South Florida has a dream. A dream that one day every tri-county resident will be able to ride a commuter train along the coast from downtown Miami up to West Palm Beach, hopping on and off in neighborhoods along the way. A dream that Amtrak will travel that same route, stopping in major cities from Miami to Jacksonville before continuing on to northern states. A dream that freight trains, loaded with containers from new, super-size ships, will rumble out of the Port of Miami for the first time in years.

One of those dreams will soon come true. The other two will need time and lots of money.

The key to a new rail reality lies with the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC). Roughly paralleling U.S. 1 (Biscayne Boulevard) from downtown Miami to Palm Beach County, the FEC passes through the centers of 28 South Florida cities before heading north along the coast to Jacksonville.

Built by oil and hotel magnate Henry Flagler in the late 19th Century, the FEC played a major role in Florida’s development, bringing goods and people to the once inaccessible southern end of the peninsula. But competition from automobiles, affordable air travel, and problems posed by a workers’ strike brought passenger service to an abrupt end in 1968. Ever since then, the railroad has carried nothing but freight

The southernmost five-mile stretch, from 71st Street to the Port of Miami, was rarely used after that, and fell into complete disuse after 2005, when Hurricane Wilma damaged the drawbridge that carried trains to the port.

Now, thanks to nearly $50 million in federal, state, and private funds, that ribbon of steel is making a comeback. Work has begun to repair the bridge, upgrade the rails, and construct an on-dock rail terminal to restore freight service to and from the port. The upgrades are being made in anticipation of the widening of the Panama Canal, which will allow super-sized ships from Asia to unload East Coast-bound containers in Miami. A $77 million state grant will help fund the dredging of the Port of Miami to accommodate those larger ships.

Questions remain as to how effective those improvements will be in attracting mega-ships to Miami. Yet of greater interest, perhaps, is the fact that the freight revival comes in advance of Florida Department of Transportation plans to place both tri-county commuter and inter-city Amtrak trains on the FEC track, too.

The Port of Miami design calls for rail cars stacked with off-loaded cargo containers to use the existing single track that runs across Biscayne Boulevard, past the Freedom Tower, then turns northward, roughly paralleling NE 2nd Avenue.

At NE 71st Street the line branches westward and continues on to the FEC’s Hialeah Railyard, northeast of Miami International Airport. That is where cargo bound for South Florida distribution would be loaded onto trucks for delivery.

But much of the cargo, if not most, would be heading farther north, passing through Jacksonville and on up the East Coast. That will mean a lot of trains using the same single track envisioned to carry passengers from Miami to West Palm Beach, and beyond. Can commuters and containers coexist?

In 2009 Sue Gibbons of Gannett Fleming, the consulting firm working on the passenger rail study for FDOT, explained at a public meeting that “within the 100-foot-wide FEC corridor, there’s room for up to five tracks, so a combination of local, express, and even inter-city Amtrak trains is possible.”

Current plans, however, call for just one additional track.

“We are analyzing, hopefully, just double-tracking,” says Amie Goddeau, a Mobility Development Manager at FDOT. “We have to do an awful lot of train simulation modeling with the FEC to make sure both freight and passenger service can be accommodated and determine what type of infrastructure is needed.”

Existing routes for the FEC & Tri-Rail/Amtrak rail lines. (S. Florida East Coast Corridor Study)

Although portions of the FEC corridor are already double-tracked, vast stretches currently contain just a single line for freight. FDOT’s plan would run two tracks from downtown Miami to West Palm Beach.

The goal of introducing a local commuter service on those tracks is estimated to cost about $3 billion. “So what we need to do now,” Goddeau explains, “is break it down into cost-effective, buildable segments. We’re looking at a few, but if you live in South Florida, the one that makes the most sense is the one between Miami and Fort Lauderdale.”

In other words, a new tri-county commuter line will be pieced together slowly, as funding emerges.

As for Amtrak, which currently travels to Miami along the CSX Railway tracks (several miles west of South Florida’s city centers), she says, “If we’re successful putting in commuter rail, then Amtrak would like to run down the FEC, too. As we look to [future] usage of the tracks, we would put in a slot for them.” Additional tracks would likely be unnecessary, she says, since Amtrak would only run one or two trains a day in each direction.

Financing those dreams could be tough.

FDOT applied for federal grants twice in the past three years to fund Amtrak’s move to the FEC. They were denied both times owing to concerns about the project’s readiness. They will try again as soon as the Federal Railroad Administration announces a new round of grant opportunities, this time bolstered by a recently approved state pledge of $118 million. It is not known, however, when the Federal Railroad Administration will make new grants available.

A tri-county commuter service on the FEC will face funding challenges, too. Local budget deficits, state cutbacks, and an anti-spending sentiment in Washington could limit government contributions. The ideological debate over the wisdom of rail subsidies will likely factor in also: Supporters believe passenger rail curbs traffic congestion, creates jobs, lowers emissions, and reduces fuel dependence. Therefore it deserves government subsidies. Critics fear a tax-funded boondoggle which is better left to the private sector.

There are stretches of twin tracks, like this near El Portal, but mainly it’s single track.

The solution may lie with Tri-Rail — South Florida’s existing tri-county commuter service, which operates several miles west of the FEC, on tracks formerly owned by CSX Railway.

The Palm Beach Post reported in August that “legislation is likely to be proposed for the [state legislative] session beginning in January that would allow private firms to bid on running Tri-Rail.” The FEC, which is interested in bidding, claims it can operate Tri-Rail for $10 million less than the state. The company would use that leftover subsidy money to jumpstart passenger service on its own coastal line. An east-west connection between the two systems could give South Florida its first expansive commuter rail service.

Other companies, such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains, the Palm Beach Post goes on to say, are rumored to be interested in bidding too, so an FEC-dominated rail network in South Florida is not guaranteed. But, says FDOT’s Goddeau, “FEC is an operator which would surely love to, if they privatize Tri-Rail, get that money and run trains on Tri-Rail and then also their own trains on the FEC.” Privatization, she notes, “seems to be the way we’re trending as a state.”

Impatient for the arrival of passenger trains, one Miami official has put forward his own local, interim plan. Two months ago Miami-Dade County Commissioner Xavier Suarez proposed running a hybrid train/trolley system on the FEC from Midtown to downtown Miami. Suarez’s “trolley trains” would have rubber wheels to allow them to transition from rails to city streets (presumably at Biscayne Boulevard). The future of that proposal depends in large part on cooperation from the City of Miami. Whether the FEC would welcome Suarez’s trolleys on their newly revived freight line — and future passenger corridor — remains to be seen.

This much is certain: Several years’ worth of planning and fund-seeking still lay ahead. Back in 2009, rail study consultant Sue Gibbons cautioned, “In the very best of circumstances, it’s going to be six years or more before we actually have service running anywhere on this corridor — and probably many more years than that before the whole plan is implemented.”

That timeline, which FDOT confirms is still accurate, leaves Biscayne Corridor residents with four more years to dream.

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.

