The SOMI Mile: What's Actually Open on South Miami's Stretch of the Underline
August 27, 2026
August 27, 2026
Walk south along the Metrorail tracks from Sunset Drive and you'll hit fresh sod in one stretch, orange construction fencing in the next, and a shaded garden that's been sitting there quietly since before most of this project had a name. That's the mile of The Underline that runs through South Miami, from SW 57th Avenue down to SW 80th Street, and it is not one finished thing. It's four different things at four different stages, and knowing which is which changes what you actually do with your Saturday morning.
Most coverage of The Underline treats it as a single countywide unveiling, a 10-mile linear park stretching from the Miami River to Dadeland South that will be "done" sometime in 2026. That framing makes sense at the county level. It falls apart the moment you're standing on the one mile that runs through your own city limits, because inside that mile, completion isn't a single date. It's a patchwork.
The South Miami segment sits inside Phase 3 of The Underline, the 7.36-mile stretch connecting SW 19th Avenue near the Vizcaya Metrorail station down to Dadeland South. Phase 3 itself is the last of three builds. Phase 1, the Brickell Backyard, opened to the public on February 26, 2021. Phase 2, connecting SW 13th Street to SW 19th Avenue through the Roads, Shenandoah and Silver Bluff neighborhoods, opened April 24, 2024, three years later. Phase 3 has followed the same staggered pattern, and South Miami's own mile is a smaller version of that same story, with some features that predate the whole project and others that broke ground last year.
The oldest finished piece on the SOMI mile isn't new at all. Baptist Health dedicated its Meditation Garden on December 13, 2018, near South Miami Hospital's East Tower at SW 62nd Avenue, just two weeks after Phase 1 broke ground miles away in Brickell. It was the first private property installation along the entire ten-mile corridor, built in partnership with Friends of The Underline as a quiet pocket next to the daily traffic of U.S. 1. If you've lived here a while, you may have walked past it without registering that it's technically part of The Underline at all. It predates the branding.
That matters for how you think about the rest of the mile. This isn't a project where nothing exists until a ribbon gets cut. Pieces of it have been usable for the better part of a decade.
The newest piece is the opposite story. On June 7, 2025, county and city officials broke ground on the Nikki Spoelstra Play Forest, a nature-based play area going in directly adjacent to the South Miami City Hall campus and the new public library. Nikki Spoelstra, a third-generation Miamian, gave $500,000 to Friends of The Underline to fund it, and Miami-Dade County approved naming the site after her through December 31, 2040. The design calls for log balance beams, stepping logs and natural play elements meant to draw kids into unstructured play rather than a standard swing-and-slide layout.
As of the most recent construction update we could confirm, tied to a February 17, 2026 South Miami Commission meeting where Spoelstra addressed the commission directly about the project, the Play Forest was still under construction. It's the first playground amenity to break ground in South Miami's segment of The Underline, which means if you're picturing a finished nature playground next to City Hall right now, you're picturing something that doesn't exist yet. It's fencing and equipment staging, not a finished park.
Between those two landmarks, the trail does what a linear park through a downtown has to do: it crosses traffic. The corridor runs directly through the intersection at Sunset Drive and 72nd Street, putting it in direct contact with the retail and restaurant strip that anchors downtown South Miami. Elsewhere along the mile, it also runs past SW 62nd Avenue and U.S. 1, close to South Miami Hospital.
South of that crossing, the mile quiets down again. One of the more distinctive features on this stretch is a wooden pedestrian bridge over the Twin Lakes Canal, a small piece of infrastructure that doesn't show up in most renderings of the project but shapes how the trail actually feels on the ground: less urban plaza, more shaded canal-side path, at least for that stretch.
Here's a detail that doesn't get much attention outside of parks planning circles, and it's worth knowing if you run, bike or walk with any regularity. SW 80th Street, the southern edge of South Miami's Underline mile, is also the terminus of an entirely different trail project: the Ludlam Trail Corridor, a 5.6-mile path running from NW 7th Avenue down to SW 80th Street along the old Florida East Coast rail line, built for the same kind of walking, biking and running use as The Underline.
These are two separate projects with separate funding and separate planning histories, and they happen to end at the same cross street. For anyone stringing together a longer loop on foot or on a bike, that intersection at 80th Street is quietly becoming a real junction point for South Miami's growing network of car-free routes, not just the endpoint of one trail.
A finished trail is only as good as its upkeep, and this is where South Miami's mile stands out from an abstract county press release. The Underline Conservancy's anticipated operating budget for fiscal year 2026 runs $8,774,000 across the whole corridor. Rather than leaving that cost to the county alone, the City of South Miami's commission voted to contribute its own share, $300,000 of that total, to keep its segment maintained and programmed.
That's a small number next to the total project cost, but it means something specific: the maintenance question isn't hypothetical or unresolved. The city has already put its own operating dollars behind the mile running through it, which is a different commitment than simply hosting county infrastructure and hoping someone else keeps the lights on.
None of this staggered timeline has stopped residents from using what's finished. Reporting from March 2026 described people throughout the corridor already treating completed stretches like ordinary neighborhood streets, walking dogs, running errands and commuting by bike instead of driving, even as construction advisories and detours remained posted in other Phase 3 segments. Systemwide, The Underline now draws close to 3 million visits a year.
The project's fundraising has kept pace with that use. The second annual Underline Sneaker Ball, held January 24, 2026 at Land Rover Coral Gables, brought together more than 425 guests and raised over $1 million, with more than $100,000 of that going specifically to the Park Stewards program, a workforce initiative developed with Chapman Partnership and the Lennar Foundation that creates employment pathways for previously unhoused adults working on the corridor.
Put together, the picture of the SOMI mile isn't a countdown to a single grand opening. It's a mile that's been giving something back to the neighborhood in pieces since 2018, with the newest piece, a shaded playground next to City Hall, arriving sometime after the fencing comes down. If you're walking the dog past the Meditation Garden this week, you're already using a piece of it. If you're waiting for the Play Forest, you're waiting for the newest piece to catch up.
For more dispatches on daily life around South Miami, or if you're weighing a move within the neighborhood and want a resident's-eye view of a specific block, Eric Firestone Real Estate is glad to talk it through. You can also schedule a South Miami neighborhood consultation any time you'd like a longer conversation.
Get assistance in determining current property value, crafting a competitive offer, writing and negotiating a contract, and much more. Contact me today.
