M E N U

  Last Updated: Friday, August 29, 2008

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Introduction

The good. The bad. The ugly. And everything in-between.

The phrase above isn’t the title of a Mel Brooks satirical take-off on a certain spaghetti western starring Clint Eastwood. It is how the news works, and the SunPost 50 reflects that fact. In this issue, the SunPost lists 50 people (a nice round number) who have had some effect on our lives in one way or another, good, bad or somewhere in-between. To understand our meaning read the newspaper, preferably the local section or just take a look out your window. Done? OK, chances are some of the 50 people listed in this special issue have something to do with what you see out there. Everything except for the sunshine and weather, which is either credited to God or random fluctuations in Earth’s atmosphere combined with internal nuclear combustion in the Sun, or both.

Of course, we still have plenty of people listed who want to exploit the sunshine and weather here. Yes, we are talking about the powerhouses of the real estate industry and, yes, many are listed in this year’s 50 issue — again. And, like it or not, the real estate industry is still among the region’s most influential. That could change if certain predictions of a real estate “correction” from a few Wall Street investment firms come to fruition. But, hey, that hasn’t happened yet.

Yet the 50 isn’t just about real estate investors, it is also about chic hotel operators, religious people who are getting attention about holiday decorations, religious people who humbly build bridges between communities, bookstore owners who plan huge literary events, museum directors who managed to persuade voters to approve a $500 million-plus bond issue to pay for art and culture for the next 30 years, politicians who seek to give tax breaks, politicians who seek to give more subsidies, politicians who want more power, politicians who want to keep their power, politicians who just want some respect, lobbyists who use their political connections for their own profit … yep, you can find all this and more in the SunPost 50.

As a bonus, we have included last year’s SunPost 50 winners.

So without further adieu, here is the SunPost 50. Prepare to be amazed, amused, disgusted, bored, shocked and bewildered all at the same time.

Compiled by Erik Bojnansky, Robin Shear, Andrew Stark, Liz Stark, Omar Sommereyns, Mario Martinez

Copy Edited by Mary Louise English, Robin Shear

Introduction by Erik Bojnansky

Barbara Carey-Shuler

Power Siphon

You know you are perceived as a powerful person when indicted individuals speak about the time they had lunch with you.

That was the case with Miami-Dade County Commissioner Barbara Carey-Shuler when

Richard Caride, a manager for Aircraft Service International Group, which was hired to oversee a “fuel farm” at Miami International Airport, was arrested for his part in an organized fuel theft operation and a fraudulent billing scheme perpetrated against us, the taxpayers of Miami-Dade County, who technically own MIA. Caride, a former Miami-Dade cop who served seven years in prison for a deadly home invasion robbery, sang like a canary and spoke of a web of corruption that included county hall operatives (who regularly demanded money and jobs to keep politicians happy), of receiving cash installments from “minority business owner” Antonio Junior (whose company provided “security” for the fuel farm at Junior’s instance) and having lunch with Carey-Shuler (who emphasized her desire to keep Junior happy). Junior has also been arrested and, as of this writing, Carey-Shuler has not. The commissioner insists on her innocence. “People know you and start using your name,” she said.

The first county commissioner to hold the commission chair gavel since voters began curbing the power of their so-called executive mayor in 2002, Barbara Carey-Shuler led the charge to siphon still more powers away from the mayor’s post. Prior to the election of a new executive mayor to replace Alex Penelas, Carey-Shuler proposed, and won, an initiative to take away the Government Affairs office from hizzoner. Thus, the mayor is now left with only the abilities to hire and fire the county manager (such acts have to be ratified by the commission, however), veto legislation and be a “head of state,” where the mayor gets to cut ribbons and such.

But Carey-Shuler proved that a county chair can be just as adept at using sharp objects to cut ribbons as any mayor, appearing in as many photo ops as the departing Alex Penelas, if not more. And her ability to form alliances on the county commission enabled her to propose all manner of ordinances, including a law that freed the Office of the Inspector General from the clutches of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics.

The gavel has since been passed to Commissioner Joe Martinez and it remains to be seen whether or not Martinez can maintain a solid wall against the newly elected Carlos Alvarez. Short of the MIA allegations gaining legs, though, Carey-Shuler will still be an influential member of the commission.

Carlos Alvarez

Power Play

On paper it doesn’t look good for Carlos Alvarez. The mayor’s powers have been steadily stripped away for the last four years. But Alvarez isn’t content with being a high-paid ribbon cutter. The former director of the Miami-Dade Police Department feels his election is a mandate to reform county government, a mandate he intends to fulfill.

How? By acting as a sort of conscience of county government, Alvarez opposes the expansion of the Urban Development Boundary that would allow more development in South Dade, earning praise from environmental groups and controlled development advocates. He opposed a referendum that would have allowed slot machines to be placed in pari-mutuel facilities in Miami-Dade County, a proposal that, while supported by county commissioners (who hoped to get a pay raise out of the deal), was ultimately rejected by a majority of county voters. Alvarez even vetoed legislation that would have allowed dedicated half-penny-transportation-tax money to pay off old debts of the Miami-Dade Transit Agency.