When Rene Martinez opens the front door of his house, he sees nothing but cars. From the back door, it’s the same view. In fact, no matter which window or door he looks out of, the scenery is the same. That’s because his home sits in the middle of a 200-car parking lot.

“I’m in love,” says Martinez. “I’m in my spot. What goes on around me, I don’t care. I’m happy.”

Straddling the border between Little Haiti and Buena Vista, Martinez’s house was once part of a subdivision that included nearly 100 homes and stretched from N. Miami Avenue to NE 2nd Avenue, and from NE 50th Terrace to NE 53rd Street. The neighborhood was middle-class Anglo for most of the last century, then shifted demographics in the 1970s and 1980s, when thousands of refugees from Haiti and Cuba arrived. And while the neighborhood is still distinctly Caribbean, Martinez’s block looks more like an asphalt sandbar, with his house sitting alone in the parking lot like a two-story metaphor for the passage of time.

Over the course of the past 30 years, his former neighbors sold their homes to the nearby Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged (recently renamed Miami Jewish Health Systems). In the 1950s, MJHS was just a collection of wooden bungalows on the former estate of prominent Miami merchant E.B. Douglas. But the organization outgrew its 17-acre campus toward the end of the last century as Miami’s large post-war Jewish community began to age and seek medical care. “The Home,” as it’s still known, expanded south and westward into Martinez’s neighborhood.

“They were hungry,” Martinez says of his vanished neighbors. “It was a poor neighborhood. They jumped on the first deal they got.” But his father, who bought the property in the early 1970s, refused to sell. His affection for his house and a belief that he could hold out for a better deal motivated him to hang on until the end. When he died last year at the age of 81, he left the house to his son, now 45 years old, who shares his father’s sentiments for the home.

The tall mango trees in the backyard grew from seeds his father carried in his pocket from Cuba. The roosters and chickens that patrol the area are the offspring of fowl that Martinez Sr. raised himself. And the home’s second story, an addition to the original 70-year-old structure, is the handiwork of the father-son team.

Martinez still refers to his long-gone neighbors by their full names when speaking about them. He tells tales of murders, hauntings, affairs, and of schoolboy pranks that he and his friends regularly played on the residents. To give up his childhood home, he says, “They’d have to pay me one million dollars. Maybe $1.5 million.”

Valued at just $258,000 by the Dade County Property Appraiser, his asking price seems extravagant, especially since the prospect of finding a buyer willing to live amid a crush of cars and trucks seems unlikely. However, Martinez explains that he has four sisters — all of whom share a stake in the property — and a million dollars split five ways doesn’t amount to a fortune.

He also points out that the access road leading to his house is maintained solely for his benefit and divides MJHS’s parking area into two separate, unconnected lots. If he leaves, MJHS can close it off and gain a new rear access to the facility, or add roughly 70 new parking spaces — that’s in addition to some 30 spaces his house occupies.

Will they pay the princely sum?

MJHS’s chief development and marketing officer, Blaise Mercadante, says that his organization needs more parking and would love to buy Martinez’s property. But, he explains, “We are a not-for-profit and we operate on donations. We need to be good stewards of the donations we receive, which includes paying reasonable rates for all we purchase.”

The plan, he says, is simply to wait out Martinez: “We don’t want to be bullies. There are no plans to ask the government for eminent domain.”

Eminent domain, while typically used by governments to seize land for public projects such as highways, railroads, and airports, can sometimes be enacted on behalf of private entities. If a company can convince a majority of the state legislature that removing a homeowner is in the public interest, a plea might be successful. In this case, since MJHS is a large medical facility, it could conceivably argue that Martinez’s presence hinders access, parking, expansion, and complicates important zoning processes.

How much compensation would Martinez receive under such a scenario? Jeff Cynamon, an eminent domain and private property rights attorney in Miami Beach, says, “In an eminent domain case, the property is valued at its highest and best use, and the highest and best use may be as assembled as part of the hospital’s property.”

Determining that future value involves a measure of speculation based on price per square foot, the value of added parking spaces (and any revenue collected from them), new facilities, jobs created by expansion, and a variety of other factors. It’s possible, therefore, that the state could determine that the value of Martinez’s property is considerably higher than its current market value.

Martinez, meanwhile, is digging in. He recently planted a row of young lychee trees in the narrow strip of soil beside his house, the fruit from which he plans to enjoy ten years from now. A building contractor by trade, he has plans for the house, too: “I’m going to do renovations soon, paint the house, get it in good shape and let everyone know I’m here to stay.”

Martinez is no anomaly. The Internet abounds with stories of people who refuse to sell their homes and end up living in parking lots, shopping malls, under highway overpasses, or sandwiched in between skyscrapers. In China, homes like Martinez’s are called “nail houses” because their owners are like stubborn nails stuck in a piece of wood.

Literature and film, meanwhile, regularly sympathize with such tenacity, as in the 2009 Disney/Pixar movie Up or the classic 1942 book The Little House, which is still in print today.

But while those stories often involve a David vs. Goliath storyline, Martinez faces a less sinister foe. Real estate records show that MJHS paid fair-market prices for many of the most recently purchased homes in the area. As one of the nation’s preeminent geriatric care facilities, the organization is often bequeathed small fortunes by happy patients and their grateful relatives. Those gifts, along with government grants, have fueled its growth and made the acquisition of private homes possible.

Whatever the future holds, Martinez is content living in the house where he grew up. “I really don’t care about money,” he says. “Money to me means problems. It’s a way to live a little better. You can get things you need, but it’s not everything.”

Still, he’d move on if he could trade up — perhaps to a beach house in Central or South America. Otherwise, he says, “I’d rather die here than go somewhere else. In fact, maybe that’s what I’ll do.”

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.

“In Miami, sex is always just around the corner.” Those are the words of my Cuban friend José. Not too long ago I found sex in Hialeah, literally, on a corner.

Rosa was an older woman, probably in her fifties. She sold cold bottles of water at a busy intersection in a part of Miami that never makes it into travel brochures. She was a beauty once. You could see that in the way she carried herself, like a woman who was used to being looked at. But Rosa had lived a hard life. That was obvious, too. The sun had done its work on her skin. Her long hair was going gray. Her body had rebelled a long time ago.

To read more, click here. To hear the radio broadcast, click the NPR logo below:

The streets are lined with stout glass towers, perfect palm trees planted in perfect rows, private boat slips, golf courses, jogging paths, faux-Mediterranean townhomes, and all the usual emblems of an upscale, South Florida suburban community. This is Aventura, an unmistakably American version of paradise where stray foliage doesn’t stand a chance, zoning codes seem like scripture, and residential enclaves boast more security than a South American drug ranch. As one of Miami-Dade County’s youngest and most successful municipalities, Aventura has been featured in international magazines, hosted presidential candidates, courted celebrities, and is regularly touted as the City of Excellence.

Such cachet did not grow spontaneously. Aventura’s image of luxury and prestige has been skillfully crafted and professionally marketed since before the city even had a charter of its own. However, some say the Aventura brand has been so heavily promoted and protected over the years — by developer-backed marketers and image-conscious government administrators — that troublesome civic issues are often whitewashed, critics sidelined, and small-business owners left without a voice.

