The City Didn’t Give the Ex-Producer of Milli Vanilli Approval to Flatten a 1920s Historic House.  His Solution:  Damn the Permits.  The Result:  a Pile of Rubble and a Near Health Hazard

  “You just think that things like this don’t happen, but apparently they do.”—Herb Sosa, executive director of MDPL

By Erik Bojnansky
Editor 

Colleen Martin said the single-family home at 3080 North Bay Road was the inspiration for the movement to protect historic homes from demolition.

So when the Historic Preservation Board member heard the 74-year-old house was being demolished last Friday afternoon, Martin drove over immediately.  By the time she got there, at around 4:30 p.m., the home was halfway destroyed. 

“The guy demolishing it wouldn’t give me his name,” Martin said.  “He said he didn’t know anything because he was just hired.”  She described the operator of the Komatsu excavator as a heavyset man with a dark completion between 5 foot 4 and 5 foot 7 in height. Martin said she then asked if he had a permit.  The operator indicated that he couldn’t hear.  “He was like ‘what, what, what?’”  He told her to back up.  When she did, he took “one last swing” and the house came tumbling down.  In front of nine or ten other bystanders, Martin said the operator ran to the neighboring lot, got in his car and peeled out.  “He pulled out so fast he didn’t look to see if there were other oncoming cars,” she said. 

Why did the operator leave in such a hurry?  The house was flattened without a building permit. 

“Oh my God,” said Herb Sosa, executive director of the Miami Design Preservation League.  “You just think that things like this don’t happen, but apparently they do… I think the city should fine the property owner to the full extent of the law.”

In this case that owner is Franz Reuther, also known as Frank Farian, a music producer best known for recruiting Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan as “front men” for the 1988 pop duo Milli Vanilli.  In 1991, following Pilatus and Morvan’s exposure as lip-syncing impostors, Reuther produced the Real Milli Vanilli, featuring “real” singers Brad Howell, Johnny Davis and Charles Shaw. Currently, Reuther is registered as the president of FAR Corporation and American Music Entertainment Corporation.  The address of both companies is listed as the New World Tower office building in Miami in the law office of Thomas Baur, an attorney specializing in representing Germans in Florida.  Baur did not return repeated phone calls from the SunPost. Reuther could not be located for comment.

Two years ago, Reuther purchased two pre-World War II homes on North Bay Road.  One of the homes was demolished to make way for a modern house, Martin said. On December 17, FAR Corporation applied for a permit to demolish 3080 North Bay Road.  However, before the permit could be issued, in that same month, the Miami Beach City Commission passed a demolition moratorium for historic homes.  The latest version of the ordinance, passed in March, requires any property owner seeking to demolish a home past the age of 60 years to get approval from both the planning and building departments.  The house at 3080 North Bay Road was designed by its original owner, architect G.C. Wilkinson, and constructed in 1928.

“It was a single-family home, not part of any historic district, but it was constructed way before 1942 and was an architecturally significant home,” said Design and Preservation Manager Tom Mooney.  The Mediterranean-revival era home was also in good structural condition, Mooney said. The building department records even note the 5,000 square foot “historic Cuban roof tile.”  With neither the building nor planning department giving the okay, the December 17 permit was rejected.  “This is the first historic house the ordinance saved,” said Martin, an activist who helped spearhead the creation of an ordinance that would protect older homes outside of the city’s historic districts.  “It was beautiful.”

Reuther still had the option of appealing the city’s decision with the newly formed Single Family Residence Review Board, Mooney said.  Instead, the Baron & Sons Construction Corporation, on behalf of FAR Corporation, applied for a new permit on February 20.  This time the permit was titled “new/addition/remodel” and described the work as “gunite, new roof trusses, sheathing, roof, bathrooms, kitchen, windows, 48 openings, impacts doors… new electric plan…”, etc.  The permit had yet to be approved, but, according to Martin, someone was hard at work destroying the house’s interior.  “They took a sledge hammer to it,” she said. (The building department issued a violation on February 5 for not complying with a “lawful stop work” order.)

Yitzi Baron, co-owner of Baron & Sons, said it wasn’t anyone from his company who demolished 3080.  “I’m trying to get to the bottom of it right now,” he said.  “We applied… but we sort of ran into a complicated stand still.” Baron said he was “still working to try to get it approved” when he was told that the building was already demolished.  “None of our employees were there,” he said.  “None of our sub-contractors were there.”

“My understanding is that the owner got some guy with a crane to go out and demolish it,” Mooney said.

“He was hired by somebody,” Martin said.  “I have to subpoena the work order from United Rentals.  As a member of the Historic Preservation Board that’s an option.”

The building department, however, already has a copy of the United Rentals receipt for the Komatsu excavator.  According to the receipt a Ferndinand Foerster rented the demolition vehicle for $2,500.  City sources have told the SunPost that a “Reinhart” hired Foerster to do the job.  When contacted by the SunPost, Reinhart acknowledged that he “sometimes works” for Reuther but denied any knowledge about the home on 3080 Bay Road. 

Besides destroying the home, the crane’s operator also forgot to disconnect the home’s water.  Building Official Phil Azan said such a mistake could have caused a health hazard for the residents of North Bay Road.  “You could get raw sewage into the neighborhood’s water supply,” he said.  (Public works shut off the house’s water on Monday.)

“People do things like this all the time,” commented Azan.  “It is not every day somebody knocks down a building without a permit, but people do work without permits all the time.”

Nelson Gonzalez, president of Esslinger Wooten Maxwell realtors, said he believes this sort of thing may happen more often. “People are a little bit upset by this whole [ordinance],” Gonzalez said.  Although the city ordinance allows the demolition of an older house if renovating it would end up costing a property owner more than building a new house, some homeowners get frustrated with the bureaucracy and decide it would be cheaper to simply pay the fines.  “To do it the right way”—i.e., to hire the people with the necessary renovation and construction plans—could cost a homeowner between $20,000 and $40,000,” Gonzalez said.  “From what I hear the penalty is double the cost of the permit.”

 According to the building department, Reuther will face fines a lot higher than that.  The German music producer has been cited with eight violations.  Each violation carries a maximum fine of $15,000 in addition to twice the cost of a demo permit plus $100.  Maximum fines could reach as high as $120,796.  Reuther’s case will be heard by the city’s “special master” on Monday, May 6.  Phil Azan said he has arranged to have a “face-to-face” with Reuther on Monday as well. He hopes to get to the bottom of how the house came to be demolished without a permit.  “If not, we’ll leave it for the special master to get as much information as she can,” he said.