Such moves enabled Alvarez to turn his weak position (on paper at least) into a stronger one and allows him to get closer to his real aim: transforming the county into a true strong mayor form of government. The instrument: Citizens for Reform, a political action committee that’s ready to collect signatures to get Alvarez’s proposed charter amendments on the ballot and gather a campaign treasury of $600,000 to persuade voters to pass it. The initiatives: giving the power to award contracts to department heads and giving the power to hire and fire the county manager and department heads to the mayor. He was going to propose a pay raise for commissioners, too, but after they made a big stink about Alvarez wanting to become a dictator and the like…well, that was left out.

Assuming the questions make it onto the ballot, will Miami-Dade voters support them? That depends on the county commission and the commission-friendly county administration. If more improprieties are discovered, more scandals and deficits uncovered and more officials indicted, Alvarez stands a pretty good chance of becoming one of the most powerful mayors in the country.

Jorge Perez

Otra Vez

A golden oldie makes the list again: Jorge Perez, president of the Related Group of Florida.

We have lost track of how many times Perez has made the 50 list. We have also lost track of how many high-rises the Related Group has developed all over South Florida, particularly in Miami, Miami Beach and Sunny Isles.

And Perez isn’t slowing down: From the Plaza at Brickell to the Venture in Aventura, he continues to build residential and mixed-use projects all over Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, amassing a real estate portfolio valued at more than $6 billion and overseeing and managing more than 50,000 units.

Perez is even paving the way for more high-rise projects by breathing life (in the form of a partnership) into Trump Dezer’s developments in Sunny Isles and by constructing a fuel tank at the old Loehmann’s Plaza to provide emergency power for all the new towers being built in Aventura’s Thunder Alley.

Unless the real estate market crashes, Perez will probably continue to change the shape of South Florida’s landscape. And even if the bubble should burst, Perez will still be here, building residential towers and mixed-use projects even as lesser developers seek jobs at McDonald’s. Perez has been here a long time; he’ll find a market, no matter what the conditions are.

Jesus Diaz

The Bean Counter

Legend has it that it occurred on a beautiful day, the kind of day that makes South Florida such a wonderful place to live. The sun was shining. Birds were singing. A rainbow glimmered overhead. And it was during that day Miami Herald Publisher Alberto Ibarguen was finally convinced Street Weekly was a money drainer. So Street, the free publication that vowed never to slow down, was unceremoniously killed off without even the courtesy of an official final issue.

A few months later Ibarguen announced his intent to step down as publisher and Miami Herald General Manager Jesus Diaz was announced as his successor. Fitting, in a way, especially since it is Diaz who was reputed to have ordered Street Weekly copies picked up after the paper dared make fun of Lennar Corporation’s president Stuart Miller, one of the most powerful businessmen in South Florida.

No doubt about it, Diaz is the sort of man who knows the bottom line. Graduating with an accounting degree from Emory University Business School, he started working for the Miami-based accounting firm of Ernst & Young in 1982. While at the Herald, Diaz’s accounting skills were recognized by corporate, earning him such accolades as the James K. Batten Knight Ridder Excellence Award for Finance in 1995 and several promotions. If there is one thing KR appreciates, it’s a healthy profit.

And Diaz knows about the newspaper business, as demonstrated in a recent interview in Miami Today. “…I view the business as a four-step process. The first one is to have top journalism so that we can increase our reach—and the reach can be through our newspapers, it can be online, it can be through some of our other publications. If you can grow the audience, you can bring in more advertising because your advertisers have more opportunities to reach their audience in your products. If you can do that, it brings in more revenue. You bring in more revenue, you can reinvest in the business, and, of course, you can make sure that the business stays successful — so that you can then go back up to the top and refocus on the journalism, then you can focus on bringing in more readers, more reach, which then leads to more advertising, which leads to a healthy business and back up to the top. And hopefully, you can just keep that cycle going.”

“How do you ensure good journalism?” Miami Today asked.

“The first thing is you have to hire and develop great journalists!” Diaz replied. He then went on about giving journalists the freedom to do their thing. Whether or not there are exceptions to that declaration (cough! Miller) remains to be seen.

But we jest — partly because we are wary of Diaz. It was Diaz who backed the revamping of the Miami Herald Neighbors section in its quest to create square block zone editions with stories about bike patrols, listings of public school events and photo pages of residential neighborhoods. Assuming the understaffed editors and copy editors don’t kill themselves with the additional zones, the scheme could work. And if it doesn’t work, well, they can always sell the Miami Herald building. It would make a nice condominium! And speaking of which …

Pedro Martin

Mr. Right of First Refusal

“But the San Jose, California-based publisher, which owns The Herald, is not selling its office building on Biscayne Bay that houses The Herald’s editorial and printing operations.”

The above quote is from a recent Miami Herald article announcing that its parent company Knight-Ridder will be selling off 10 acres surrounding that newspaper’s bayfront office building in downtown Miami – consisting of a parking garage, surface parking lots and a two-story building – for $190 million to Pedro Martin’s Terra Group. But KR won’t be selling the Miami Herald building, as many have said the corporation has desired to do since before it supported construction of the never-ending Performing Arts Center project – at least not yet.

“It is not for sale,” Larry Marbert, KR’s VP of production and facilities said in a press release. But if the building ever does go on the market, Martin will have “the right of first refusal,” the release said.