“What is this place called Aventura? Who is Aventura? What are the businesses here? How many people do they employ? What’s the trending on commercial real estate? What’s the vacancy rate? How’s the city doing? How many condos are under water?” These are just some of the questions that real-estate franchise recruiter and self-proclaimed social entrepreneur Emil Hubschman wants answered. At age 75, the voluble Philadelphia transplant should be taking life easy, strolling the local golf courses or cruising the world. Instead he’s fighting to breathe new life into an organization he founded 14 years ago, the Aventura/Sunny Isles Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Emil Hubschman is just getting warmed up: “The developer phase is over. The bubble machine has stopped. Now it’s time to get serious about local business.”

Derailed by the sudden death of its CEO from cancer in 2002, and several subsequent years of neglect by interim managers, the chamber, once 450 members strong, has dwindled in size. Now Hubschman wants to get it back on course. And like any good chamber of commerce, he wants it to be the voice of small businesses in his area.

Aventura begins around NE 176th Street in the south and ends at the Broward County line. The FEC railroad tracks mark the western boundary. To the east, the Intracoastal Waterway sparkles along the full length of the city. One recent afternoon Hubschman drove around the far less sparkly commercial western half of the city (abutting Biscayne Boulevard) pointing out to a BT reporter one troubled shopping plaza after another. “Look at this place!” he exclaims. “You could shoot a cannon through here! A real estate agent had a big office over there. Gone. A restaurant used to be right there. Gone. An eyewear place moved out over there. This plaza here is the Promenade, which seems to be dying a horrible death…. Here’s another little strip center where nobody shops…. And over here is a whole network of empty stores…. This is the kind of thing I want to get a handle on.”

Then Hubschman adds soberly: “But the real challenge in Aventura is the mall.”

He’s speaking, of course, of the thriving Aventura Mall, which sits like a giant pantheon off Biscayne Boulevard, drawing an estimated 24 million shoppers annually. Built in 1983 by pioneering Aventura developer Don Soffer and his associates, the mall is the fifth largest in America, generating revenue greater than the GDP of many African nations — roughly $8 billion per year — and providing the City of Aventura with millions in property taxes each year. (For the fiscal year that ended in September 2009, the mall paid some $6.7 million to the city, more than 40 percent of all property taxes collected. That covered roughly 18 percent of the city’s operating expenses.)

The mall is so popular with tourists that foreign visitors comprise 20 percent of the traffic. In fact, 7 million more visitors arrived at the Aventura Mall than at Miami International Airport in 2009.

Aventura Mall generates revenue greater than the GDP of many African nations, but is it really part of Aventura?

“But the mall,” Hubschman stresses, “is not Aventura. There are no local businesses in the mall. It’s a regional destination and is always packed. But if you go to any given strip center, it looks like death warmed over. We need to help local shopping plazas become worthwhile destinations, too. These businesses are part of the community, not to be ignored and treated like some unwanted stepchild.”

Hubschman’s fight for the little guy is hard not to love, and his passion is endearing. Tall, lean, and exasperated, he cuts a distinct profile, like a harried college professor, or perhaps Ted Turner. When he speaks about small business, his thoughts seem to outpace his tongue, compelling him to stop now and then, reconsider, and begin anew.

But with a touch of the firebrand about him, he has for many years, he admits, been viewed as something of a lightning rod in the community, operating in the shadow of Aventura’s bigger, more influential business organization, the Aventura Marketing Council (AMC).

Created in 1988 by an elite group of businessmen and big-name developers — among them Turnberry Associates, the Trump Group, Mystic Pointe, Coscan, and Humana Hospital — the AMC’s original purpose was simple: promote the then-unincorporated corner of northeast Dade County as an upscale, business-friendly, resort-style community.

Forlorn strip malls, many with vacant buildings, line the city’s western edge, along Biscayne Boulevard.

Rather than market their individual projects, developers realized it would be more effective to promote the area as a destination, to sell a lifestyle instead of a product. Brochures, a magazine, a local TV talk show, sponsorships, networking events, and other efforts helped them spread the word about their blossoming area. There were other reasons for forming the nonprofit, too, like lobbying the county for better services.

After area residents voted to incorporate and form the City of Aventura in 1995, the AMC’s role shifted. As part of a self-governing municipality with name recognition, prestige, and a healthy tax base, large-scale marketing campaigns slowly became less central to the group’s mission. Consequently, the AMC today refers to itself on its website as “a grass-roots business organization similar to a chamber of commerce.”

Hubschman counters that, in reality, it is nothing like a chamber: “A chamber’s main purpose is to advocate for local businesses and residents. We go to the city with issues and try to get them solved. The AMC doesn’t do that.”

Former Aventura Mayor Jeff Perlow agrees. In an interview with the BT at his Aventura law office, he holds up a sheet of paper showing a list of ten things that all good chambers do. “The AMC,” he says “does only a fraction of what a chamber does.”

Perlow drew up his list because he may provide office space and play a future role in the “new” chamber Hubschman is now working to create — if it can deliver on his ten-point list. Speaking of his 1996 campaign for a commission seat — against a candidate involved with, and supported by, the AMC — Perlow asks, “What exactly did the AMC do? They threw nice luncheons, they had nice breakfasts, they brought in good speakers, and they did very well. But they were pretty much developer-driven…. Clearly the AMC, prior to incorporation, did a very good job marketing Aventura as a destination. But if you take away the developers and get down to the level of family-owned businesses, most can’t afford to join the AMC.”

With annual fees ranging from $475 to $16,000, most membership tiers in the AMC are reserved for those in the upper strata of the business world. A survey of the organization’s database shows 429 members. Excluding professionals like doctors and lawyers, roughly 30 percent of those could be characterized as small, independently owned businesses. The rest are mostly franchises, municipal governments, schools, developers, financial companies, or other corporate entities.

“That’s the thing about gated communities. People don’t vote. There’s virtually no sense of community in Aventura.”

What do those members get for their money? A seat on the AMC’s board for the highest-paying members, two monthly networking meetings, and coverage in the weekly Aventura News.

Twenty years ago, according to the Miami Herald, the AMC “helped local community newspaper chain Miller Publishing/Community Newspapers found the Aventura News to publicize Marketing Council businesses.” Eight full pages, including the front cover, are paid for by the AMC and feature articles about the group and its members, mainly AMC meetings, ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and what appear to be news stories reporting on a specific member’s business activities.

The AMC makes detailed promises of Aventura News “coverage” according to membership level. For example, at the Executive Level (yearly fee: $2750), “the company is given a half-page feature story (value $750) and seven quarter-page stories (value $2100). Total advertising value $2850.”

In 2001 the paper finally began identifying AMC-generated coverage, adding a small AMC logo to “purchased” pages. That logo, however, does not consistently appear near AMC stories, and some feel that the paper is misleading.

Former Mayor Jeff Perlow: “The AMC threw nice luncheons, they brought in good speakers, but they were pretty much developer-driven.”

