Miami

What’s in It for Us?

Impact study on slot machines to be prepared by city

 By Erik Bojnansky

Not satisfied with high stakes poker, Miami-Dade’s pari-mutuels are not gunning for slot machines. And now the city of Miami wants a piece of the action. Photo by Angie Hargot.

For the second time in three years, Miami-Dade County voters will be asked Jan. 29 if they want to allow slot machines in three existing pari-mutuels.

Two of those pari-mutuels, Flagler Dog Track and Miami Jai-Alai, lie within Miami’s city limits. So during a meeting last Thursday, Commissioner Tomas Regalado asked the question: Can the city of Miami benefit from slot machines located within its boundaries?

To answer that, Assistant City Manager Roger Hernstadt will analyze the potential pluses and minuses of expanded gambling in Miami and submit his findings in a week.

“This is a very important issue … that will help us provide certain funding to help us with tax relief,” Commissioner Angel Gonzalez said, adding that he did not want a report prepared “at the last minute.”

Of particular interest to Miami officials is whether or not they can charge a municipal surtax on slot machines operating within the city. The state of Florida already charges a 50 percent surtax on slot machines in Broward County that benefits public schools. Miami-Dade County negotiated a “favored nation status” agreement with the three pari-mutuels to a 1.5 percent tax on slot revenue and prevents municipalities from seeking a higher rate, Hernstadt said. At that rate, revenue collections from a pari-mutuel the same size as Broward County’s Mardi Gras, which has 1,200 slot machines, are estimated at about $770,000 a year.

After reading pro-casino studies claiming that 6,000 new jobs will be created if the three pari-mutuels are allowed slot machines, Regalado also asked Hernstadt to negotiate a deal with Flagler and Miami Jai-Alai to make Miami residents “first on the list” for jobs.

Comments? Email letters@miamisunpost.com.

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Safe and Cost Effective

Security and cost are biggest concerns for new Museum Park

By Cynthia Archbold

Bird’s-eye rendering of the latest design for Museum Park.

Miami residents who attended Tuesday night’s public meeting about revised plans for downtown’s forsaken Bicentennial Park are still concerned about safety.

Bicentennial Park, a prime 30-acre piece of waterfront Miami land next to the MacArthur Causeway entrance, is slated to be transformed into Museum Park, home of the future Miami Art Museum and Miami Science Museum. But right now the park is isolated, barren and abandoned.

Even as residents listened to a proposal for a simpler, greener, more economical upgrade of the space to a cultural and shady urban oasis, some worried that without careful planning and more police protection, the park will remain a publicly funded magnet for crime and the homeless.

“We have heard a lot of comments from the public meetings. We are tuned into what people want in the park,” said Alexander Cooper, an urban planner whose firm, Cooper, Robertson & Partners, has been commissioned to renovate Bicentennial.

Cooper did not offer a final proposal Tuesday or include cost details, which he says will be revealed in January. Instead, he presented a kind of progress report, reassuring city planners and some residents that his firm is incorporating their suggestions into its ultimate plan.

The county earmarked $250 million to construct the museums from the $2.9 billion Building Better Communities bond charged to Miami-Dade property taxes. Previous cost estimates for the city of Miami’s portion of transforming Bicentennial into Museum Park have ranged from $58 million to $120 million, depending on whether it includes development of the port boat slip. However, the city has not announced how it will pay for its share of the entire project. Consultants and residents suggested that the city create a trust funded with private donations for the park and its maintenance, as was done for New York City’s Central Park.

In three previous public meetings, citizens balked at the proposed project’s costs, including the expenses of exotic trees and plants, fancy stone walkways and maintenance. “We are paring down costs to something affordable and digestible,” Cooper said.

There’s been a public outcry for plenty of parking in the new museum garages. But Cooper said the most prohibitive expense would be enlarging the proposed 500-space garage. That would either require adding a level of parking underground or underwater, increasing the cost of development, or adding another level to the museums, making them taller and blocking the view of the water. Instead, he suggested saving money, the view and the current plans for the proposed garage by pointing out that the proposed parking garage, plus nearby garages and lots within a 10-minute walk of the park, will provide 6,184 spaces total.

Other cost-savers Cooper mentioned: using drought-resistant native plants and trees instead of imported exotics, replacing stone walkways with concrete, and planting cheaper royal palms instead of date palms. Shade trees will be planted every 40 feet, providing the park with 50 percent shade in 10 years, he said.

