Last weekend I traveled to the final remaining site on my list of Sunlands. Known as the Miami Sunland, the facility in Dade County is actually far north of town in Opa Locka, now also called Miami Gardens. It's a sprawling campus that was renamed the Landmark Learning Center in 1982, as the Sunland Centers struggled to reinvent themselves.
The Landmark Learning Center was simply a renaming of the same facility. Landmark came under fire for years for care quality problems, with numerous calls to close the center throughout the 1980's. However, as of March, 1994, the facility still housed about 300 intellectually disabled individuals. In this same year, 36 mentally and physically handicapped persons were moved TO the Landmark Center after a private group home, opened under the "community based care" model, was found to be so deficient and neglectful that an emergency closure was necessary.
Landmark finally closed and the property was handed back to the county in 2005. Today, the campus houses a fire station and His House, a shelter for abused or neglected children run by a faith-based, non-profit organization. Here are some photos taken Sunday at the Sunland/Landmark campus.
Sources:
photos: author
background: Miami Herald archives 8/19/07 (Marissa D. Clarke and Mohamed Hamaludin)
Miami Herald (uncredited) 3/1/94, 3/12/94, 11/15/82.
Web site: His House Children's Home www.hhch.org
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