Michael Miller, co-owner of Miller Publishing, did not respond to requests for comment. Back in 2001, however, he characterized the weekly as a “newsletter for an organization,” telling the Herald: “Our primary mission with the Aventura Newsis to promote the Aventura Marketing Council. If the newspaper were owned by the Aventura Marketing Council, or if we changed the paper’s name, there would never be a question. Usually the people who have a problem with it are newspaper people.”

Newspapers that sell their editorial space may irk journalists and raise questions of integrity, but critics say the AMC’s control of the News simply illustrates the way the organization has come to dominate the public dialogue in Aventura, and reveals the incestuous relationship between the AMC, big business, and government officials.

For example, city Commissioner Bob Diamond writes a column for the News. Dan Palmer, the paper’s editor, sits on the AMC’s board. Aventura city manager Eric Soroka also sits on the AMC’s board, as does city Commissioner Michael Stern, whose company operates the group’s website.

Attorney and lobbyist Cliff Schulman, a regular face in the News, is chairman of the AMC’s board of directors. He also works for the law firm that acts as Aventura’s city attorney. In other words, he represents the business interests of the AMC’s members while his firm simultaneously advises the city on legal matters.

Conflict of interest? Schulman says no, and defends his position by providing the BT with an e-mail from the executive director of the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, which states, “I see no conflict of interest preventing Mr. Schulman, a shareholder with [law firm] Weiss Serota, from continuing to serve as chairman of the Aventura Marketing Council.” Schulman also points to legal documentation from the Florida Commission on Ethics backing up that position.

More curious, perhaps, is city manager Eric Soroka’s seat on the AMC’s board. The potential conflict with that arrangement is explained by Jack Pinkowski, director of Nova Southeastern University’s Institute of Government and Public Policy. “One of the [goals] of Aventura’s commission-manager form of government,” Pinkowski says, “is to isolate administrators from political influence…. This is an area where the manager could find a conflict of interest between proactive advocacies of the interests of the business community versus the mandates as determined by the elected representatives of the people — i.e., the city commission…. Still, many cities have close relationships with groups that represent private entities…. It is appropriate for cities to have representatives on such bodies. But it is not normally the chief administrative officer….” (Soroka did not respond to requests for comment.)

Aventura City Hall, designed by Arquitectonica: An “institutional resistance to news coverage”?

Former city commissioner and one-time Aventura/Sunny Isles Beach Chamber of Commerce president Jay Beskin views the AMC’s status as that of a civic institution. “They forged a bond…with the city manager and several of the commissioners,” Beskin says, “and as a result have become significant partners of the City of Aventura. They have a significant amount of influence, I would say.”

Beskin adds that the chamber was created in 1996 in an effort to address the issue. However, he acknowledges that the effort was unsuccessful. “The chamber tried to work with the city and the chamber was thwarted,” he says. “And I think the chamber was thwarted because the AMC viewed it as this upstart organization that was attempting to encroach upon its bailiwick and its influence. And it succeeded.”

The AMC’s success at becoming an Aventura institution is largely attributed to the talents of its 21-year president, Elaine Adler. Formerly with the North Dade Chamber of Commerce, she is said to have risen from part-time secretary to chamber president, and increased that organization’s membership from a few dozen to a few hundred during her tenure. Recruited to the AMC based on that achievement, she led the group from obscurity to prosperity, and is praised by nearly all who speak of her — even AMC critics.

Among the city’s amenities is a jogging path circumnavigating the Turnberry Isle Country Club.

But those same critics ask whether Adler’s skills are really worth more than a quarter of a million dollars per year. A 2007 tax form lists the AMC’s total revenue as $488,256, while Adler’s compensation that year was $263,113. That’s more than Aventura’s city manager, mayor, and six commissioners earn collectively. By comparison, the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches had total revenues of $1.5 million in 2007, and its president made $112,361. The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s revenue that same year was nearly $3.9 million, while its president earned $171,300. Florida’s Latin Chamber had $3.7 million in revenue in 2008, and its executive director made just $58,010. (Adler did not respond to repeated messages requesting an interview.)

Of greater concern to some Aventura residents is the lack of serious, sustained local news coverage. The Aventura News, these residents say, avoids critical coverage of the city. Indeed, Adler herself describes the weekly as a “good-news newspaper.” As she put it to the Herald: “You read the Aventura News once and you see no rapes, no robberies, no murders, no rip-offs, no drug deals.”

Other locally distributed newspapers, including the Miami Herald, have limited resources for reporting on city affairs. There is, of course, Aventura Magazine, but it deals mostly with luxury living and doesn’t produce investigate pieces — not surprising given that it is co-owned by Aventura city Commissioner Michael Stern.

The Shoppes at Waterways, on 207th Street, is one of the few commercial malls dominated by independently owned businesses.

His company, Stern Bloom Media, for years has published the City of Aventura’s annual report, as well as a bi-annual guide to local businesses and events, which the city buys from him. To facilitate those transactions, his fellow commissioners have granted him a waiver from Miami-Dade County’s ethics code.

Aiming to break through that wall of happy news, one longtime journalist, who requested anonymity, launched a website in 2009 with the goal of providing “real news coverage” to Aventurans. He suspended operations a little over a year later, citing, among other things, “institutional resistance to news coverage…. The root of the issue is the all-controlling marketing council, which views all news coverage as a threat to its marketing message. It influences the thinking of merchants and public officials who’ve embraced that mindset and will tolerate only controlled happy talk.”

That “institutional resistance to news coverage” is reiterated by Aventura resident Nancy Lee, co-operator of the popular political blog Eye on Miami. “The city clerk is married to the city manager,” she says. “They have erected an iron curtain. If you write to any of the commissioners or the mayor, the clerk intercepts all the e-mails and only forwards some of them.”

Dense living in some 80 condo towers allows for the lowest property taxes in Miami-Dade County.

To back up that claim, Lee produces a series of e-mails she wrote to various administrators showing the chain of contact. The mayor and commissioners’ phone numbers, meanwhile, are not listed on the city’s website, nor is there a listing for a city spokesperson or media liaison. The BT’s follow-up e-mail to a public-records request asking for additional information was ignored by the clerk, as was an e-mail to the city manager. Phone calls to the clerk went straight to voice mail.

Another instance of apparent municipal self-consciousness involves prolific South Florida history-book author Seth Bramson. In 2009 he was commissioned to write a history of Aventura. Government administrators, deciding that they wanted to change much of the book’s content, put the project on hold for an indefinite period and the book, at this point, remains unpublished.

Iron curtains and bureaucratic elusiveness prompt another question: Does anyone care?

This past November, Aventura’s municipal elections were canceled because no one challenged the city’s incumbent mayor and three commissioners. All four were automatically reelected. In fact, only about half of Aventura’s estimated 30,000 residents are registered voters, and no more than about 16 percent of them regularly turn out to cast ballots in city elections.

“That’s the thing about gated communities,” says Emil Hubschman. “People don’t vote. There’s virtually no sense of community in Aventura. Most people who live here didn’t grow up here and don’t work here. Others are retired or semi-retired, or they’re snowbirds who spend only part of the year here. They come and go — from all over the country and the world. They’re not stakeholders in the community. They mostly just care that taxes are low.”

