How Far Brickell Backyard Reaches Now: The Underline This Fall, Before Its Last Gap Closes

If you walk south from the River Room this week and stay under the Metrorail, how far can you go before the trail runs out? In February 2021 the answer was SW 13th Street, half a mile from the river. By May 2026 the answer was Douglas Road, after about five continuous miles of trail. By the end of this year, if construction holds, it will be Dadeland South, 10 miles away.

The neighborhood still treats Brickell Backyard as a pocket park with a gym, a stage and a long dining table. The rest of the route has outgrown that idea. This fall the Backyard is starting to work as a front door, and the one piece still missing is a single stretch along the University of Miami.

The half-mile that started it

Brickell Backyard is Phase 1 of The Underline, running from the Miami River to SW 13th Street. Miami-Dade County gives its opening date as February 26, 2021. It's split into four named rooms, and they're worth knowing by name because the event calendar uses those names:

• River Room, between the Miami River and SW 7th Street.
• Urban Gym, between SW 7th and SW 8th Streets, with a flex court for half-court basketball and mini-pitch soccer, plus fitness equipment and a running track.
• The Promenade, beside the Brickell Metrorail station, with game tables, a 50-foot communal dining table and Inter Stage at SW 8th Street and SW 1st Avenue.
• Oolite Room, near SW 11th to 13th Streets, with butterfly gardens, oolite boulder seating and a 90-foot mural.

For five years that was the whole picture for most Brickell residents. Each section built since then has pushed the trail's end a little farther from the river.

Heading south from the River Room, in order

Starting at the river and walking south, here is what the route opens up, segment by segment, along with when each piece came online.

1. SW 13th Street to SW 19th Avenue. Phase 2 opened April 24, 2024. It added the Simpson Park Playground Area, Vizcaya Station Plaza and 17th Avenue Plaza. It also brought the 2-mile Hammock Trail and the Rain Garden.
2. SW 19th Avenue to the Coconut Grove station. The Miami Herald reported in August 2025 that this stretch was quietly open that month, ahead of its formal celebration.
3. Inter Grove Gallery, SW 24th to SW 27th Avenues. It was formally celebrated as open in November 2025, and Coconut Grove Spotlight reported that an Inter Café food trailer debuted there.
4. SW 27th Avenue to Douglas Road. Segment 4 opened in spring 2026. Friends of The Underline marked it with a "Five Years, Five Miles" ribbon cutting, and the county's transportation director described the new piece as a nearly one-mile stretch between 27th and 37th Avenues.
5. Coral Gables north of LeJeune Road. In July the Miami Herald described the Gables stretch north of LeJeune, home to the new Chewy Bark Park, as already connected "all the way to the river."

Taken together, a resident who starts at the River Room can stay on dedicated trail through Simpson Park, past Vizcaya, through the Grove and into Coral Gables. Most people still picture the Underline ending somewhere near SW 13th Street.

The other end is already finished

The trail's southern end opened before its middle. On Saturday, August 15, Friends of The Underline and Miami-Dade County ceremonially opened a 1.17-mile piece running from Dadeland to South Miami at Red Road, on the edge of Coral Gables. Its standout feature is the Nikki Spoelstra Play Forest, a playground set among trees with an outdoor reading room, musical instruments and covered seating for parents.

Near Dadeland South, the Herald's July visit found Mariposa Gardens, a butterfly garden, beside a cluster of green birdhouses the paper called a village for birds. It also found two micro-forests, which are compact plantings of native trees and shrubs meant to grow quickly into dense, cool patches of green along the U.S. 1 corridor.

With that opening, the Herald counted seven of the trail's 10 miles finished and open.

The gap along the University of Miami

The unbuilt section is the middle of the trail, through Coral Gables along the University of Miami. The Herald has described it as the section that "will contain some of the trail's most elaborate features." A Herald photographer recorded crews working there on September 14, 2026, and the paper's October 3 report said construction was expected to wrap up by December.

That's ahead of schedule by some measures and behind by others. A 2022 Herald report recorded an end-of-2025 deadline for the full project. The October Herald piece, meanwhile, describes the finish as arriving "years early thanks to a substantial federal grant." Miami-Dade's Phase 3 page lists the southern 7.36 miles, from near Vizcaya to Dadeland South, at an estimated $109 million in construction cost and still expects completion in 2026.

The Underline's location map still lists several amenities as under construction. Among them are Pineland Courts, with four pickleball courts and a basketball court, along with Rock Ridge Plaza and the Wilds and Stormwater Ponds. The same map also still marks the Play Forest and Mariposa Gardens as under construction even though both are open, so its labels run behind what's actually on the ground.

No date has been announced for the finish. Founder Meg Daly told the Miami Herald that once the trail is complete there will be "a 10-mile-long party."

Where the edges are still rough

Ten finished miles won't mean ten seamless ones on day one. In its July report, the Herald found that both Dadeland Metrorail stations and the Douglas Road station were under renovation, expansion or redevelopment, and that trail connections through them were "sketchy or missing altogether." At Dadeland North, the old connection behind the station garage was blocked off. Signs on the green-marked path through the station told cyclists to dismount and walk the tenth of a mile from end to end.

Those are the most recent station-level details on record, so treat them as last reported in July rather than as today's conditions. For Brickell riders, Douglas Road is the one that matters first, since it sits right where the continuous northern run reaches Coral Gables.

Who pays once the fencing comes down

Finishing early has a side effect. The October 3 Herald report said annual operating costs are expected to come in at around $9.5 million once the entire trail is finished, and that supporters hadn't expected that full bill to arrive so soon.

Coral Gables commissioners unanimously agreed to redirect $500,000 toward the trail's operations and maintenance for fiscal year 2027, half of the $1 million Underline leaders requested. The deal also gives the city a seat on the Underline Conservancy board. Miami-Dade County has agreed to provide several million dollars a year in operating funds for three years, tapering annually, with no guarantee beyond that. Funding from Miami and South Miami is expected to fill in alongside the Gables money.

For Brickell, that puts its half-mile at the start of a park with a 10-mile maintenance budget, shared among three cities and a county.

The Backyard calendar into December

The free programming at the Brickell end runs on its own steady schedule while the trail keeps growing. These are the listings on The Underline's events calendar from publication day through mid-December.

The UYoga listing describes it as a free class held every Saturday at the Urban Gym at SW 7th Street and SW 1st Avenue, so the November 7 date is one week of a recurring session.

One more date sits on a separate calendar. East Coast Marketplace lists "The Underline Market – Brickell" for Saturday, December 12, on SW 1st Avenue, with local vendors, food and live entertainment. That listing comes from a third-party event platform, so check it the week of.

When you look at a Brickell building, the walk from the lobby to the nearest Underline entrance now counts for more than it did when the trail stopped at SW 13th Street. If you want to know how a specific address connects to the River Room, the Urban Gym or the route south, Andrea Alonso and Team Gabriel can walk it with you, in English or Portuguese. Let's connect and start your Florida search.