Bridge work cuts access to president

Space for sign waving and speeches is shrinking on what has turned into Protest Island near President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate.

Fences and police barricades are closing off territory on tiny Bingham Island, just east of the Southern Boulevard bridge, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.

The island has become a magnet for Trump protesters and supporters alike since Election Day, because it offers one of the few public gathering spaces available amid the mansions, private clubs and other prized real estate surrounding Mara-Lago.

But barriers erected in recent weeks have closed most of the parking and the

grassy areas where hundreds of demonstrators had been gathering to spread their message close to what the president calls his Southern White House.

“It’s as close as you can get to Mar-a-Lago when he’s in town,” said Trump protest organizer David Gibson, of Peace, Justice, Sustainability Florida. “A piece at a time, they keep taking areas away from us.”

Those hurdles to public access aren’t expected to disappear anytime soon.

Newly added chain link fences have gone up around construction staging sites for a long-scheduled Southern Boulevard bridge replacement expected to last three years.

That would make most of the island off limits for large demonstrations until almost the end of Trump’s fouryear term.

The public can still use slender strips of beach rimming the island and a narrow area between the fenced-off construction zones.

But that’s not enough room for the hundreds of demonstrators who at times have marched from West Palm Beach over the bridge to Bingham Island.

“There’s no place closer or better to hold rallies,” said Patrick Ferguson of the Sierra Club, who led a climate change protest march to Bingham Island on April 29. “It’s very important to have a public speaking space that close.”

The town of Palm Beach maintains that the new squeeze on public space available at Bingham Island wasn’t an effort to curtail demonstrations during Trump’s visits to Mar-aLago. The bridge replacement was in the works long before demonstrators started flocking to Bingham Island, according to town and state representatives.

“These plans have been in place since before President Trump was even running,” Palm Beach Police Capt. Curtis Krauel said.

Bingham Island is a small stretch of land between two bridges, less than a mile long, that link Palm Beach to the mainland.

South of Southern Boulevard, much of the island is a bird sanctuary.

North of Southern Boulevard, the island features a narrow beach, a parking lot and grassy right-of-way area, which have become a rallying site for demonstrators seeking to make their voices heard while waving signs and flags within sight of Mar-a-Lago.

Space for demonstrators started to shrink in Bingham Island during Trump’s April 6 and 7 summit with the president of China, when an army of local law enforcement agencies helping provide security claimed more space on the island.

Likewise, on April 15 the parking lot on the north side of Bingham Island was blocked off by police when nearly 700 protesters marched from West Palm Beach toward Mar-a-Lago, renewing the call for Trump to release his federal tax records.

Then on April 29, environmental advocates marching to raise awareness about climate change were surprised to find fences blocking them from using the area on Bingham Island where they had planned to hold their rally.

Protest organizers had coordinated with Palm Beach police to hold their rally between the road and the beach, but the fences for bridge construction went up sooner than expected.

“They gave us the little area in between [the fences], but it wasn’t anywhere near big enough to hold the rally,” Ferguson said.

When the climatechange demonstrators found they didn’t have room to gather on Bingham Island, police allowed them to march along Southern Boulevard to the roundabout beside Mar-a-Lago before heading back over the bridge to West Palm Beach.

But that was only allowed because the president wasn’t in Palm Beach that day, according to Palm Beach police. When the president is in Mar-a-Lago, the Secret Service doesn’t allow people to gather that close to Trump’s estate.

In addition, South Ocean Drive in front of Mar-aLago as well as the beach bordering it are closed to the public.

Demonstrators can use sidewalks, parks and other public areas in the town of Palm Beach — as long as they don’t block traffic — but there aren’t many of those near Mar-a-Lago, according to the police department.

“It’s in a residential community,” Krauel said about the president’s 18-acre estate, which he turned into a private club. “This isn’t a government park or a business district.”

Bingham Island, without bathrooms or electrical hookups and limited parking, was already a less-thanideal site to host a crowd.

Now, the fencing for the Southern Boulevard bridge construction project has closed off much of the prime real estate near Mara-Lago that still made it appealing as a protest destination.

The $93 million Southern Boulevard Bridge construction has long been scheduled to follow work on another bridge to Palm Beach, the Flagler Memorial Bridge, which is nearing completion, according to Florida Department of Transportation spokeswoman Barbara Kelleher.

Work crews have already been moving water lines and other utilities along Southern Boulevard. Now, workers are creating space to bring in materials to be used to build the temporary bridge that must be constructed before replacing the old bridge.

The goal is to be done by November 2020, but the work could stretch into early 2021, Kelleher said.

When it’s done, the 6-foot-wide sidewalks and 7-foot-wide bike lane will make it easier for future demonstrators and others to get to Bingham Island.

Until then, Palm Beach police and demonstration organizers say they expect more protest rallies to be held in West Palm Beach. Dreher Park along Southern Boulevard borders Trump’s motorcade route and George Petty Park, near Flagler Drive, is just across the Intracoastal Waterway from Mar-a-Lago.

“We are going to march wherever we can and get as close as we can,” Gibson said.