The new Arts and Cultural Center could help the city and its residents develop a sense of community. (Courtesy City of Aventura)

Taxes, in fact, were the main reason Aventura broke away from Miami-Dade County in the first place. Feeling as though they were putting a lot more money into the county pot than they were getting back in services, the well-to-do residents overwhelmingly voted to incorporate in 1995, giving themselves control of their own money and the ability to set their own property tax rate, known as millage. Today that rate is just 1.72, the lowest of any municipality in the county, meaning Aventurans are taxed $1.72 per $1000 of their homes’ assessed value. The City of Miami’s millage rate, by contrast, is 8.64.

That bargain rate is made possible by some 80 condo towers, which allow a dense population of above-average earners to cram themselves into just 2.7 square miles. Taxes from the Aventura Mall and a few other large commercial properties grow the coffers, too. And of course the newly installed and highly contentious red-light cameras now contribute handsomely to the city’s funds, bringing in $3,053,000 during the last two fiscal years alone.

Run like a blue-chip company, Aventura is a well-managed city with an abundance of high-quality services. In fact CNN ranked Aventura as a contender for “Best Places to Live” in 2007 and 2009. The BT’s very own Aventura correspondent, Shari Lynn Rothstein-Kramer, thinks the average person who lives in the city is exceedingly happy. “It’s a very nice place to live,” she says, “unless you want a lot of funkiness. There’s no funky here.”

Ex-commissioner Jay Beskin is fond of his city, too, describing it as “upscale, safe, pleasant, clean, beautiful, and a desirable place to live.” On the other hand, he laments its sameness. “Our moniker is City of Aventura, but we’re not a city because a city represents diversity, different people, sometimes some tension as to how things should proceed — the messy part of democracy. Differences are healthy. Instead we just seem to have this homogeneity. It’s unhealthy not to have civic organizations or messy politics or investigative reporting.”

It is within this complacent, vertical suburb that Emil Hubschman seeks to relaunch his chamber of commerce within the next 60 days, aiming to create a trusted gateway to the community (like a Better Business Bureau, only hyper local), with a welcome center, newsletter, updated website, and cell phone app. Homeowner and condo associations will get free memberships, he says, to help “close the loop” between locally owned businesses and residents.

Much of his philosophy for the chamber is based on the “shop local” movement. “When you buy from a chain store,” he says, “most of the money goes to the home office somewhere far away. It doesn’t stay in the community. That’s the main theme of chambers all over the world — shop local. You get personalized service at local stores. They know you, and you build a relationship. You help to build a sense of community.”

Word around town is that the Aventura mayor and city manager are open to working more closely with the chamber. “It’s a new day,” Hubschman beams.

As for the AMC, he says, “It’s not either or. Businesses can join both organizations. The AMC has done a wonderful job promoting Aventura. I give them a lot of credit. But the developer phase is over. The bubble machine has stopped. Now it’s time to get serious about local business. It’s time for a true chamber. That’s part of the maturation of a city.”

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.

Photo by Silvia Ros.

The City Inn hotel at 660 NW 81st Street in West Little River is the kind of place you wouldn’t recommend to your worst enemy. Tattooed pimps with gold teeth patrol the surrounding streets on spray-painted bicycles. Drug-ravaged women in stained miniskirts and worn-out pumps drift in and out of the lobby, stopping occasionally on the curb outside to light a cigarette, thrust out a hip, and nod to passing male motorists.

To most people, the ten-story City Inn is just one of many eyesores along I-95. Nestled against the west side of the expressway, it stands out more than most buildings along that particular stretch of asphalt, thanks to the large soft-drink banner and other ever-changing advertisements that completely cover the north and east sides of the hotel. Cellular companies lease roof space from the inn, and their large white antennae sit prominently atop the building, lending the hotel a hint of technological sophistication. Up close, though, there’s nothing sophisticated about it.

“That place is really, really bad,” says veteran Ofcr. Darrell Nichols of the Miami Police Department, when asked about the hotel. And with that grim assessment, I decide to do what any sensible writer would do: go and get a room.

To read more, click here.

On the quiet Oleta River in North Miami Beach, where tall mangrove forests grow along the ancient shorelines and block out the noise of the city beyond, a nine-person crew sits in a long, hand-painted boat, waiting for an order. Bent forward, arms poised at the ready, their fists clench long wooden paddles. A steersman, standing at the stern, grips the skiff’s rudder by the handle and issues his command: “Go!”

The crew lets loose, plunging their paddles into the murky water, using the strength of their upper bodies to push their 40-foot Chinese dragon boat upriver. The vessel glides along at an impressive speed, each paddler pummeling the water in sync until, 250 meters along, the steersman calls for an intermission. “Let it ride!” he yells.

The paddles come up, the paddlers catch their breath, and peace returns to the winding waterway — until they repeat the drill moments later.

Every weekend the scene plays out the same way. The Puff Dragon Boat Racing Team (Puff, for short) races their dragon up and down the placid Oleta until — as they like to say — they’ve drained their tanks.

That an ancient Chinese sport should find a home on an urban river in North Miami Beach may seem strange to some, but to 27-year-old Biscayne Park resident Sam Trotter, it makes perfect sense: “South Florida, being outside on the water, meeting people and getting exercise — that to me is a no-brainer.”

Trotter and wife Kate Benson joined Puff just two months ago, but like many newbies, they’ve quickly become diehard dragon-boaters. And even though a competitive streak runs through the heart of the team, Benson insists the niche sport is as much a social affair as it is a sports bout: “There’s a lot of camaraderie. And it’s still kind of underground, so you feel like you’re part of a club. Besides, what other team sport can you do where you get to be out on the water? This is Miami. Don’t you want to be out on the water?”

Founded seven years ago by Michael Chen, Puff is one of about five dragon-boat racing teams in Miami-Dade County and currently boasts some 50 permanent members, ranging from buff, young outdoor enthusiasts to well-ripened weekend warriors (including a 73-year-old part-time paddler). Some members show up to the weekly training runs religiously. Others, only occasionally.

As a young man in Hong Kong, watching dragon-boat races from the window of his home, Chen was never too impressed with the sport. “Too damn slow,” he thought. It wasn’t until many years later, living in South Florida and looking for a way to get outdoors and reconnect with his cultural heritage, that he decided to take up dragon-boating. That’s when he realized just how satisfying — and fast — racing dragons can be. “You don’t realize how fast it is until you’re in the boat,” he says.

The Puff crew digs into the Oleta River.

Chen participates in local races twice a year. He competed in Tampa last month, raced in New York last August, and travels to Hong Kong every year for an annual dragon-boat festival there (seven Puff members will accompany him this summer). The sport has even shaped his world view. “Putting a bunch of people in a boat and having them work together toward the same goal,” he contends, “makes the world a better place. If you want world peace, everyone should go dragon-boating.”

