Tuesday marked the beginning of the end for the old Coconut Grove Convention Center as crews began demolition on the facility by tearing down part of the front wall.
City officials were on hand for the demolition, which will make way for a new 17-acre park.
"It’s really thrilling to destroy something, especially something that’s going to give way to a brand new park here in the city of Miami," Commissioner Marc Sarnoff said.
Sarnoff took the liberty of getting the process underway, helping to start tearing walls down at the convention center, which recently housed production of USA's "Burn Notice."
“It is as good as you think it is, it might even be a hair bit better on the bucket list it should be a top three thing for any boy to do," he said.
Sarnoff says because of proper planning tearing, the old building down won’t really cost the city much.
"A lot of the building will be able to be recycled so that offsets a lot of your demolition costs," he said.
The finished park product is not set in stone but estimates put costs at $2.1 million.
The total demolition of the convention center is going to take about 30 days and Sarnoff says what it looks like at the end it going to depend a lot of the public’s opinion.
“we’re going to take up all this concrete, all this asphalt, we’re going to green it up going to put irrigation in, some electric in so that years to come and people find more and more money they be able to put whatever amenity that the public wants in the park," he said.
The initial phases of the park construction are set to begin some time in February or March.
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