Several Coconut Grove residents
complained to the Miami Zoning Board, Monday, that their
neighborhood is under siege by intoxicated club patrons
who get into fistfights, defecate or even have sex on
their public sidewalks after 5 in the morning. The board
was presented with an e-mail from Miami Police Officer
Tom Braga, who patrols the Grove area, urging the board
not to approve a nightclub’s application to operate
after 5 a.m.
Still,
after more than an hour of discussion, debate and
testimonies, the Miami Zoning Board narrowly approved
the granting of a 5 a.m. license to Vision Nightclub and
Apples Martini Bar and Lounge at 3105 Grand Ave.
Liquor
license attorney Lou Terminello started his presentation
by acknowledging that there are a lot of noise problems
from Cocowalk, a popular retail and entertainment
complex. Even the pizza establishments have speakers,
Terminello said, and at one club a DJ was arrested for
flagrantly violating the city of Miami’s noise ordinance
hours after midnight.
However, Terminello claimed that his client, Shawn
Shahnazi, owner of Vision and Apple Martini Bar,
operated differently from many area businesses. There
were no speakers in front of his establishment, there
have been no complaints levied against Vision or Apple
Martini in the two and a half years they’ve operated,
and Shahnazi has vowed to enhance his security to 17
personnel and five off-duty police officers.
Testifying before the board, Shahnazi, said he himself
is a resident of Coconut Grove and insisted he should
not be penalized for something he didn’t do. “I don’t
want to pay the price for other people’s mistakes,” he
said.
But
according to an e-mail written that morning from Officer
Braga to Coconut Grove Neighborhood Enhancement Team
Administrator Haydee Regueyra, at least one mistake was
made by Vision operators. Although only possessing a 3
a.m. license, Vision stayed open until 5 a.m. “Recently,
during a Grove-wide license check, we realized that some
nightclubs were operating until 5 a.m. without benefit
of the proper licensing, some operating as nightclubs
when they were in fact restaurants. Vision was one of
those locations,” Braga wrote.
Braga
stated that “over a long period of time” the area
experienced “a great deal of problems from particular
establishments that held hours and sales of alcohol
until 5 a.m. These problems included, but were not
limited to excessive disorderly intoxication, assaults
and fights on and off the Cocowalk property, and the
majority of these complaints and concerns were occurring
between 4 and 6 a.m.” There were also many robberies and
assaults against drunken patrons, Braga wrote.
Braga
wrote that since the enforced closure of establishments
with 3 a.m. licenses, there has been a marked decrease
of assaults and robberies but “it is too soon to
actually attribute this to having [clubs] close
earlier.” For that reason, Braga asked that Vision’s
application be continued 90 days.
Residents testified that the chaos caused by Cocowalk’s
5 a.m. clubs continued on their doorsteps. One resident
said someone decided to set up a cooker and sell
sandwiches to drunken patrons. Another talked about how
she found human feces and, at one time, a couple having
sex on the sidewalk. Yet another club in Coconut Grove,
they said, would only make the situation worse.
“This
is not Times Square. This is the village of Coconut
Grove,” said Gary Hecht, chairman of the Coconut Grove
Village Council. Hecht and other residents said allowing
clubs to stay open past 3 a.m. was a mistake “Like we do
so many times in this city, we create a monster and
erode the quality of life.… What we are asking from you
at this time is to put the plug back in.”
Countering the testimony from residents, Terminello
invited a non-uniformed Miami Police officer to testify
if he had heard of any complaints related directly to
Vision or Apple Martini. The officer said no. When board
members later asked the police officer (who declined to
give his name to the SunPost) about Braga’s memo,
Grovites at the meeting yelled that the young man was
one of the off-duty cops who worked security. The
officer and Terminello explained that the officer was
not there to represent the MPD but as the head of Vision
and Apple Martini’s security team.
Many
board members, though, were reluctant to penalize
Shahnazi for the late night conditions at Cocowalk —
especially board Chairman Juvenal Pina, who cast the
final swing vote in favor of the 5 a.m. license.
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Parking Lot
Park
City
Land Sale Delayed After Miami Commissioners Ask if Land
Can Be Converted to Green Space
By
Adrian Carrillo
The Miami City Commission held up
the sale of a lot in Miami after two elected officials
desired to have the property transformed into a park,
during a meeting Tuesday.
The
property in question is a 1,950-square-foot parcel at
4001 NW 17th Ave. that was conveyed to the city by the
county “in connection with delinquent taxes.” Centurion
Community Development Center, Inc., described by city
officials as a “faith-based organization,” was the only
entity interested in purchasing the property for $5.13 a
square foot, or $10,000, according to a resolution
prepared by City Attorney Jorge Fernandez. The site is
currently being used for parking by a nearby church. “…
Centurion wishes to purchase the city’s site for
parking,” the proposed resolution stated.