Dragon-boating, in fact, may be the biggest sport you’ve never heard of. In 2006 Time magazine reported that “more than 75 dragon-boat festivals were held in 31 states and 70 cities across the country, with participation up 20 percent over 2004, to 54,000 people.” More recent surveys show considerable increases in those numbers, and the sport has been called one of the fastest-growing water sports in the world, with annual festivals being held in more than 50 countries.

Begun in China, dragon-boating arose more than 2000 years ago as a way to appease mystical river dragons who had sovereignty over water, rainfall, and floods. Tied in to that yearly custom is the legend of Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet who drowned himself in a river after the defeat of his homeland by a rival army. The dramatic bard’s suicide fell on the day of the annual dragon-boat festival and villagers are said to have raced out in their dragon boats to look for him, tossing rice dumplings into the river to distract fish from eating his body.

The exotic world of myth and legend has morphed into a competitive international sport complete with standardized rules and equipment. Typically, 20 paddlers seated in pairs power a boat, although upward of 50 are common. A steersman controls the rudder and a drummer sits at the bow, beating out a rhythm for the paddlers. Red, green, or blue scales adorn the sides, and a colorful dragon head and tail are fitted to either end of the boat for races.

A distinctly festive attitude, however, prevails. In China yearly dragon-boat festivals are vivacious affairs where alcohol flows, food is abundant, and paddlers are known to party late into the night. In Miami, too, the annual dragon-boat regatta, which pits paddling teams, corporate workforces, police, firefighters, and other local groups against each other, often feels like an oversize, Asian-themed block party.

The boats feature a dragon head at the bow and a tail at the stern. (Photo courtesy of Puff)

True to that spirit, Puff (named for a certain “Magic” dragon, but also an acronym for Paddles Up For Friendship/Fun) ended their recent Oleta River practice at the historic Blue Marlin Fish House, on the river near the team’s launch site. Seated around a table in the shade, five Puffers raised beers to toast their enlivening workout: “To dragon-boating!”

Balu Vandor, a lithe Hungarian who’s been hitting the paddles for five years, breaks down the formula for good dragon-boating in between swills of lager: “It’s 49 percent technique, 51 percent timing.” The sport’s collaborative nature, he says, means that some people’s personalities just don’t work in dragon-boating.

Conversely, photographer Kate Benson says that Puff has spawned more than a few long-term relationships — and even one marriage: “You didn’t know dragon-boating was so romantic, did you?”

“But first and foremost,” founder Michael Chen insists, “we’re competitive. We want to win.” He says Puff has two races coming up in the next six months, and some members will try out for Team USA, which will represent the U.S. in the World Dragon Boat Championships in Tampa next year.

Chen, however, is no party-pooper. “A lot of people in Miami say they like to party,” he says, “but we have more parties in one month than they have all year.” He believes Miami has the potential to be a world destination for dragon-boaters because of the weather and water. And the inclusive nature of his team ensures the advancement toward that goal: “We want new members, we embrace all people, we’re apolitical, and we respect that everybody is a unique being.”

“Let’s put it this way,” he says, fingering a silver paddle pendant hanging from his neck chain. “We all just love this sport.”

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.

He was a portrait of grace, a symbol of adventure, a mythical-looking figure in a red wooly cap. Born one hundred years ago today, famed French explorer Jacques Cousteau remains as relevant and iconic as he was during his illustrious lifetime — especially to the millions of fans who grew up watching his high-sea adventures unfold on their TV screens.

For those of us who were children in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, one of the great and simple images to which our hearts first opened was that of Cousteau traversing the world’s oceans in his ship Calypso. He and his team of charismatic explorers called on foreign ports that we couldn’t visit ourselves, discovered ancient sites that we knew only from dreams, and lived life in a limitless way that few of us will ever experience.

More than three decades have passed since The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau or The Jacques Cousteau Odyssey series shimmered across our television screens, but we think of them often. We think of rusty medieval war canons being lifted onto Calypso’s deck, of Cousteau sniffing Roman amphorae for ancient wine, of chief diver Falco resurrecting bronze statuettes from watery Aegean graves, of dolphins playfully flanking Calypso’s hull as she glided through pristine Caribbean waters.

And then there’s the lasting image of Cousteau’s team gathered on deck, sharing a laugh or a cigarette, or passing around Venetian coins retrieved from a wreck below. Their camaraderie, their unmatched collection of shared voyages, evoked the tales of Homer and they not only took us along on their odyssey, they provided us with a musical soundtrack and a poetic narrative that made the journey more than an adventure, it made it art.

“I’m not interested in achievements,” Cousteau once said, “I’m interested in having an interesting life and sharing it with the public.” And that he did, in more than 150 films, TV shows and books. Yet, he still found time to co-invent the aqualung, father the science of undersea archaeology, advance underwater filming techniques, and later co-invent the Turbosail, a hybrid wind-motor propulsion system for ships. As the inscription on his National Geographic Society Gold Medal reads, “To earthbound man, he gave the key to the silent world.”

The legendary 'Calypso'

If Cousteau deserves criticism, it’s for setting an impossible precedent for authentic living. How many of us, after all, will ever experience the freedom, danger, joy, and pioneering thrill of the Calypso crew? Tethered to our computers, trapped in an online world, most of us feel ever more alienated from the natural realm. Even our brief episodes of escape can feel inadequate. Modern commercial jet travel, crowded airports, contrived vacation resorts, they do nothing to satisfy the adventurous spirit.

In that sense, most of us don’t care that Cousteau had no scientific credentials, or about his untidy family affairs, or whether he failed twice for every success. What we care about is what Jacques Cousteau represents to us: freedom, art, discovery, the joy of being the first and best at what you do, living by the motto “Il faut aller voir” (“We must go and see for ourselves”). “We are not documentary,” Cousteau once said, “we are adventure films.” And it was the adventure that mattered to us. Not the science.

One of the lessons we learned from the Captain’s life is that it doesn’t take advanced educational degrees or wealth to achieve success — neither of which Cousteau had. It takes only creativity, desire, and an instinct for innovation. Cousteau evolved from a sickly child into a self-proclaimed misfit, then into a naval officer, later into an inventor and master cinematographer, and finally into the world’s greatest ocean explorer. “Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed,” Cousteau said about his first experience using goggles underwater — an experience which ignited his passion for undersea exploration.

In his later years, Cousteau transformed from voyeur to activist and used his fame to influence environmental policies on things like overfishing, pollution, population growth, nuclear waste and global warming. He also began describing the earth as a delicate and limited planet — a message which set the tone for much of today’s discourse on environmentalism.

Photo courtesy of the BBC

But the details of Jacques Cousteau’s life are fuzzy now for most of us, and it’s those simple, early images that still dominate our thoughts: Cousteau emerging from his diving saucer after a 1,000ft-dive in the dark depths of the Atlantic; his son Philippe hovering over the sparkling glaciers of Antarctica in a multi-colored hot-air balloon; the team’s helicopter circling a Greek island in search of Atlantis.

“I have accepted death not only as inevitable but also as constructive,” Cousteau once said. “If we didn’t die, we would not appreciate life as we do.” We were young when Cousteau uttered those words, and knew nothing of death, but we appreciated life because he appreciated it, and because he showed us how. He was not only captain of the Calypso, he was captain of our imaginations, and clearly one of the great men of the 20th century. Our only question now is, where is the successor to the charismatic man who skippered the dreams of our youth?