To enhance park safety, the new proposal replaces four formerly secluded garden “rooms” with open gardens fronting a three-acre great lawn.

However, several citizens said without more police, Bicentennial Park could still be dangerous.

Other residents asked the city for a kid-friendly plan that can double as an outdoor environmental classroom for public school students.

Boaters said they want to be able to dock their vessels at the park; some suggested that the city create a permanent slip for water shuttles from North Miami Beach, Miami Beach, Key Biscayne and Coconut Grove. But Cooper noted that cost concerns have left undetermined the fate of the giant port boat slip on the south side of the park. The new park will allow temporary docking for large vessels more than 100 feet long, but will be off limits to smaller boats for “reasons of navigational safety.”

City Manager Pedro Hernandez said some of these issues should be addressed at the next Museum Park meeting, slated for the middle of January.

Comments? Email letters@miamisunpost.com.

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Miami Beach

Faux-çade

The Fontainebleau spite wall shall be spiteful no more

By Angie Hargot

In spite of the developer’s attempts to change its plans, the Fontainebleau’s spite wall may get windows. Photo by Josh Becker

The $400 million overhaul of the Fontainebleau Hotel’s north tower hit an expensive snag Tuesday when the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board denied the hotel’s request to keep its legendary “spite wall” intact.

The Fontainebleau Florida Hotel — a limited liability company headed by developer Jeffrey Soffer — proposed in 2005 to demolish the north tower and construct a new building in its place. It scrapped those plans in 2006 in favor of cheaper renovations, but the historic preservation board would only allow the new plans if the developers agreed to carve windows into a controversial 17-story wall that overshadows the pool of the neighboring Eden Roc hotel.

The Fontainebleau accepted the stipulation. Then, in recent months, as structural engineers looked into the logistics of adding windows, it became apparent that the concept would be too pricey to execute — an additional $1 million to $2 million, according to estimates from the project’s architect — without a new building and the revenue from additional rooms.

Developers asked last month to modify plans for the exterior wall, but the board sent them back to the drawing board because they did not provide renderings of their windowless alternatives. When they returned Tuesday with a handful of new proposals — including tile mosaics, false windows and the Fontainebleau logo characterized by a decorative, two-story letter F — board members were unimpressed.

“The doing away of the spite wall was a great incentive to approval,” board Chair Allan Hall said Tuesday. “Although we are the historic preservation board, that does not mean we have to preserve bad architecture.”

The 330-room north tower was added to the Morris Lapidus-designed Fontainebleau in 1962. It casts a building-sized shadow directly over the pool area of the Eden Roc, also designed by Lapidus, next door.

“I don’t know why the building was built this way, but it was,” project architect John Nichols said. “Putting windows in this wall creates a number of problems…. [It] would take massive steel reinforcements.”

According to the project’s engineering firm, windows would diminish the spite wall’s “shearing” effect, which adds structural strength in hurricane-force winds. The wall would have to be braced with steel bars.

Plus, the building’s structural designs do not exist. According to Fontainebleau attorney Carter McDowell, the building’s original engineers were only able to provide the current project engineers with the standards used in the initial construction.

“We’re not saying it can’t be done — anything can be with enough money — but we probably should have done more research before we proposed putting windows in,” McDowell said. “We didn’t. We’re asking for help, to be honest.”

Since the board didn’t provide that help, the company will have to shell out the extra dough.

“People who are driving down Collins Avenue have all of these interesting things to look at and then this — it’s jarring,” board member Erika Brigham said.

Although most board members remained adamant that windows be added, not all were unreceptive to the idea of tiles or faux windows.

“You could make the spite wall an ‘in spite of’ wall,” board member Diane Downs said.

But William Cary, design, preservation and neighborhood planning director, said a vertical tile mosaic would be “an insult to Morris Lapidus,” adding that although the spite wall is a piece of history, the city probably shouldn’t preserve a bad design that was intended to ruin another hotel’s business.

The board approved the option of introducing three-panel bedroom windows and clear corridor windows into the spite wall. It also stipulated that if the F logo design intended for the top two floors is not approved for a zoning variance, the windows will have to extend all the way up.

“I can’t believe that we would commit the same error that our predecessors made: bad architecture that should never have taken place in the first place,” Hall said. “Everything costs money, but I’m not willing to reduce Miami Beach to a small portion of a budget.”

