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John Brennan is known as Miami's guardian of the
waterfront.
John Brennan
Brennan, 73, has lived in Miami and Coconut Grove for
more than four decades and served on the City of Miami's Waterfront
Board for 15 years. He's currently chairman of that board and in the
fifth year of his latest appointment. A pair of Spirit Award plaques
hangs on his office wall, given to him by citizens of Coconut Grove
for his service on the board.
"We offer advice to the city commission and
that's all we can do," said Brennan. "We don't have any
political clout, money clout or anything like that. But, it seems like
we're getting more and more respect from the commission and they seem
to be listening to us more."
Brennan was appointed to the Waterfront Board by
former city Commissioner J.L. Plummer, a relationship that turned
rocky in recent years.
"Up until recently, I got along with Plummer
fairly well," he said. "Then he decided he was going to be a
bad guy. I was trying to save the boat yard (and hangars) and
apparently he had other plans (for the property) and he didn't want to
hear me talk in public. With Plummer gone, it appears we're gonna have
a good voice on the commission."
Brennan concedes that he has been a leader in the
fight against irrational development of the waterfront.
"There's no reason to say that development is
bad," he said. "But, you've got to say that this is going to
be good for the community and this is going to be good for the
developer. I want what's good for the community."
Brennan was born in Rhode Island and grew up on the
water around Narragansett Bay. A ham radio operator and former
merchant marine sailor, he professes a life-long love for sailing and
bought his first sailboat when he was just 16 years old.
"It didn't have a centerboard and it leaked a
little bit, so I used tar, and the sail didn't have any battens in
it," he reminisced. "After sailing it across the bay a
couple of times, I started to get the picture that it wasn't what I
needed and I ended up getting a little bigger boat that was a real
sailboat. It was a Wee Scot. I kept it on a mooring right down the
street from my house. And this is one of the reasons I'm interested in
the waterfront here."
Brennan has been a member of the Coconut Grove Sailing
Club for 30 years and kept his sailboat there for 10 years prior to
joining the Club. Over the years, he has worked on various club
committees, served on the board of directors, was a rear commodore,
vice commodore and Commodore. He sails a 35-foot Pearson centerboard
sloop regularly and moors it at the Club.
"It (sailing) gets you away from the mad, mad
world," he said. "If you get on a sailboat and go for a sail
then get off tense, there's something the matter with you."
Brennan, who retired after 30 years with Bell
telephone, says when he was a boy in Rhode Island, if you wanted to go
to the waterfront you simply walked down to the end of the street and
it was there. And that's what Miami used to be like, he says, noting
that the city today seems to be doing a good job of selling off public
waterfront to private interests.
"But, there's a couple of us troublemakers still
around that would like to see that reversed," he said. "Even
a little bit would help."
Brennan observes that suddenly there seems to be a lot
of proposals popping up on what to do with the city's waterfront
property.
"There seems to be a great deal more happening at
this particular time," he said. "It's not just the
convention center in Coconut Grove, there's Watson Island and there's
Virginia Key and the Marine Stadium.
"Let's start with Virginia Key," he
continued. "I would like to see the Virginia Key property left in
a natural state. Now, if you wanted to go back and put in what the
blacks had a little tram, a merry-go-round and several little
cabins that would be all right. But, beyond that, nothing more than
open trails and that sort of thing."
Brennan says restoration of the Miami Marine Stadium
should be a priority for the city and it shouldn't be turned into a
marina, as proposed by Mayor Joe Carrollo.
"I would like to see them do something
intelligent with the Marine Stadium," he said. "The only
reason it wasn't repaired after the damage by Hurricane Andrew in 1992
was because it was competing with the new ATT amphitheater in the
re-developed Bayfront Park."
Brennan says the Stadium is now in a sad state of
disrepair because the city virtually abandoned it and ignores it.
Vandals have ripped out the copper electrical wiring, covered the
walls with graffiti and skateboarders are further damaging the
facility by using the roof for a practice track.
"I would like to see it re-furbished with the
barge-stage back in place and go from there," he said. "I
would really like to see them put the boat races back in there. If
they can't, there's got to be something else they can do with that
stadium and I certainly don't want to see them fill it (the race
course) back in."
Regarding the city's plans to re-develop the Coconut
Grove waterfront, Brennan said he still has hope that it will be done
the right way.
"I keep hoping that we can do it right," he
said, "that we can do things that will benefit the community.
However, until you get the ethics committee actually working and get
rid of some of these guys that are more interested in what Castro does
than what happens here in town, we've got a real problem."
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