It has been said that true happiness lies in the fulfillment of childhood aspirations. If there’s any truth to that statement, then happiness for many of us means climbing aboard an affectionately named ship, pointing to the horizon, and announcing to a small group of bold adventurers, “We must go and see for ourselves.”

It was a water-pumping station, a house of music, a private residence, maybe a church, a chop shop, flop house, meeting place for mystics, and finally a beauty salon. There may even be a dead body buried in the backyard.

For decades, the grotto-like structure at 5808 NE 4th Ct. in Miami’s Upper Eastside was known simply as the Lemon City Pump House. Named for the citrus-rich agricultural community that once flourished nearby, the coral-rock building looked, to most locals, like a stone chapel. But beyond its sweeping entryway arches and heavy wooden doors sprung a once-rich supply of pure drinking water.

Built in 1923 by developer James H. Nunnally, the pump house originally concealed a 38-horsepower engine and pump that drew water from two wells sunk deep into the Biscayne Aquifer. An 8000-gallon storage tank created enough pressure to pipe the water across Biscayne Boulevard to residents of the newly constructed development of Bay Shore (later renamed Morningside).

The Water Plant at Bay Shore, as it was called in a 1920s sales brochure, provided fresh tap water at a time when many U.S. homes still had none. Yet despite its functionality and modern trappings, the pump house soon grew idle.

A very large backyard is dominated by water features. (Photo courtesy of Sabrina D’eca)

Two years after its construction, the area of Bay Shore was annexed by the City of Miami and, according to Miami-Dade College history professor Paul George, the house became redundant: “When Bay Shore was a development outside of city limits, the developer had to assure people he could provide water. But once it joined the City of Miami, the city picked up the task.”

Defunct and seemingly forgotten, the pump house’s historical record grows dark for the next half a century. Hobos are said to have used the place as a crash pad during the 1930s. Local pianist Marvin Maher converted the building into a private home at some point and gave music lessons there for many years. But other than vague recollections and old title deeds, information on the period from 1925 to 1975 is hard to come by. Historical photos, too, seem to have been lost to time.

In the spring of 1976, the story picks up on a much darker note when accused murderer Robert Brent Bowman moved from Ohio to Miami and mortgaged the place for $50,000. The charismatic, 40-year-old handbag manufacturer brought with him his wife, young daughter, and a terrible secret.

According to published reports, Bowman allegedly had abducted a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Toledo nine years earlier. He shackled her to a wall in his basement, sexually assaulted her, and strangled her to death. Police found her body in a field several days later.

J.B. Kilpatrick spent three years chiseling out the lagoon.

It would take 40 years and new DNA technology to link Bowman to the killing and finally make an arrest. He’s currently awaiting trial in an Ohio jail. His days at the pump house, however, have left some unanswered questions.

Shortly after moving into the home, Bowman began to go through profound spiritual changes. He used LSD, slept inside a glass pyramid, and talked about being spiritually connected to John the Baptist. Around the same time, ads began to appear in local newspapers announcing meetings at the pump house, hosted by an outfit called Cornucopia Centers. The meetings explored things like “multi-sense awakening” and “cosmic rites.”

Veteran South Florida journalist Dan Christensen, writing for the Miami News in 1988, reported that police finally questioned Bowman in 1982 about the Toledo killing. Bowman didn’t admit to the murder, but hinted that another girl’s body was buried somewhere on the pump house grounds. Skepticism, money, and departmental restructuring, according to Christensen’s article, kept Miami police from conducting a search.

Whatever the case, ownership of the pump house passed to the Veterans’ Administration in 1978 after Bowman, who was a military vet, defaulted on his VA-backed mortgage. A doctor snapped up the place for just $10,000 in 1980 and partitioned the interior into 11 separate rooms, creating cheap residential rental units exclusively for women. Three years later he sold it to retired art teacher Everett Gum — at a $75,000 profit.

Owners Sabrina D’eca and J.B. Kilpatrick: When they bought the property in 1999, the neighborhood “was like the Wild Wild West.”

With the neighborhood newly awash in drugs, violence, and prostitution during the 1980s, however, Gum had trouble maintaining the place. According to his daughter, he bought the house as an investment, and it’s unclear whether he ever lived there. Court records show he evicted tenants twice during that period, and a news report from 1988 described the home as dilapidated and vacant.

By 1994 the pump house had become an encampment for vagrants. Hundreds of used tires accumulated on the property — possibly dumped there by the proprietors of an automobile service station across the street in the present-day Andiamo Pizza building. Cars, stripped to their frames, and mounds of debris also littered the large backyard.

A near death blow was struck that same year when a destructive fire tore through the place, collapsing the second floor and tall cathedral ceiling. Initial speculation was that homeless squatters had accidentally sparked the blaze. But according to the Sun Sentinel (which described the place as an abandoned church), investigators found flammable liquid on the premises and concluded there was “no doubt the building was burned intentionally.” The perpetrator and motive remain a mystery.

Exposed, charred, and in ruins, the house drew the attention of Miami code inspectors, who gave Gum 90 days to clean and secure his property. But with $100,000 in liens against it for accumulated code violations, Gum opted to have the pump house demolished instead.

The backyard was once littered with discarded tires, stripped cars, and piles of garbage.

Miami Herald reporter Geoffrey Tomb documented the pump house’s plight in an April 1995 article that sparked an immediate public outcry. His story prompted Miami Mayor Steve Clark to order the demolition halted. Volunteers descended on the place to help with a clean-up effort. And most significantly, Gum agreed to donate his property to the preservation group Dade Heritage Trust, which persuaded the city to remove the hefty liens by promising to restore the pump house.

Habitual building-savior Sal Patronaggio paid just $16,500 for the property a year later and tried to fulfill that promise. He hired a machete-wielding homeless man, still living amid the ruins, to help him clean the grounds; used a pressure-washer to drive snakes out of the rock walls; and eventually installed a new roof. “It was junkyard back then,” he says, “but I fell in love with it.”

The pump house had another admirer as well. Former actor J.B. Kilpatrick had been eyeing the place for years. A decade earlier, despite facing ridicule from buddies, he had taken his sister’s advice to attend beauty school while pursuing his movie career. Now, scouting a new location for his South Beach hair salon, he and his wife Sabrina D’eca decided to make Patronaggio an offer.

Shortly thereafter, in 1999, they bought the pump house for $208,000. “It was like the Wild, Wild West back then,” Kilpatrick recalls. “There was no fence in the back, so people were all over the property. They were even in the damn trees. One guy tried to hit me with a hammer. Another time, five guys kicked the door down when I was inside. I picked up my bow and arrow and fired a few shots. They ran out so fast you wouldn’t believe it.”

Such mayhem wouldn’t last long. With developer Mark Soyka’s burgeoning commercial complex next door, the growing focus of historic preservationists on nearby Biscayne Boulevard, and Kilpatrick’s D.I.Y. talents, things finally started to turn around for the embattled pump house.