But the
proposal met some resistance from Commissioners Marc
Sarnoff and Michelle Spence-Jones, who proposed putting
a pocket park in the area. City Manager Pete Hernandez
suggested that the 17th Avenue property was a little too
small for a park, but Sarnoff pointed to Coconut Grove,
where he said many pocket parks helped beautify the
area.
The
item was deferred to allow more time for examination and
discussion, and to enact restrictions on the use of
billboards on the site.
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Builders,
Assemble!
City
Commission Approves Contractor and Consultant Pool for
Capital Projects
By
Adrian Carrillo
Following another strenuous
conversation, the Miami City Commission approved the
creation of a “qualified” pool of contractors and
consultants to oversee the city’s “construction-related
disciplines of architecture, engineering, landscape
architecture, surveying and mapping services,” during a
meeting Tuesday.
Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones stressed the need to
evaluate the city’s contractors over mismanagement,
citing several examples of times the city had poor jobs
turned in by contractors.
City
Manager Pete Hernandez, though, still heavily favored
the pooling of consultants, saying that Capital
Improvement Program Director Ola Aluko “needs to have
those constituents available to him” to make the right
decisions about capital improvements.
Aluko also went on the record to propose a policy that
would allow contractors who perform poorly one more
chance to prove by providing documentation their
worthiness for city capital improvement contracts. If
they failed to impress again, they would be permanently
deleted from the pool and banned from city work.
Miami’s
Capital Improvement Projects and Transportation
Department was thrust into the spotlight recently after
it was found that 11 of 17 employees in the capital
improvements section contracted their services out to
private developers while on city time. They were
arrested on June 21 on charges that included fraud and
racketeering.
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Miami Beach
Ethical Election
City
Commission Approves Placing Ethics Referendum on the
Ballot, but Not Before Some Political Fireworks
By Ben
Torter
It will now be up to Miami Beach
residents to decide whether or not they want the power
to hold their city government to its current high
standard of ethics.
The
Miami Beach City Commission voted unanimously Wednesday
to place on the Nov. 6 ballot a charter amendment,
proposed by termed-out Mayor David Dermer, requiring
future elected officials to get approval from voters
before choosing to weaken the city’s tough ethics laws.
“Throughout the years we have raised the bar in terms of
ethics in Miami Beach,” Dermer said, while introducing
this latest ethics booster.
Over
the last 10 years, the city of Miami Beach has worked
steadily to strengthen its ethics legislation, and
giving the power to the people is meant to assure that
future commissions will never reverse that progress,
Dermer said. A press release sent out by the mayor’s
office last month listed some of the city’s ethics
victories as “the barring of conflicts of interest;
requiring lobbyist registration; reforming campaign
finance; as well as protecting the integrity of the
procurement process.”
With
four out of seven commission seats up for election this
year, City Hall may become a very different place. And
so before Wednesday’s vote, Dermer invited residents and
candidates to say a few words about his proposal.
Commission candidates Jonah Wolfson, Deede Weithorn, Ed
Tobin, Linda Grosz, Luis Salom, Elsa Urquiza, Frank
Kruszewski and Ivor Rose all spoke in favor of the
mayor’s initiative, but the talk wasn’t all peace and
love.
The
audience and commissioners alike squirmed as Ed Tobin
used his opponent, Commissioner Michael Gongora, as an
example of why the mayor’s initiative is necessary. He
passionately criticized Gongora for trying to jump
through a loophole in the city’s lobbying rules.
In June
the commission closed the loophole in its 10-year-old
“certain appearances prohibited” ordinance. Prior to the
June 6 commission vote, the ordinance prevented
companies from lobbying a commission or city board if a
commissioner or board member was a “partner, joint
venturer or co-corporate shareholder.” Becker &
Poliakoff attorney Gongora was elected to the commission
in November to complete the last year of the term of
Commissioner Luis Garcia, who was elected to the Florida
House of Representatives. Soon after taking office,
Gongora and his firm challenged the ordinance. Becker &
Poliakoff argued that since Gongora is only an
associate, the firm could still lobby the city. The
Beach City Commission, as well as the Miami-Dade
Commission on Ethics, disagreed.
The
mayor stepped in to prevent an all-out political debate
as a red-faced Gongora shot back at Tobin. “My recently
filed opponent took this opportunity to do some campaign
bashing,” Gongora said. He then suggested Tobin would
have to prove he wasn’t a “Johnny-come-lately” to the
political scene.
Tobin,
a 46-year-old Miami Beach attorney with the law firm of
Ratner & Tobin, announced his candidacy on June 13.
Tobin has the support of Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach.
Later
at the meeting, Tobin told the SunPost that he
hoped he didn’t come across as angry, but he felt he had
no choice but to point out Gongora’s challenge of the
city’s ethics.
“I was
torn,” Tobin said. “I didn’t think it was appropriate to
necessarily call someone out by name, but by the same
token I think it’s too important an issue to deny.”
Candidate Ivor Rose, who’s running against Tobin and
Gongora in the Group 5 race, provided some comic relief
when he stood up in shorts and a T-shirt and said he
hopes he doesn’t win.
