Eulois Cleckley, Miami-Dade’s transit chief, is leaving his job to take charge of the county-funded Underline project, a trail and park being constructed under the Metrorail tracks.
After applying for at least one job outside of Florida — Cleckley was a finalist to run Boston’s airport and seaport in May — the county’s director of Transportation and Public Works will become the new leader of a 10-mile linear park that is partially open, partially under construction and still needing government support to finish the $156 million project.
Already open from Brickell to Silver Bluff, the one-time biking trail now has separate tracks for walkers and joggers, plus recreational options that include picnic areas, basketball courts and plazas for yoga classes and communal dining. The project is planned to eventually stretch south to the Dadeland Metrorail stations.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who hired Cleckley away from running Denver’s public works department in 2021, announced his departure in a memo to county commissioners on Friday afternoon.
“We are excited that Eulois is taking on this key position with the Underline,” Levine Cava said in the memo. “During his tenure, the Department has made major strides to accelerate our progress in connecting our community via public transit.”
Cleckley leaving his $298,000-a-year county job marks a new era for the Underline, which will evolve from a charity run for free by its founder, Meg Daly, to a nonprofit with a full-time professional director who was recruited away from the project’s main government sponsor.
Cleckley will be CEO of the Friends of the Underline, the fundraising and advocacy arm of the project. The operator is a separate nonprofit called the Underline Conservancy, where Patrice Gillespie Smith remains as president. Daly serves as chair of both organizations.
Miami-Dade’s 2025 budget puts the Underline construction cost at $156 million, with public funding coming from Miami, Coral Gables and the state of Florida, as well as Miami-Dade. County funding is about $70 million.
Levine Cava said Daly, the current volunteer Underline CEO, will remain chair of the charity’s board. No compensation information was released for Cleckley’s Underline position.
Raquel Regalado, the Miami-Dade commissioner whose Miami district contains a large chunk of the Underline route, called Cleckley’s hiring a “win-win” for the county and the park.
“We look forward to witnessing the positive impact he will bring as he works alongside Meg Daly to ensure the continued growth and success,” she said.
The change ends Cleckley’s tenure atop the county transit system, a three-year run that brought controversy, complaints, progress and big changes in Miami-Dade’s transportation plans.
Under Cleckley, Miami-Dade launched its Better Bus route redesign, a reworking of bus service that brought widespread complaints from riders and multiple attempts to fix things by Transportation and Public Works.
In 2022, he helped Levine Cava craft the strategy that killed the county’s plan to build a privately run monorail connecting Miami with Miami Beach and instead pursue extending Metromover tracks on the MacArthur Causeway instead.
He’s been part of the team that secured more than $400 million in funding in President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal for the county’s plan to launch a commuter-train service on tracks that Brightline owns.
Cleckley was suspended without pay for two weeks ahead of the redesign launch last fall over a free-fare promotion that Levine Cava said she hadn’t approved.
In a statement, Daly called Cleckley a national leader in transportation whose mission will be to secure the dollars needed to build and operate the Underline. She said Cleckley’s “overarching goal will be to achieve or exceed our annual fundraising goals.”
The Underline relies on a mix of government and private dollars for construction and operations, including about $2 million a year needed to maintain and service the half-mile stretch that opened in the Brickell area in 2021, according to Underline figures shared earlier this year with the Miami Herald.
At the time, Daly said the annual budget of the project once the Underline is fully built will be based on a calculation expecting each mile to cost between $750,000 and $1 million. That would have Cleckley overseeing expenses between $7.5 million and $10 million a year.
Cleckley currently oversees one of Miami-Dade’s largest departments, with 4,300 employees and a budget of $1 billion.
Levine Cava’s memo said the administration is searching for a new director and that Cleckley would be leaving his post “later this year.”
©2024 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.