But enough about the Herald; this is about Pedro Martin, the Greenberg Traurig land-use lawyer-turned-powerhouse developer. Although Martin’s contracted purchase of what is mostly the newspaper’s parking lots made news all over the United States (and likely helped Knight Ridder’s stock up a few decimal points), Martin has been buying property throughout Miami and beyond, paving the way for still more high-rises. Current projects to Martin’s credit include Nautica in Miami Beach, Metropolis in Kendall, Quantum on the Bay and 900 Biscayne Bay in Miami.

And while he still practices law, Martin has jumped full throttle into the powerhouse developer role: contributing to the arts, giving money to the Performing Arts Center (it’s a right of passage for developers, especially if you plan to build something near it), appearing at charity galas and throwing blowout condo-opening parties. (One event – a free concert in Margaret Pace Park related to the groundbreaking of his Quantum on the Bay – attracted 3,000 people.)

When some pesky financial journalist asked about Wall Street’s concerns that Miami’s development boom is based on speculating investors, Martin stepped up to the plate to represent the local real estate/development community. “For them to make that kind of statement, I don’t see it backed up by empirical statistical data,” the Herald, quoted Martin as saying in an article that also reminded readers about his land deal with Knight Ridder. ‘‘You don’t put 20 percent down on a $500,000 condo when you are a speculator.’’

Even if he hadn’t made a deal with Knight Ridder, Martin would be considered a major player in South Florida. Yet it doesn’t hurt one’s reputation to be known as the man who has the first option to buy the Miami Herald building.

Edie Laquer

Hating to Lose

We didn’t want to keep dwelling on the Miami Herald land deal. But we can’t help it. It is just so darn amusing. And there is something about amusing, high-profile deals and Edie Laquer: They pretty much go hand in hand.

Was it any surprise it was Edie Laquer who brokered the Herald deal that may some day pave the way for the office building to be converted into a condominium? Since coming to town in 1980, the former Montreal native has brokered some of Miami’s biggest deals. Cocowalk, Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, Midtown Miami, the expansion of Africa-Israel-Boymelgreen’s South Florida real estate empire – she had a hand in all of them. And Laquer, ever the workaholic, remains modest. “Whether the deal is $1 million or $1 billion, I enjoy giving each transaction the same dedication regardless of its scope,” she told South Florida CEO in August 2004. “It’s not so much that I like to win; it’s just that I hate to lose.”

With that attitude, is it any wonder that Jacob “Hank” Sopher continues to deal with Laquer? Quick recap: It was Laquer who helped Sopher sell off his properties to A.I.-Boymelgreen. But Sopher ain’t done yet. He has decided to buy up yet more properties in the young North Dade municipality known as Miami Gardens. Guess who is acting as Sopher’s pathfinder in his quest to acquire undervalued acreage in the land of radio towers and vacant parcels? Edie Laquer.

Shaquille “Shaq” O’Neal

MVP

When archaeologists find the remains of Old Miami hundreds or thousands of years from now, they will come to believe a man of tall stature known as The Shaq either ruled here or was regarded as a god. Why else would there be so many pictures of him everywhere in this lost city of Miami?

Miami has yet to stop going utterly gaga over Shaq becoming a Miami Heat basketball player. An official press conference announcing Shaq’s induction into the Miami Heat drew such huge crowds downtown one would think we had already won the playoffs. Makes sense since any team who obtains Shaq becomes an instant championship contender.

As predicted, the Miami Heat had a huge winning streak this season and Shaq’s face is always to be found on local television news broadcasts and in various sections of the Miami Herald. (Yep, not just in Sports – but also the front page, Living, Weekend, etc.) Shaq is even the star of a Miami Heat comic book in which the players must do battle with their evil doppelgangers. And the clubs? Forget about it. Any nightclub in Miami and Miami Beach is proud to treat the Shaq to a VIP table and all its trimmings for free.

At deadline, though, the Shaq hasn’t been able to party out in the town, thanks to a viral infection. As Heat fans know, same said viral infection has kept Shaq away from the court and his absence allowed the Memphis Grizzlies to make mince meat out of the Heat in an April 8 game. (This special section went to print before the Heat’s April 10 game against the Detroit Pistons.) Ironically, such defeats give more credence to O’Neal being named Most Valuable Player of the NBA at the end of the season and explain our fascination and adoration. After all, everyone loves a winner — especially if he is really tall.

Manny Diaz

The Pied Piper

Recently, a few thousand people went to the Coconut Grove Expo Center to protest proposed cuts in Community Development Block Grant funding. Why? It’s because Manny Diaz envisioned it, wanted it, planned it, and sold everyone else on it. And in Miami, what Manny Diaz wants, others suddenly want and he gets: In this case it was attention.

Attention. Diaz is pretty good at getting that. For example, the governor’s election is years away and yet Diaz, who no longer has a party affiliation, is already being touted as a possible candidate for governor to replace the termed-out Jeb Bush.