“The
only reason I’m running, I want no lobbyists,” Rose
said.
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Surfside
Building Moratorium Time!
Temporary Freeze May Be Imposed On Town Commercial Areas
as New Zoning Code Is Worked Out
By
Evan Berkowitz
At its July 10 meeting, the
Surfside Town Commission moved forward with an ordinance
that would put a temporary moratorium on issuing
development or building permits for properties in the
town’s commercial district.
Mayor Charles Burkett said the town was currently
working on new zoning, building and design guidelines
that will attempt to protect historic structures, keep
heights down and maintain “that small-town seaside
flavor.”
“I
don’t want to see towers going up where we have two- or
three-story buildings on the ocean. I don’t want to see
a 12-story wall from 88th Street to 96th Street,” he
said.
Burkett
noted that historic buildings and homes stood on Collins
and Harding avenues as well as in the town’s residential
neighborhoods.
At one
point the proposed moratorium was to cover residential
areas, but many residents were concerned about the
possible loss of their property rights.
“I view
this as a deed restriction on our house,” said 13-year
resident Tony Blake. He asked what the town’s Planning
and Zoning Board’s position was on this. The mayor
replied that the board had come to no formal conclusion
because it did not have an actual written ordinance to
review at its last meeting.
Burkett
noted that Surfside’s codes had not been updated in many
years and needed to be, because the town has changed a
great deal.
Town
Planner Sarah Sinatra said the new building code could
be ready by November.
Vice
Mayor Howard Weinberg said it was his understanding that
if a similar moratorium had been in effect for the
previous six months, not one single project would have
been stopped.
Sinatra
said the zoning code changes did not necessarily require
that a moratorium be in place while the new laws were
being finalized. Weinberg said that because of the slow
real estate market they have a “de facto moratorium” in
place.
Commissioner Marc Imberman moved to amend the ordinance
to have the moratorium time frame shortened to120 days
or four months, with a possible 60-day extension.
Another suggestion was made to bifurcate the vote on a
moratorium for the commercial district, but not the
residential areas. Commissioner Steven Levine said he
favored this idea because it avoids complicating the
lives or restricting the rights of Surfside homeowners.
Imberman, though, felt that bifurcation was illogical
because, if the current code were flawed and needed
fixing, it would be “irresponsible” not to protect those
properties immediately.
Commissioner Mark Blumstein noted the importance of
process in these matters and said the Planning and
Zoning Board should review the ordinance before the
commission voted. He said the commission was not
respecting the role of the PZB and was showing
“arrogance” toward it. With the one exception of
Imberman, all of the commissioners voted no on the
original ordinance that included the residential areas.
On the bifurcated version effecting only the commercial
areas the vote was 3-2, with Blumstein and Imberman
dissenting.
The
building moratorium ordinance will next go to the
Planning and Zoning Board.
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Bay Harbor Islands
$95,000 Contract
Garage Consultant Awarded Additional Gig of Designing
Facility
By Evan Berkowitz
The Bay Harbor Islands Town
Council allocated additional money for its contracted
consultant to help build a municipal parking garage,
during its July 9 meeting.
Timothy
Haahs Engineers and Architects was awarded a $95,000
contract for professional design services to construct a
garage at West Bay Harbor Drive and 95th Street. The
company already serves as the town’s consultant on the
project. The only dissenter in the vote was Councilman
Robert Yaffe, who believed the prearranged price for
services should be reduced by some amount due to the
decrease in the size of the garage.
The
garage was originally to have more than 600 spaces, 130
of which were to be leased by the Miami-Dade School
System and used by Ruth K. Broad Bay Harbor Elementary
and Middle School across the street. Ruth K. Broad is
currently expanding its facilities to teach seventh and
eighth grades for the first time starting this fall.
But
Town Manager Ronald Wasson was concerned that the market
would not entice a developer to construct a
public-private project of that size and opted for a
smaller, 350-space garage that would cost between $6.5
million and $7 million to build. Wasson told the
SunPost he wants to forge a cooperative
agreement with a developer, or a public/private-type
development where the outside partner would help fund
the construction and operate the garage. The developer
would also be allowed to use some of the multilevel
structure for residential/mixed-use-type projects. But
the need to construct the garage by this coming fall to
accommodate Ruth K. Broad’s schedule put the town in a
weak negotiating position. “I believe the build-out
schedule was so aggressive, it put the town in an almost
no-win position with attempting to strike a fair,
equitable deal for Bay Harbor Islands and a developer,”
Wasson wrote in a June 7 memo. “I believe that is why
all the proposals were extremely overpriced and laden
with developer givebacks and tax breaks.”
So,
during a special meeting held on June 19, on the advice
of both Wasson and Timothy Haahs Engineers and
Architects, the Town Council scaled back the garage and
rejected all three proposals they had received from
developers in May.
The new
garage structure will replace an existing ground parking
lot. The school district will pay the town $720 a year
per spot. The town also put out an official request for
qualifications for designer/engineering firms.
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