Walk south from 83rd Street along the sand in North Beach and until last fall you would hit three separate parks that had nothing to do with each other. North Beach Oceanside Park at 8328 Collins Avenue gave way to open beach, then to Altos Del Mar Park near 76th Street, then to a stretch of bare oceanfront pavement between 73rd and 75th that had sat there for years while a development project worked its way through approvals. Past that, the beachwalk picked back up near the Miami Beach Bandshell at 7275 Collins. Four sections. Three of them finished. One of them a gap you had to route around.
That gap closed on October 3, 2025, when the city held its grand opening for Ocean Terrace Park, a five acre, fifteen million dollar project between 73rd and 75th Streets. The completion did more than fill in a lot. According to the city's own announcement, the finished park means residents can now move along an unbroken stretch of public space that starts at Altos Del Mar Park, runs through Ocean Terrace Park, and continues past the UNIDAD Senior Center down to the Bandshell. What used to be three separate walks with a dead end in the middle is now one walk, close to a dozen blocks, with nothing but sand and landscaping between them.
The Gap That Used to Break the Walk
The land between 73rd and 75th had been part of a redevelopment plan for years before it became a park. Ocean Terrace Holdings, the group behind the surrounding project, spent that time working through design and permitting while the corner sat as pavement. Sandor Scher, principal at Ocean Terrace Holdings, described the intent behind the finished space as turning "oceanfront asphalt into a lush, welcoming landscape." Mayor Steven Meiner called the result "a signal of the transformational investments that will fuel North Beach's resurgence" at the opening ceremony.
A year on, the park does the connective work the city described. It was designed by landscape architecture firm Raymond Jungles and built by Recreational Design & Construction, and the scope went beyond a plaza. The project rebuilt storm drainage, added turtle friendly lighting along the dune line, and repaired the section of beachwalk that runs through the site, the piece that had been the literal missing link between the north end and the south end of this stretch of coast.
What the Five Acres Actually Hold
The park itself is not just a wider sidewalk. It includes a multilevel pedestrian promenade and three separate water features planted with aquatic species, along with custom benches and open lawn for anyone who wants to sit rather than keep walking. The city's parks department lists a playground built with a shade canopy and poured in place rubber surfacing, ADA accessible play components, and a set of "Sway Fun" swings sized for toddlers, older kids, and ADA use.
For adults, there is a HealthBeat fitness area with seven stations built into the park: assisted row, assisted push up, balance steps, a cardio stepper, an elliptical, a hand cycler, and Tai Chi wheels, all rated for ages twelve and up. There is a dog park on site, turtle educational exhibits tied to the same nesting season the lighting was designed to protect, and enough grassed area that the space works as a stopping point rather than a corridor you pass through on the way to somewhere else. A future open air pavilion is still to come, but the park does not need it to already function as a destination in its own right, not just a connector between two better known ends of the walk.
The Ends of the Walk Were Already Busy
The two anchors on either side of Ocean Terrace Park were not waiting around for a ribbon cutting to matter. North Beach Oceanside Park, the northern anchor at 8328 Collins, went through its own $15.8 million renovation before Ocean Terrace Park broke ground, adding a net increase of 188 trees, new concrete pathways, refurbished restrooms and picnic shelters, and the same turtle friendly lighting standard now used further south. It was already a mature, shaded stretch of the beachwalk by the time the middle section caught up.
The southern anchor has a longer history than either park. The Miami Beach Bandshell at 7275 Collins was built in 1961 by Norman Giller and Associates and sits inside the North Shore Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 for its MiMo architecture. The Rhythm Foundation, a Miami Beach based nonprofit, has managed the venue for the city since 2015, and by its own count the Bandshell welcomed more than 70,000 people to over 140 public concerts, festivals, and community events in 2025. That is not a quiet neighborhood amenity waiting to be discovered. It is one of the busier cultural venues on the barrier island, and it sits at the exact point where the newly finished beachwalk now lets out.
What's Scheduled on That Walk This Fall
The calendar over the next three months gives a sense of how often that connection will actually get used. On October 4, the Bandshell hosts a free 10th anniversary concert from the Florida Fellowship Super Choir, an ensemble rooted in Black gospel tradition. Ticketed shows follow quickly, with Black Country, New Road playing October 9 and John Scofield's "Electrospective" on October 24. ZunZún Children's Fest lands October 18, aimed at families rather than a late night crowd, and Afro Borinken Roots takes over the venue on October 25 for an afternoon into evening celebration of Afro Puerto Rican heritage with live music and artisan vendors.
Into November and December, the venue keeps a similar mix: Hot Mulligan on November 13, a set from local quartet Abstract Citizen on November 19, and a North Beach Social with DJ Mr. Pauer closing out the year on December 17. None of these require driving. Anyone coming from north of Ocean Terrace Park, whether from Altos Del Mar or further up near North Beach Oceanside Park, can now cover that distance on the beachwalk itself, arriving at the Bandshell without crossing Collins Avenue traffic at all.
The Blocks Feeding the Walk
The corridor along Collins between these parks has its own small, specific food scene rather than a single dominant strip. Taquiza Tacos and Sushi Bichi sit within a few blocks of the Ocean Terrace Park entrance, Sazon Cubano and Samba Brazil Restaurant cover the more traditional end of the neighborhood's food options, and La Sandwicherie North Beach is the kind of stop that works before or after a walk rather than as a destination on its own. None of these are new arrivals timed to the park opening. They were part of the neighborhood before the beachwalk connected, and they are part of the reason the connection matters now: a resident heading to a Thursday night show at the Bandshell has a reason to leave earlier and eat somewhere along the way instead of driving straight there.
None of this required a new road, a new bridge, or a new causeway. It required one five acre park finishing what two older ones had already started, and a beachwalk that had been interrupted for years finally running the way it was drawn to. For a neighborhood on the northern end of Miami Beach that gets discussed mostly in terms of what is being built along Collins Avenue, the more immediate change is what got taken off the walk. The gap is gone. The parks were always three. The walk is finally one.
If you are already living somewhere along this stretch of North Beach or watching how it continues to knit together, Vanessa Frank tracks these changes block by block, from the parks to the properties nearby that benefit from them.