And then there are the real estate investors and developers. Never before have they banked so much on the Magic City. Diaz has a lot to do with that — investing a lot of his time and the city’s money in attracting projects from new stadiums to mini-metropolises. Diaz also has a point of view that can only be described as developer friendly. As Otto Boudet-Murias, Diaz’s former economic advisor-turned-city economic development director recently put it to the New Times, “Miami has a lot more growing to do. And we’re giving the people what they want — a lifestyle of prestige.”

Then there is the relative political stability factor. In the four years since Diaz was elected, the business community remains grateful he wasn’t voted in by dead people, doesn’t throw tea bag containers at his spouse nor visit constituents in the dead of night. Diaz is not just business friendly, he is also politically correct: not espousing extreme ideology as a few previous mayors of Miami have.

So it’s hardly a wonder Diaz makes the cover of South Florida CEO or is seen as a contender for governor. And it’s not surprising that, when Diaz plays a flute, others are tempted to follow. Maybe not in lockstep (Diaz supported slot machines for Miami-Dade pari-mutuels, a proposal rejected by voters), but enough to generally get his way. And while a power struggle might be occurring in the county, there is no doubt who is in charge in Miami. Diaz, with his support of subsidizing business interests, liberal zoning laws and making Miami home to the Free Trade Area of the Americas headquarters, is the darling of capitalists betting on the city’s future.

Mike Walker

I Want My MTV

Before Florida got whacked by spinning storm systems, things were looking pretty good for Miami. Art Basel was a hit. Winter Music Conference attracted thousands. And then along came MTV, which, for the first time in its 20-year existence, decided to hold its Video Music Awards show someplace other than New York City or Los Angeles.

And the man who had a lot to do with MTV looking Miami’s way was Mike Walker, vice president of the Miami Heat Group. His primary job is bringing all manner of events and shows to the American Airlines Arena. In so doing, Walker has attracted some of the biggest concerts to ever grace the county, as well as the Latin Grammies, HBO Boxing, and other big-name events.

So Walker isn’t the sort of man who just twiddles his thumbs, waiting for things to come his way. Walker makes things happen. And when he heard that MTV would not go to New York because the city was hosting the Republican Convention, he called Sally Frattini, executive producer of the VMAs. “I just made the call,” Walker told the SunPost.

That led to more calls and, within just a few weeks, to meetings between Walker and MTV execs. Oh yeah, and Bill Talbert, president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas joined the party. Long story, short: MTV came to the American Airlines Arena, to Miami, and in the dead of summer (August) no less! In the days preceding and of the show, Miami-Dade County wasn’t a place of ridicule and scorn as in previous years when authorities regularly carted away corrupt politicians. Miami was celebrity central, the coolest place on Earth.

In the days after, Walker immediately lobbied MTV to hold its awards show here a second time. And as recently announced, MTV has once again opted to make Miami’s American Airlines Arena the site of its 21st annual show.

All because Walker made a call. Perhaps Talbert said it best when he described Walker as “the man.”

Samuel Keller

Art International

Admit it? Ten years ago if someone told you Miami would become something more than a place for people to enjoy subtropical weather without having to worry about volcanoes erupting or death-squads/rebels lurking in the foliage, you might laugh. Ten years ago if someone said, “Yes, and Miami will be one of the centers of the art world,” you’d probably laugh so hard you’d wet yourself.

A decade hence, Miami is being hailed as a nexus of the international art world and it is largely because of Art Basel Miami Beach. A spin-off of Art Basel in Switzerland, considered the most important art show in the world, the event has come to Miami Beach every December for the last three years. Samuel Keller, the Swiss show’s second-in-command, was named the Beach Basel’s director and, while too modest to admit this directly, has evolved into its personification. A lean, mean, schmoozing machine, Keller is said to know every one of the hundreds of dealers and collectors who journey to Art Basel Miami Beach by name. Yet while Keller is recognized and respected by art collectors worldwide, he doesn’t let it go to his head. That might be why Art Basel continues to get better and better every year even as other art shows fade and wither.

Keller, though, likes to credit Basel’s success to the area. “Basel could only be possible on solid ground,” he told the Miami Herald. “It was all here already, the museums, the collectors, the schools, all of the people who have been very committed to art for a long time.”

It’s just that few people, from Miami-Dade residents to high-profile art collectors elsewhere, knew that before the advent of Art Basel Miami Beach.

Edgardo Defortuna

Still Here

Another golden oldie, Edgardo Defortuna still dominates the corner of the universe we call South Florida real estate. The president of Fortune International, Defortuna continues to master the roles of both Realtor and developer by gaining exclusive accounts of some of the most luxurious real estate towers in this end of the state while building lavish high-rises like Jade Residences in Miami, M Resort Residences and Jade Beach in Sunny Isles, and Bridgewater and Ocean Blue in North Bay Village.

Not bad for a guy who came to Miami from Argentina in ‘80 just to manage his family’s real estate holdings, took a glance at other real estate agents then working the market and said, “Man, I can do this.” Using his connections in South America, Fortune International continues to grow, now employing 500 real estate agents, according to South Florida Business Journal.

Oh, and all that talk about the real estate market going south in South Florida? Defortuna isn’t worried, especially about Brickell, where he started Fortune International all those years ago. “Prices on Brickell still have a lot of room to grow,” Defortuna said. “If the location and the price [are] right then people respond.”

Robert Falor

Condo-Hotel King

Robert Falor probably loved to play Monopoly as a kid.