Comments? E-mail angie@miamisunpost.com.

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Further Delay

Lone vote slows Bijou Hotel project

By Angie Hargot and Erik Bojnansky

The Bijou site. Photo by Ben Torter

After hours of debate, procedural snafus and three separate votes, the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board opted to rehear a request to revise plans for a South Beach hotel on Jan. 8.

Bijou Hotel developer Zedek Associates revised its application to include a preliminary traffic, parking and noise concurrency study, but the board couldn’t approve the proposal — which requires the OK of all five board members — Tuesday because one member, Jeff Donnelly, voted no. Instead, the board decided to hear the new plan in two months.

Donnelly said he would vote yes only if the developer conducts a proper traffic study.

Zedek Associates principal Fred Rado, meanwhile, accused his adversary, South Beach activist Frank Del Vecchio, of swaying Donnelly, who had voted for Bijou’s original submission just a little more than a month ago.

“You bought a vote! You bought a vote and I will prove it!” Rado told Del Vecchio outside of commission chambers, claiming that Del Vecchio had contacted the Miami Design Preservation League, which then contacted Donnelly, the league’s appointee on the historic preservation board.

“That’s a defamation,” an admittedly “frightened” Del Vecchio said.

Donnelly said he was persuaded by information that Del Vecchio submitted to the planning department revealing that a preliminary concurrency evaluation required under city code was not completed before the board approved plans on Sept. 11 for the Bijou, a proposed seven-story, 130-room hotel with a 297-person capacity restaurant, a bar and lounge and a rooftop pool. Bijou will replace the boarded-up, three-story Simone Hotel, at 315 Ocean Drive, which was constructed in 1937. Bijou developers plan to demolish the Simone, but preserve its Art Deco façade.

Del Vecchio and other South of Fifth Street residents fear that Bijou’s rooftop pool area — a patio with the potential to host large parties — and its restaurant will wreak havoc on the neighborhood, as did the popular Prime One Twelve restaurant inside the Browns Hotel just a few blocks away.

Miami Beach city code requires the city’s Transportation and Concurrency Management Division to conduct a concurrency study on the impact of new developments before those projects are approved. Concurrency studies assess traffic, parking and the availability of services to determine whether neighborhood infrastructure can support proposed projects.

Del Vecchio, whose condominium at 301 Ocean Drive is located next door to the Simone Hotel, filed an appeal after he found out that the evaluation hadn’t been conducted at the time of the Bijou’s approval. It has since been submitted.

“I opened up this rotten onion,” Del Vecchio said.

Rado asked for a rehearing to formally submit his traffic study into the record and validate his project. Del Vecchio, who primarily opposes the hotel’s planned outdoor amenities and entertainment, appealed for the board to reject the application.

According to the Bijou’s concurrency report, the new hotel is expected to generate a “high” number — 1,494 — of vehicle trips per day. 

During the debate, Rado’s legal team forced another board member, Erika Brigham, off the dais when attorney Carter McDowell pointed out that she owned a unit in a neighboring building and accused her of participating in a recent neighborhood meeting, where she allegedly “opposed the project.” Brigham countered that she merely asked questions at that meeting, but finally recused herself to avoid an apparent conflict of interest.

The planning department recommended that the board grant Zedek’s rehearing request and approve the project, with the conditions that the first floor café and front terrace do not serve alcoholic beverages and that the planning department determine the final calculations for required parking.

Board member Norberto Rosenstein said the added conditions were more than sufficient to allow Bijou to move forward. “We’re wasting a lot of time and money on a project that was approved,” he said.

Still, Donnelly refused to budge and insisted that the rooftop lobby would attract far more people than the concurrency report implied. “This does not compute,” he said.

Rosenstein then suggested limiting the restaurant capacity to 250 people. Rado agreed and even offered to limit the capacity of the pool lobby area to 100 people, even though it already was restricted to hotel guests and mandated to close at 11 p.m.

Donnelly suggested that no food or beverage service be allowed at the rooftop pool bar, but McDowell adamantly said “no.” At one point, he and Rado even pleaded with Donnelly to tell them what to do for approval. “Please don’t put us out of business,” he said.

Donnelly said he just wanted an accurate picture of the impact the Bijou would have, insisting that he did not oppose development. “I am just trying to find a way to make the project work for you and the community at large,” he said.