“Every day I would cut hair on the Beach until maybe 2:00 in the afternoon, then come here and work on the place until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning,” Kilpatrick recalls. “My vision kept getting bigger and bigger — until I ran out of money. And this is what I ended up with.”

What he ended up with is a fully restored stone sanctuary with a cathedral ceiling, glazed concrete floors, dark interior woodwork, and lush tropical landscaping. The crowning jewel: an elaborate, coral-rock water feature that took three years to chisel out of the ground. Spread halfway across the back garden, its water cascades from an upper pool into a larger lagoon, where hand-carved stone steps descend like a Roman bath beneath the glimmering surface.

There was, however, one problem with his little Eden. The property carried a decades-old residential zoning restriction, which barred him from establishing his salon business. Kilpatrick grimaces as he describes the unexpectedly long process of having the property rezoned commercial (seven years by his count): “I almost lost everything waiting for the zoning change. Everyone at the city was onboard except Sarah Eaton [the city’s former historic preservation officer]. I put so much money into this property and spent so many years not making any money back from it.”

He credits historian Paul George, who spoke on his behalf at a Historic and Environmental Preservation Board meeting, with finally persuading Eaton to approve the change. And if not for a generous investment by his late father-in-law, Alfonso D’eca, and mother-in-law Joyce, he insists the pump house project would have died long ago. He and wife Sabrina finally hung a sign outside in 2006, christening their building and business with a new name: The Beauty Temple.

Standing in front of their coral-rock masterpiece on a recent workday, Kilpatrick acknowledges a spiritual connection to the place after his protracted struggle: “This is where my heart is. This is my soul. If I sold this property now, my life journey would change completely. There’s definitely some powerful energy in this place.”

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.

Artist Franklin Sinanan delivered six paintings and one sculpture to Miami Beach City Hall early last month. His work was put on display there as part of a Black History Month art exhibit.

Since dropping off his artwork, however, Sinanan has revisited City Hall twice to remove pieces the city later decided were inappropriate.

Born in Trinidad and raised in Canada, Sinanan’s work has taken on a distinct Afro-Caribbean flair since moving to Miami two years ago. “In Canada,” he says, “my work never looked like this. It was just a lot of white faces.”

Now, some people are afraid to step into his Lincoln Road studio because of the voodoo-like elements in his work. He’s been called a witch doctor. Some visitors ask to be healed. One woman wanted his blessing to help help her land a large sum of money.

City officials, who initially approved the exhibition of Sinanan’s work in their fourth-floor public gallery at 1700 Convention Center Drive, later asked him to remove a sculpture entitled “Rituals” after receiving complaints from city staff.

With votive candles, feathers, rope, baby dolls and skull-like heads atop crucifixes, Sinanan admits the sculpture looks “voodoo-ish.” Yet, he puzzles over why it needed to be removed. “This is Miami. It’s part of the local culture, right? Why should anyone take offense?”

'Rituals' Sculpture.

Three days after installing it, however, he complied with the city’s request, and replaced it with a less controversial piece: an abstract painting entitled “Rwanda.”

A few days later, however, he got another call from the city. His painting of a rooster, they decided, also needed to go. The crucifix dangling from one corner of the canvas and the votive candles that lined a bottom shelf, Sinanan suspects, were to blame. “Still,” the artist says, perplexed by the back and forth, “it’s just a chicken.”

City of Miami Beach officials, who refused to comment for this story, clearly disagree.

Although, generally, municipalities cannot display religious symbolism on public property, Florida International University Constitutional Law Professor José Vilanova says there are exceptions: “Any works of expression that are fully artistic in nature are covered under the ‘Free Exercise’ clause of the First Amendment. So, the government can display religious symbolism if there’s an expressly secular purpose, like an art exhibit. Where municipalities run into problems is when they financially sponsor some form of overt religious expression, like a manger scene during Christmas.”

However, “In Sinanan’s case,” Vilanova says, “City Hall is the gallerist, if you will. And, in that regard, they can put up and remove whatever they want. Now, if they were to craft some kind of policy, written or unwritten, forbidding the display of artwork that portrays religious imagery, it would be a First Amendment problem.”

Miami Beach’s City Charter makes no mention of religious symbolism on public property, artistic or otherwise. Whether an unwritten policy exists is unclear.

But, Constitutional law aside, city employees are not alone in their disapproval of Sinanan’s art. Last December, an important sponsor pulled funding from an Art Basel satellite exhibition featuring the artist’s work.

Sinanan's Rooster painting.

Babacar M’bow, curator and director of Multitudes Gallery in Miami, says of the reluctant patron: “He was my biggest sponsor. He represented three quarters of my budget. He came to me and said, ‘This is voodoo.’ But I had to take an ethical position. I told him to keep his money and we presented the show with Franklin’s work anyway. Unfortunately, it demonstrates how in South Florida we need to do more to teach people about art. Our society is becoming more and more multicultural and I think Franklin Sinanan is a symbol of where we should be going.”

A year earlier, at the Art Center of South Florida art studio complex on Lincoln Road where Sinanan is an artist-in-residence, his work was the target of more animosity. A police report from Jan. 26, 2009 details the odd behavior of 48-year-old Robert Newton, who strolled up to the center’s large display windows where Sinanan’s rooster painting was on exhibit, and scrawled the word ‘Santeria’ across the glass with lip gloss. A security guard summoned police and Newton was promptly arrested. He told cops the painting was offensive.

“I’m Canadian,” Sinanan says, “I don’t know anything about Santeria or Voodoo. “I was born in Trinidad, but I wasn’t brought up there, so all this is new for me. I don’t even know if they practice voodoo in Trinidad. Miami influenced me to create these pieces without really knowing what I was doing. I just see it as art. But people keep telling me it’s voodoo or black magic. But I just pulled this stuff out of my head. It’s all imagination.”

“I don’t create work to be provocative,” Sinanan insists. “Besides, the inspiration for my rooster painting wasn’t voodoo. It was Mr. Clucky.”

Read this article on The Lead’s website.

Like many artists who ply their trade in studios, warehouses, and garages around the world, David Zalben says it’s not about the money. It’s about connecting with people. “Every day I’m here is an opportunity to meet somebody new. It’s not just about making a sale.”

And if Zalben were a solitary artist, in a lonely studio, in some godforsaken part of town, his social appetite might seem strange. But Zalben’s tidy, little workspace is on Lincoln Road, Miami Beach’s famed pedestrian thoroughfare, where every year thousands of people stroll, and strut, amidst stores, restaurants, and clubs.

Tucked into a two-storey, 1930’s-era, art deco building, Zalben’s studio has no street-level presence. He shares the partitioned, former department store with 27 other emerging artists. 13 more work in a similar building just down the street. They all pay very little in rent, help each other along, and enjoy the kind of exposure only dreamed of by most visual artists.

What makes for such favorable artistic conditions?: ArtCenter / South Florida, a 25-year-old non-profit aimed at doing everything one organization can possibly do to advance the knowledge of contemporary art in Miami.

To read more, click here.