We refer to that board game where players wander around a two-dimensional realm as a shoe or a car or a thimble, buying up properties in an attempt to assemble all the parcels of the same color so houses and hotels can be built and other players, when they land on the developed squares, will be forced to fork over thousands in cold, hard, fake currency.

While most players were probably holding out for Boardwalk and Park Place, Falor likely focused his attentions on acquiring the blue Oriental Avenue, Vermont Avenue and Connecticut Avenue parcels, the yellow Atlantic Avenue, Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens properties and the green Pacific Avenue, North Carolina Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue lots – basically the territories his competitors were most likely to land on, i.e. the prime locations. All he needed then was to put up the plastic hotels and watch the money roll in.

Today the president and CEO of the Falor Companies, Robert Falor is all about prime locations. As the company’s mission statement declares, the Falor Companies seeks to purchase “underperforming and under-valued properties in prime locations, repositioning these assets through renovation and re-flagging and then marketing the finished product as condominium units for timely and profitable sell-out.”

And so the Chicago-based, family-run Falor Companies, along with its partners Hard Rock Hotels, Ritz-Carlton, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Kor Hotel Group and Kimpton Hotels, has been buying up properties all over the world with the goal of building condo-hotels.

Quick definition of a condo-hotel: the latest real estate craze, where hotel rooms are owned directly as condos and the owners can, in turn, rent out the rooms to a private hotel company. Hotel developers like it because condo-hotel buyers furnish all the funding they need to build their resorts. Sure, there are skeptics who doubt the condo-hotel trend/scheme to avoid bank financing will work on a wide scale. But for now, condo-hotels have attracted many lucrative-prime-location seekers such as Robert Falor.

And with the condo-hotel craze taking Miami-Dade by storm, Falor and company are at the forefront, purchasing properties at warp speed. Hotels in the Falor family’s fold include the Breakwater, the Edison, the Tides and the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza (soon to be a Hard Rock Royal Palm) in Miami Beach. In Coconut Grove, Falor has a joint venture with Colony Capital to convert the Mayfair House hotel into a condo-hotel and down south in Islamorada, he has joined forces with Cheeca Holdings to transform the Cheeca Lodge and Spa into a – you guessed right – condo-hotel. Did we mention Falor bought all these properties in less than 21 months? And Robert Falor isn’t done yet. ‘‘What is the old saying? Make money while the sun shines? The climate is perfect to execute our business plan,’’ he recently told the Miami Herald.

And so Falor continues to buy up Miami-Dade’s version of blue, yellow and green properties on the game board that is South Florida real estate.

R. Donahue Peebles

Mr. Slick

One day, there will be a book about R. Donahue Peebles, a man who somehow finds a way to come out on top, no matter how bleak things look for him.

Peebles was selected as the developer of Miami-Dade’s first African-American-owned hotel (Miami Beach’s $10 million-plus way of apologizing for Miami officials snubbing Nelson Mandela) back in 1996. And during all the time since it’s not clear whether Miami Beach ever had a firm deal with Peebles that lasted more than a few months. From complaining about the poor structural condition of the original 1940 Royal Palm Hotel (it had to be demolished) to pointing out the sweetheart deal the neighboring Loews Hotel received, Peebles always found reason for demanding a new agreement with the city, at one point even refusing to pay rent. He managed to exhaust and frustrate Beach officials negotiating with him, often gave liberally to political campaigns (especially those of Beach politicians) and still found time to buy the Bath Club, an institution that, ironically, once refused membership to blacks and Jews. He was also not above scrapping with personalities he believed to be extorting him or jerking him around.

In short, Peebles was a tough cookie who could be nice one minute, rough the next.

And once again Peebles has come out on top: selling his interests in the Royal Palm and Shorecrest hotels to the Falor Companies for $128 million. But he isn’t out of the Royal Palm business yet. The purchasing company wants to use Peebles’ “experience in the Miami hotel industry,” as described by a Falor press release, and he will thus play a part in the hotel’s future operations. Translation: The Falor Companies value Peebles’ experience in the political arena. As an observer once described, “Peebles is as slick as owl s-it.” We have never personally observed owl droppings closely enough to note how slick they are. But the phrase just sounds kind of, well, neat.

Suzanne Delehanty

Under the Radar

The Miami Art Museum will soon get a brand-spanking-new $100 million facility, and on the waterfront no less, thanks to Miami-Dade County voters who approved $2.9 billion worth of general obligation bonds. But it was a single, wide-ranging $553 million bond question that fulfilled a quest ten years in the making.

