Two Stalled Projects, One Fall
The park's makeover has technically been public since August 10, 2023, when District 2 Commissioner Sabina Covo and the city's parks director unveiled a master plan at the park itself. Shoreline work was supposed to start that year and finish by the first quarter of 2026. A splash pad was promised within a year of the announcement. Both of those pieces are the kind of infrastructure that arrives quietly and gets used without anyone remembering there was ever a ribbon cutting.
The part residents will actually notice is the piece that was always scheduled last: a new community center, plus a pair of coastal pavilions designed by Miami firm Touzet Studio. One is a circular, shaded Community Pavilion meant for yoga classes and dance groups. The other is a linear Baywalk Pavilion strung with swings and seating along the water, both built as abstracted takes on mangrove forms rather than the standard-issue rec center look. That construction is slated to begin late 2026 and run through 2028. Late 2026 is not a future date anymore. It's this quarter.
Directly north of the park, a second long-stalled project just cleared its own final obstacle. The building at 2121 North Bayshore Drive, a 1960s-era condo called Biscayne 21, has been the subject of a legal fight for years between its developer, Two Roads Development, and a group of owners who refused to sell as the site was assembled for redevelopment. In July 2025, Florida's Third District Court of Appeal sided with those owners on a voting-rights dispute. The Florida Supreme Court declined to hear Two Roads' challenge. A Miami-Dade circuit judge later ordered the developer to restore portions of the building and units damaged during demolition work carried out mid-litigation. Roughly two weeks ago, Two Roads announced it had reached and fully funded a settlement with the remaining owners, reportedly around $50 million according to Bisnow's coverage, finally clearing the way for Arquitectonica's planned 649-foot EDITION Residences tower on the same lot.
Two multi-year fights. Two projects that had every reason to stay stuck. Both released within roughly the same sixty days, on adjoining pieces of shoreline.
The Quiet Third Project
There's a third piece that has nothing to do with parks or towers and everything to do with the ground underneath them. The City of Miami's Edgewater Neighborhood Flood Improvements project, drainage and stormwater work spanning the broader neighborhood rather than one corner, has a construction start date of September 2026 and a projected end date of December 2027. It won't make anyone's Instagram, but if you've ever timed a walk around a street closure you didn't know was coming, it's the kind of project worth knowing about before it's the reason your usual route is torn up.
None of these three projects caused the others. But a park board that finally lined up its funding, a courtroom fight that finally resolved, and a city infrastructure schedule that finally reached this neighborhood all happened to land in the same season. Here's the timeline side by side.
| Project | What's changing | Starts | Wraps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Margaret Pace Park community center | New building plus mangrove-inspired Community and Baywalk pavilions | Late 2026 | 2028 |
| EDITION Residences (Biscayne 21 site) | 1960s condo tower replaced by a 649-foot residential tower | Cleared to proceed as of September 2026 settlement | Not yet announced |
| Edgewater Neighborhood Flood Improvements | Neighborhood-wide drainage and stormwater work | September 2026 | December 2027 |
What Actually Closes, and What Doesn't
The good news for anyone who plays pickup basketball or brings a dog to the run most evenings: the courts, the dog park, and the tennis courts are not part of this construction window. Those upgrades, along with new pickleball and beach volleyball courts, were always planned for later phases of the master plan. What breaks ground late this year is the community center footprint and the two pavilions, which sit on a different part of the park's eight acres. That's a meaningful distinction if you've been assuming the whole park goes offline at once. It doesn't.
What will change is foot traffic and staging. Construction on a shared shoreline plot next to an active park usually means fencing creeps further than the actual build site, equipment staging eats parking, and the entrance sequence that's been the same for years gets rerouted. None of that is unique to Margaret Pace Park. It's what happens whenever a two-year build sits inside a park people use every day.
The Detour You'll Actually Use
If the south end of the park gets noisy or fenced off intermittently over the next two years, the reliable alternative is the Baywalk segment north of NE 24th Street, which has connected Sea Isle Marina down to the park since 2019. That's not a construction-era workaround invented for this article. It's an existing, already-built stretch of waterfront path that predates all three projects and will keep functioning through them.
It stays open in part because of a rule most residents have never had a reason to look up. Since 1979, Miami's Dan Paul ordinance has required any new building along Biscayne Bay or the Miami River to set back 50 feet from the water and maintain a 25-foot public pedestrian promenade. That's why EDITION Residences, whatever else changes about that corner, is still expected to connect its more than 800 linear feet of waterfront frontage directly into the Baywalk and the park next door. The rule was written decades before anyone drew up a 649-foot tower, and it's the reason the public path along the water doesn't disappear just because a private lot changes hands.
For getting around the wider construction zone without a car, Edgewater has more going for it lately than it gets credit for. A 2026 Freebee expansion connects the neighborhood and Midtown to the 15th Street Metromover station, on top of the Baywalk you already have running north and south. It's not a reason to celebrate a construction season, but it does mean the car isn't the only option for dodging whichever block is fenced off that week.
What the Corner Looks Like When This Is Over
Set EDITION's numbers against the tower everyone already watched go up a few blocks north. Aria Reserve Miami, the twin 60-story project on a five-plus acre site, was approved for 637 feet and 547 linear feet of bay frontage. EDITION Residences, on a single redeveloped lot, is planned for 649 feet with more than 800 linear feet of waterfront frontage and only 185 units split across one-bedroom-plus-den layouts up to four-bedroom homes and three tri-level penthouses. More frontage, fewer units, on what was recently a single stalled 1960s building. That's the shape of what's replacing it.
By the time the community center and pavilions are finished in 2028, and assuming the flood improvements wrap on schedule at the end of 2027, the corner of Edgewater around Margaret Pace Park will have absorbed all three projects inside roughly two years. None of them individually is the story. What's worth understanding now, before the fencing goes up, is that the park you've been using for years and the building that's loomed half-finished next to it are both about to move for the first time in a long time, on the same calendar.
If you're the kind of resident who plans a run around what's actually open this month, that's the one thing to hold onto through the next two years of orange fencing: the courts you use are staying put, the Baywalk detour already exists, and the corner on the other side of all this construction is going to look considerably different than the one you've gotten used to.
Mastery of RE keeps a close eye on exactly this kind of change across Miami Beach and the surrounding bayfront neighborhoods, not because every reader is buying or selling, but because knowing what's actually happening on your own block is worth something on its own. If you're curious how a shift like this one plays into value or timing down the road, Mastery of RE is always glad to talk it through.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
