A $20.5 million museum telling the story of Miami's segregation-era Black beach will finally break ground next month — 22 years after voters first funded it.

The Virginia Key Beach Park Trust announced Wednesday that the official Historic Virginia Key Beach Park Museum groundbreaking ceremony will take place Saturday, Aug. 22, at 11 a.m. at the park, 4020 Virginia Beach Drive, Miami. The event is free and open to the public through Eventbrite.

The ceremony caps a frustrating journey. Miami-Dade County commissioners first earmarked $5 million for the museum in 2001. Voters approved an additional $15.5 million through a 2004 general obligation bond. But bureaucratic disputes between the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County stalled the project for more than two decades, according to NBC Miami reporting.

"It's a pattern of broken promises and sheer indifference," Virginia Key Beach Park Trust founding member Enid Pinkney told NBC Miami in January 2023. "The voters said yes but the government won't invest the money."

That frustration appears to have finally yielded results. Movement came in 2023, when Miami City Commissioner Christine King pledged to fast-track the project. Lord Cultural Resources, a museum planning firm first engaged in 2006, was re-engaged that year to produce a new concept plan including visitor experience strategy, building program and capital cost estimates. The City of Miami, the Trust and the District 5 office then held an industry day Jan. 15 to brief contractors on the design-build procurement.

Athalie Edwards, the Trust's executive director, told WLRN in August 2025 that the groundbreaking would happen "later this year." The ceremony is now scheduled for August 2026, roughly a year later than that forecast. The Trust has not publicly explained the additional delay.

A beach born from a 1945 civil rights protest

Historic Virginia Key Beach Park sits across Bear Cut from Key Biscayne, spanning more than 80 acres with a half-mile of shoreline. The park opened in August 1945 as Miami-Dade's only beach for Black residents. That opening followed a May 9, 1945, "wade-in" protest at Haulover Beach, where seven African Americans led by civil rights attorney Lawson E. Thomas demanded equal shoreline access. Rather than make arrests, county officials agreed to open Virginia Key Beach.

The park was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in June 2002. After the City of Miami closed it in 1982 citing maintenance costs, the Trust restored and reopened it in February 2008.

Paula Campbell Stone, then 74, recalled her childhood visits at a September 2023 museum planning workshop: "To me it was paradise. I thought it was the best beach in the world because we were not allowed to go anywhere else."

Community members at that workshop said they wanted the museum to feature civil rights history, rotating exhibitions and architecture that fits the natural surroundings.

How to attend the Aug. 22 groundbreaking

The groundbreaking ceremony takes place Saturday, Aug. 22, at 11 a.m. at Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. Registration is available through Eventbrite. For more information, contact the Virginia Key Beach Park Trust at 305-960-4600 or [email protected].