In 1995 Suzanne Delehanty was hired as executive director of the Center for the Fine Arts, effectively being placed in charge of long-term planning. It soon became apparent to her that the museum, located in the Miami-Dade Cultural Complex on West Flagler Street, was not all it could be. So the museum became an independent nonprofit, changed its name to the Miami Art Museum and started a series of happy hour events (art goes great with cocktails and music!) that helped gain the facility some exposure. It wasn’t enough. The museum’s board of directors and patrons wanted MAM to become a collector’s museum, and that meant a bigger space. They knew MAM would get much support from the private sector. But they needed public money and a publicly owned location — preferably on the waterfront — to make this happen. Saaaaaaay, why not Bicentennial Park? Public outcry prevented the Florida Marlins from building a stadium there anytime soon. Hmmmmm…

Yet to make such a thing happen would require patience and luck. Fortunately Delehanty had something more than that: influential board members such as former Miami Herald publisher David Lawrence (often seen with Delehanty in Miami-Dade Commission meetings) and power attorney Aaron Podhurst. After a series of polls, Delehanty and company figured the best way to get a bond passed for MAM was to present it among a bunch of other cultural questions. And so the $100 million Miami Art Museum allocation was lumped together with several other cultural and educational proposals such as the $175 million Miami Museum of Science and various library, historic preservation and, most importantly, Head Start programs. Total price tag: $552,692,000. For an added touch, the word “museum” was left out of the referendum question — for space reasons, County Manager George Burgess told the media. (Space was found on the ballot for “Head Start” programs, though.) Meanwhile developers downtown, in love with the idea of constructing their projects near a “museum park,” contributed graciously to a political action committee dedicated to the question’s passage.

The plan worked. Voters approved all eight bond questions, particularly good ol’ culturally sensitive number eight. Goes to show you what a little long-term planning can get you.

Jeb Bush

Dubya’s Brother

We can only guess what would happen if the courts decided to unplug a vegetative woman in a state whose governor wasn’t the brother of the President of the United States. Would the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives try to intervene during a midnight session?

If perception is power, Jeb Bush has a lot of it. Blood is very thick in the Bush clan. Saddam Hussein’s attempt to kill George Bush Sr. in 1994 during a visit to Kuwait has been cited by detractors of the Iraq War to be among the reasons why his son wanted to invade. As for the brothers, there is little reason to disbelieve one Bush sibling will do what he can to help the other. A decent example would be during the 2004 presidential election when Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood’s positions pretty much mirrored those of the man who appointed her, Jeb Bush, and improved Dubya’s chances in the Sunshine State by such means as removing the names of registered voters who seemed to be leaning Democratic, ensuring Ralph Nader’s place on the ballot and stubbornly defending the accuracy of touch-screen voting machines lacking print-out receipts. That loyalty carried on to the March 8 special election on allowing slot machines in pari-mutuel gambling facilities in Miami-Dade and Broward. When Republican State Rep. Randy Johnson, an Orange County legislator who headed No Casinos, Inc., accused the Dade and Broward governments of accepting pari-mutuel funds to help pay for the special elections, Hood said her department did not have the power to prosecute but encouraged the PAC to try other avenues to investigate the matter further. Hey, it made for good media fodder.

But Jeb Bush isn’t a 50 because of Dubya or Hood. Jeb, the man himself, made a huge impact when he campaigned hard in Miami-Dade to crush the slot-machine referendum. Thanks to Bush’s campaign, and his allies in the Cuban-American community (as well as growing skepticism of the pari-mutuels’ promises of a utopia with plentiful jobs and well-funded schools), slots failed in Miami-Dade County. Without the last-minute push by Bush, the pari-mutuel question just might have passed here. Meanwhile, Bush pretty much has declared his intent to make Broward slots far less profitable by proposing state laws that would forbid Vegas-style machines and ban alcohol sales in such facilities.

Now Bush is also weighing in on the expansion of Miami-Dade’s Urban Development Boundary. He opposes it, earning Brother Jeb rare praise from liberal-leaning environmental groups. Bush is even backing Alvarez’s move to create a strong-mayor position.

With his fraternal tie to the White House, a Republican majority in both houses of the Florida Legislature and his political connections in South Florida, Bush is a heavy hitter in the realms of business, development and education, not just throughout the state, but right here in Miami-Dade.

David Dermer

Little Jeb

Let it be stated here that David Dermer is probably the most honest politician in Miami-Dade County. That said, honesty isn’t always enough to win an election. So in 2001, when Florida Democrats backed former state Rep. Elaine Bloom for mayor of Miami Beach, Commissioner David Dermer, also a Democrat, had to look for other endorsements if he wanted that seat.

He got it in the form of Republican Gov. Jeb Bush.

Dermer ultimately won in the mayoral run-off and has been a loyal supporter of Governor Bush and his clan ever since. How loyal? Dermer admitted devoting so much energy campaigning for George W. Bush’s re-election that a straw ballot referendum on the light-rail Bay Link between Miami and Miami Beach did not get his complete attention. The result: A majority of Beach voters who bothered to move that far down the ballot endorsed the Bay Link. A blow for Dermer? The mayor wasn’t exactly thrilled with the straw ballot’s results but he was overjoyed that Bush was re-elected. Besides, it isn’t like the Bay Link will get federal funding before the mid-21st century. As for Dermer’s support for Republican Bush in a city where many votes went to Democrat John Kerry, well, it hasn’t hurt him a bit. Thanks to his history as a city government reformer, Dermer remains as popular as ever, a fact not lost on his colleagues on the commission dais.

And his support has won him a friend in both Tallahassee and Washington.

Then there is the Ron Dermer factor. Politically active in both the United States and Israel, David’s brother Ron was instrumental in his election in 2001 and was a media strategist for the Republicans in 1994. According to Haretz.com, George W. Bush met Ron Dermer through author Natan Sharansky. Following Bush’s re-election, Ron Dermer received a new title: Minister for Economic Affairs at the Israel Embassy in Washington.

