More than a year after Devon Aire Park's renovation was supposed to wrap up, the fields off SW 122nd Avenue in Kendall remain largely fenced off, and the youth football and cheerleading teams that once called the park home are now scattered across five different locations just to practice and play. The $3 million project, which began nearly two years ago, has no completion date in sight, leaving parents, coaches, and a neighboring school still waiting.
The renovation was originally supposed to be completed by July 2025, according to WPLG Local 10, which reported that the field now has a drainage problem and can flood when it rains, creating safety concerns for children. When the outlet's crew arrived at the park around 8:30 a.m. for a recent visit, the construction site appeared to have little activity, and the field remained largely fenced off.
Kenid Joseph, who has two children attending the school next to the field, told the station the project kept getting delayed and was entering its second year. The delays have hit more than just one family — nearby schoolchildren, football players, and cheerleaders have all felt the effects of a project that was supposed to be finished a year ago.
A League Forced to Scatter Across Five Fields
Mike Pintado, president and football commissioner for Kendall Hammocks, said the Hammocks Warriors — which operate under the Optimist Club of Kendall Hammocks and serve kids ages 4 to 14 in tackle football and cheerleading — have felt the impact of the prolonged closure directly. This year, Kendall Hammocks football teams will play games at five different locations, and youth sports teams across the organization are scrambling for places to practice and play.
Cheerleading coach and director Priscilla Martinez said the teams are shrinking because of the project, with participation suffering as families deal with the shuffle. Hammocks Warriors cheerleaders have been reduced to practicing on a small patch of available space near the construction area, since the rest of the field remains off-limits.
Students at the adjacent Devon Aire K-8 Center, which sits at 10501 SW 122nd Avenue and serves nearly 700 enrolled students, have also been unable to use the field for physical education classes, according to Homes.com. The school relies directly on the neighboring park grounds for outdoor activity, making the closure felt well beyond the football sidelines.
What County Officials Are Saying
The Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation Department said it is working with the contractor, Gonzalez & Sons, on a permanent solution, and that the field cannot reopen until recent improvements meet project specifications and are safe for public use. Local 10 requested an update from Gonzalez & Sons but had not received a response by the time of publication, and Miami-Dade's mayor declined the station's interview request.
Gonzalez & Sons Equipment Inc., incorporated in Florida in 1990 and headquartered in Hialeah, is a licensed building and utility contractor that has handled multi-million-dollar infrastructure work for the county before, including major transit fastener replacement contracts for Metrorail, according to Miami-Dade County records. That track record has done little to ease frustration among parents and coaches watching the fenced-off fields sit largely untouched.
The Arsenic Cleanup Behind the Delay
The project's roots trace back to an arsenic problem in the park's soil, which officials say has since been addressed. Local 10 reported that Miami-Dade County began the environmental project in January 2025, requiring excavation and removal of 12 inches of contaminated soil across the athletic fields, with a summer 2025 completion date that has long since passed.
That wasn't the first time crews dug into the park's soil. Contractor Cherokee Enterprises previously conducted targeted source removals for Miami-Dade Parks at Devon Aire, excavating the top foot of arsenic-contaminated soil across four zones totaling more than 33,000 square feet near the baseball diamond and open fields before laying geotextile fabric barriers, according to Cherokee Enterprises.
Under Florida Administrative Code Rule 62-777, the state's default residential Soil Cleanup Target Level for arsenic is 2.1 milligrams per kilogram, a standard formally written into the Code of Miami-Dade County in September 2020, per the University of Florida IFAS Extension. Exceeding that threshold triggers mandatory remediation regardless of the actual health risk involved.
The contamination itself traces back decades. The Florida Department of Health and Miami-Dade County determined the low-level arsenic across local parks stemmed primarily from historical use of monosodium methanearsonate, an organic arsenical herbicide once widely applied to turf grass. Health consultations by the Florida Department of Health on Miami-Dade park turf found that estimated human exposure doses were well below minimum risk levels and did not pose an immediate public health danger, though county officials elected to fully remove and replace the soil anyway, out of caution.
A Neighborhood With a History of Fighting for Its Park
This isn't the first time the area around Devon Aire Park has organized around safety concerns. Back in 2013 and 2014, residents and PTSA leaders at the nearby intersection of SW 104th Street and SW 122nd Avenue successfully blocked a $26 million Florida's Turnpike exit ramp proposal specifically to protect pedestrian safety around the park and the K-8 center, according to Miami's Community Newspapers.
Devon Aire Park is also counted among more than 15 designated nature-based playgrounds in Miami-Dade's Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces system, built with specialized physical structures and eco-oriented play features. For now, though, that distinction offers little comfort to families still waiting on a field they can actually use, more than a year after the county's own deadline came and went.
