Miami Tourist Guide North of Downtown North of the Downtown loop, sights thin considerably, and neighbourhoods grow rougher: patches like Bicentennial Park are closer to the crime hobbled Miami of the 1980’s than the glossy city of today. The Port of Miami is still one of the busiest cruise-ship docks in the world, though, and on any given day you can drive down Macarthur Causeway to the beach to see half a dozen mammoth ships queuing  patiently at the dock. One of the most arresting additions to the local skyline is the American Airlines Arena on the old Port of Miami site. A high profile project for local design celebrities Arquitectonica, the AA arena is an origami building floating by the bay, its stark, rounded walls like stowed wings. It’s the site of many big-name concerts as well as the home of the Miami Heat basketball team. Directly opposite the arena is Freedom Tower, new headquarters of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Freedom Tower Often called “Miami’s Ellis Island,” the ornate Freedom Tower at 600 N Biscayne Blvd, served not only as an immigration post but also a community center for over 360,000 Cuban refugees who arrived between 1961 and 1974. It was one of three replicas of Seville’s Giralda belltower built in Miami by the same architects, Schutze and Weaver, who designed New York’s Grand Central Station: the other were Roney Plaze Hotel in Miami Beach (since demolished) and Coral Gable’s Billmore Hotel. Since its 1925 construction as the headquarters of Miami Times newspaper, the Mediterenean Revival structure has lain more often empty than occupied thanks in part to its impractical and eccentric shape, with a high, narrow turret, and little versatile office space. Its most recent owners were the Cuban-American National Foundation, whose late head, telecom billionaire Jorge Mas Canosa, bought the place in 1997 amid much fanfare with plans to open a massive museum. After his death, the plans foundered amid in-fighting and arguments over what was appropriate to feature- exhibits were scheduled to showcase refugee raft simulations, Cuban art exhibits, as well as a public research center. The building’s been sold again, this time to local real estate conglomerate Terra Developers. The company’s not yet confirmed its intentions, only saying that it will indeed open some form of cultural space in the Freedom Tower, perhaps administered by a partner university, while using the land around it to construct high-rise condos. Bicentennial Park Troubled from the day it opened in 1977 (the men running the food stands on opening night were mugged for the day’s takings), Bicentennial Park, at 1075 N Biscayne Blvd, is a problematic eyesore for the city to which little attention has been paid. For over 25 years, its 35 acres-originally an oily storage lot for shipping containers for the nearby Port of Miami-have served as a refuge for the area’s homeless and is not a place to dawdle, especially at dusk. That’s set to change in the next five years, as a monumental new construction project gets under way, known as Museum Park Miami. This cultural hub will combine the Museum of Science, currently in Coconut Grove and the Miami art Museum on a single site, along a satellite location for the Historical Museum of Southern Florida; the park will also boast a 4-acre s sculpture garden and a zoo. To date, progress has been slow and the project controversial, mostly owing to the debate of the building being here than created an unbroken, open greenspace. However, in late 2004, voters approved the funding for the construction and location, though there’s been no schedule released.