Congratulations Miami Beach  

Approximately 250,000 visitors jammed South Beach during Memorial Day Weekend. That 120-hour challenge proved Miami Beach can successfully manage its growing reputation as one of the most popular special event destinations in America. 

A.C. Weinstein
Columnist  

When NBC’s Today Show did its national broadcast from South Beach with Mayor David Dermer on Saturday morning, Memorial Day Weekend was in full swing. If the weekend had been anything like what some in the media had hyped as a coming disaster, the tone of the interview with the mayor could have given Miami Beach a terrible black eye. Instead, the interview focused on the impact of international terrorism on Miami Beach. The mayor assured the viewers across the country that Miami Beach is a safe city.  

While tourism spends millions of dollars promoting Miami Beach as a destination, it’s the responsibility of city officials to manage the large numbers of visitors to the city, such as with the boat show and Memorial Day Weekend.

The city prepared a crowd control and traffic plan for Memorial Day Weekend that worked. While police, fire, sanitation, code compliance and other departments set in place a plan to handle the quadrupling of the city’s population within a small and already high-density section of South Beach, the rest of Miami Beach also needed to be fully serviced. City Manager Jorge Gonzalez and his staff, particularly Christina Cuervo, not only succeeded, they set a standard that other special event destinations will learn from and try to emulate.

Providing a safe and clean city in ordinary times in Miami Beach, which often doubles its resident population on any given weekend, continues to be a great challenge, however, the police and fire department’s reality of success far outweighs the rhetoric of any media hype.

There was a lot of Miami Beach pride riding on the weekend. To see the mayor, city manager, police chief, fire-rescue teams, finance, sanitation and code compliance directors along with scores of employee volunteers out on the street, it was an all-out effort to thump that ridiculous end-of-the-world hype that even discouraged some residents from venturing south of Lincoln Road. 

The successful management of Memorial Day weekend has secured Miami Beach’s reputation as a popular and safe event destination for the music and entertainment industries. Tourism comes in many flavors, and when a city bases so much of its economy on its numbers of visiting tourists, it will be these types of events that will become more and more commonplace.

While many residents and even some local businesses may not be too happy with the theme or tone of every special event that comes to Miami Beach, it’s still the responsibility of local government to provide the safest and cleanest environment for every resident and visitor, whether it’s during New Year’s Eve, this past weekend’s Hip-Hop gathering of the music industry or the upcoming Soul Beach Music Festival.

Although costly, Miami Beach did cover its public safety responsibility this past five-day weekend. Because of its success, some will complain that the city overspent in dollars and time with a plan that prepared for every possible contingency. But that’s okay, because it’s just that very criticism that will only confirm just how well the city did. Congratulations Miami Beach.