Comments? Email letters@miamisunpost.com.

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Burn Out

Owner tries to save Collins Park Hotel façade

By Erik Bojnansky

Miami Beach firefighters sprayed water into a smoldering Collins Park Hotel in February. Photo by Angie Hargot

So hot were the flames at Collins Park Hotel last February that the smoke could be seen from miles away. It took 33 firefighters to prevent the fire that broke out in the boarded-up circa-1939 hotel at 20th Street and Park Avenue from spreading to neighboring Art Deco structures. Only a husk remained following the manmade blaze. Firefighters concluded the cause was arson but have not arrested any suspects.

On Tuesday, representatives of the Collins Park Hotel’s current owner, Shane Rolls, and its contracted buyer, Ron Bloomberg, told the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board that they would try to save the outer structure of the historically significant hotel.

But first Dean Carlson, of Carlson Engineers, will try to stabilize the hotel using support beams on the outside of the husk, allowing workers to safely examine what’s left of the building.

“Right now it is a danger to the public,” Carlson said.

Restoration efforts also will include demolishing a shed behind the hotel.

An update on the hotel’s fate will be presented to the Miami-Dade Unsafe Structures Board when it meets on Dec. 11.

A landmark hotel for decades, the Collins Park Hotel lobby was the location for a firefight scene in the 1995 movie Bad Boys. The property also appeared in the 1998 George Clooney-Jennifer Lopez thriller, Out of Sight. It has been boarded up since Rolls bought it in 2000. Rolls, who purchased five other neighboring hotels, initially planned to use the Collins Park Hotel as part of a larger project. However, the permits eventually lapsed and Rolls agreed to sell the hotel to Bloomberg prior to the fire.

Bill Farkas, executive director of Miami Design Preservation League, said he is pleased that Rolls and Bloomberg will try to save at least part of the Collins Park Hotel. “The big fear was [it would] be demolished,” he said.

Rolls, who attended the Historic Preservation Board hearing, refused comment.

 Comments? Email letters@miamisunpost.com.

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Coral Gables

City OKs Senior Housing

The Palace to fill Gables senior housing void

By Stephanie Rodriguez

The Coral Gables City Commission approved a 99-year lease agreement Tuesday between the city and the operators of the Palace, a senior citizen housing development, to replace two parking facilities on Andalusia Avenue near Miracle Mile.

The project, developed by the Palace Management Group and estimated at $100 million, will feature 210 independent rental units for seniors, 35 assisted-living rental units, various amenities, a parking garage and ground floor retail space.

“We’ve lost a lot of our seniors to areas such as Stuart, Naples and Sarasota because we didn’t have senior-specific housing choices,” Development Director Cathy Swanson said. “They’ve lived here for decades and they want to be able to stay here.”

The new parking garage, which will be located on the south side of Andalusia Avenue, will include 205 parking spaces for Palace residents and 337 public parking spaces to replace the parking in the garages that will be demolished.

“I’m pleased that the commission has approved the Palace’s design for the project and now they are ready to move forward to planning and zoning,” said Dr. William Schiff, a retired dentist and member of the senior citizen advisory board.

The project is set to open in December 2010.

Comments? Email letters@miamisunpost.com.

Corrections The correct design that was backed by the Coral Gables City Commission. In the Nov.1 news article “The UM Bridge,” the wrong cost estimate was given for the proposed pedestrian overpass at University Metrorail Station. The correct amount is $5.4 million. The Coral Gables City Commission also went with choosing the Mediterranean-style of architecture for the pedestrian overpass, not the one shown in the story. In the same issue, in the front page article “Junk Mail” and the news article “Certain Attorneys Prohibited,” it was incorrectly stated that Commissioner Michael Gongora voted to close a loophole in Miami Beach’s certain appearances prohibited ordinance on second reading that banned law firms affiliated with city commissioners and board members from lobbying the city. In actuality, Gongora recused himself from the vote. as his law firm, Becker & Poliakoff, sought to appeal a Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics ruling. In the Nov. 1 issue’s “The 411” column, a caption that mentioned Scott Storch incorrectly stated that he “was among the guests who wished Michael Capponi a happy birthday.” In actuality, Saturday, Oct. 27, was not Capponi’s birthday. Capponi simply hosted the party at Mansion. The SunPost regrets the errors.

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