But never mind the Dermer brothers’ favorite people status amongst the Bush administration. David Dermer the Miami Beach mayor is a SunPost 50 because he continues to shake things up as he demonstrated in his state of the city address. Yes, Dermer’s proposal to forbid sexual predators from living within 2,500 feet of a school instead of 1,000 with Attorney General Charlie Crist nodding approvingly in the background was nice and all but what was really fun was his initiative to create an Urban Impact Compensation Fund, designed to rebate tax money to Miami Beach residents for dealing with increased traffic, parking woes, higher cost of living, noise and all the other costs associated with a booming economy. Dermer figured such a fund would be a better investment of city funds than to, say, attract private ventures with taxpayer money. “There are those who commend a politician as being ‘visionary’ when he or she is standing in the middle of a real estate deal wearing a hard hat or figuring out innovative ways to move public dollars into the cupped hands of private individuals,” Dermer said. “Frankly, this is not my vision of good government, no matter how it’s packaged…. Great city governments are defined by what they give back to the entire community, not just to the privileged few.”

Stuart Miller

The Poet

The editorial board of Street Weekly learned the hard way: Don’t mess with a guy who recites Dr. Seuss verses.

Two years ago Street thought it would be funny to produce a satirical piece called “Hometown Zeroes” that featured controversial figures from Miami’s recent history. Listed with County Commissioner Miriam Alonso, rapper Vanilla Ice, drug kingpin Willy Falcon and Gen. Manuel Noriega was Stuart Miller, CEO of the Lennar Corporation. The piece on Miller swatted Lennar for allegedly building flimsy homes that were destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and getting off with a $50,000 “fine.”

Not many people got to read it. The Street newspapers were picked up — all 70,000 of them — as ordered by parent company Miami Herald. They were replaced with a new version that featured baseball player Jose Canseco in place of Miller. It should be noted that prior to the spoof, while the Herald wrote a series of glowing tributes for Stuart’s recently deceased father, Leonard Miller, columnist Jim DeFede blasted Leonard’s philanthropic activities as a form of “reputation-laundering” to insulate himself from responsibility for the South Miami-Dade homes that were “reduced to kindling during Hurricane Andrew.” The Herald afterward received a series of phone calls from community leaders demanding DeFede’s head.

What is it about the Millers that inspires such reactions? Maybe it’s the fact that Lennar is not only one of the largest homebuilders in Florida, but also the second largest homebuilder in the United States of America with assets of over $10.9 billion. And Stuart Miller has a lot to do with the company’s growth.

His first brush with Lennar was working as a landscaper at the age of 12, mowing the lawns of the company’s model houses to save up for his first car. Miller reputedly hid the fact that he was Leonard’s son from his co-workers. When he rejoined his dad’s company in 1982, after graduating from the University of Miami, his title was director of commercial property leasing and sales. Even before Stuart Miller became CEO in 1997, he was prodding his company’s expansion westward into Texas, mainly by acquiring real estate firms such as Friendswood Development Company and Village Builders, the real estate arms of Exxon USA, Bramalea California Inc. in Los Angeles and Renaissance Homes, Pacific Greystone and Winncrest Homes in Sacramento.

And the acquisitions continued throughout the country: U.S. Home Corporation, Barry Andrews Homes, Cambridge Homes, Concord Homes, Don Galloway Homes, Genesee Company, Patriot Homes, Summit Homes, Sunstar Communities, Newhall Land and Farming Company, Seppala Homes, Coleman Homes, etc. All the while Miller has regularly courted Wall Street in an effort to increase the value of his company’s stock.

Mind you that much of this occurred after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, when the company not only paid a legal settlement to Florida to the tune of $50,000 but also paid $2.4 million to settle lawsuits, according to a March 2005 Orange County Register article. (Lennar executives insist the South Dade homes were built to the standards of the time.)

Stuart Miller’s secret to success? Dr. Seuss, the acclaimed children’s book writer. A recent Wall Street Journal online article described a tense meeting in Dallas at which Miller was to meet with managers from a Texas company Lennar had just acquired. The scene, as described by the Journal: “When his turn came to speak, the 43-year-old Mr. Miller plopped down on the floor of the conference room and coaxed his audience to join him for a reading of the Dr. Seuss classic, Oh the Places You’ll Go! ‘Congratulations!’ he began. ‘Today is your day. You’re off to great places! You’re off and away!’”

Miller also likes to recite from a poem he adapted from a children’s story called “Scratchings From the Little Red Hen.” The basic premise of the poem is the hen seeks out worms during a drought while the rooster stands around waiting for worms to just pop up around him. The hen gets a meal, while the rooster misses out.

No wonder Lennar is scratching away in Miami-Dade County. Besides building high-rises in North Bay Village, Lennar is one of the big pushers for expanding the Urban Development Boundary westward, which would open new building markets for Miami-Dade. The move might not have endeared him with environmentalists, but it hasn’t hurt the company’s financial outlook, as mutual fund advisers still recommend Lennar as a profitable stock.

Jorge Gonzalez

Smooth Operator

Something about Jorge Gonzalez: He inspires enormous respect or enormous disdain — and often from the same people at various times.

The city manager of Miami Beach, Gonzalez speaks with a soft voice. Don’t let that fool you. Gonzalez is a savvy administrator who makes it known he is the guy who runs and operates the city. A rare glimpse of this occurred during a late-night Beach Commission meeting. Commissioner Luis Garcia made accusations about Gonzalez’s management style. Gonzalez (and, mind you, Garcia is technically Gonzalez’s boss) flipped out and demanded the commissioner stop. “My integrity is being impugned, Mr. Mayor, and I will not stand for it!” Gonzalez exclaimed to Dermer. So Gonzalez can be a badass at times. That’s fine. Such a personality trait is often necessary for leaders. And considering we are paying a hefty salary for that leadership (Gonzalez’s base salary is now $212,858.88 a year), fine leadership is what Miami Beach needs and deserves.

Having said that, Gonzalez can be a bit of a, well, politician. That would be OK if he was an elected official, but Gonzalez is an appointee of the City Commission. It’s probably his propensity for making deals or sticking up for questionable conduct by his administrators that has earned him ire and controversy. Like that park sponsorship and marketing contract where a certain assistant city manager acknowledges he called one of the bidders regarding lobbyist Michael Milberg. The bidder insists this assistant city manager and another city employee tried to get Milberg on his team. Turns out, Milberg’s new team member receives the backing of the city manager. The vendor files a protest, Milberg claims not to know what is going on and an investigation by the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission, while locating the officials’ e-mails to this potential company, fails to find enough evidence to prove actual wrongdoing. Gonzalez stands by his man and backs his assistant city manager — claiming he was exonerated. Months later, the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce (of which Milberg is a past chair) makes Gonzalez “Man of the Year.”

Yet even those who have butted heads with Gonzalez praise him for his management style and leadership abilities. Think taxes and fees are high in Miami Beach now? They would likely be even higher if not for Gonzalez’s administrative know-how. Face it, critics, the guy has skills.

Alan Randolph

The New Face

In recent years the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce has been accused of neglecting the business community — stepping in only to help certain select individuals and interests.

Alan Randolph, manager of the South Beach Mellon Bank branch and the new chamber chairman, wants to change that. His mission is to make the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce responsive to the needs of its members — all its members — and a true spokesperson for Miami Beach’s business community.

 Imagine that? A chamber of commerce that actively seeks the prosperity of all Miami Beach’s business community. Can Randolph make it happen? We can only hope. (The SunPost is a member of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce.) At the very least, Randolph’s presence as chair has infused new blood and energy into the chamber’s leadership.

But never mind Randolph’s philosophy. To be frank, the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce couldn’t have picked a better face to represent itself. Alan Randolph is young, handsome and vital. Arguably, Randolph will be the best-looking chairman in chamber history. Doubt us? Well, look at that face. Now pick up newsletters of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce for the last, oh, 20 years or so. Now look at Randolph again. OK, there were a few good dressers, but no past chairs can compare to that face.

Sandra Snowden

Onward Christian Soldier

Last year, when Bay Harbor Islands believed a nativity scene was too religious to be set up alongside a menorah near the town’s toll booth, Sandra Snowden in protest opted to go on a several-month fast — no solid food from Christmas to Valentine’s Day.

This past holiday season, Snowden tried a different strategy: She joined forces with the Thomas More Law Center, a nationwide Christian advocacy group, and sued the town of Bay Harbor Islands, arguing the menorah was not a secular symbol, as the town alleged, but in fact a religious symbol. The courts agreed and issued Snowden a temporary restraining order, allowing her to put up a neon nativity scene as local and national television news outlets taped her. Why the interest? Her case set legal precedent, effectively nullifying a 1989 case known as Allegheny v. ACLU that ruled a nativity scene at a Pittsburgh courthouse violated the separation of church and state. Needless to say, Snowden became a hero to Christian activists all over the country who sought to “put Christ back in Christmas.” The nativity controversy made life in the Bal Harbour/Bay Harbor/Surfside area a little tenser among the religious Jews, secular Jews and Christians living there. “This incident has cast a dark cloud over the town,” Councilwoman Ileene Wallace told the SunPost. Said former Bay Harbor Mayor Linda Zilber: “With everything that is going on around the world — at least Bay Harbor should be happy and peaceful around the holiday.”

That is doubtful. At deadline, even as the council struggles to settle her lawsuit, Snowden has decided to use affidavits to launch a jihad of sorts against Bay Harbor’s current mayor, Isaac Salver.

Susan Gottlieb

Aventura Shaker

Susan Gottlieb wasted no time. Less than a week after her election as mayor, Gottlieb set out to make some changes: proposing the televising of City Commission workshops (held just before regular meetings), a change of seating arrangements placing the mayor (Gottlieb) in the center of the dais, creating a traffic committee and even hiring some secretaries for the commission or mayor’s office. You would think Gottlieb was proposing a totalitarian form of government. Her colleagues reacted with shock and dismay, freaking out over almost all the proposed ideas — particularly the (gulp) televising of workshops that were designed to lessen the chances of an ugly debate during the regular commission meeting. Only the traffic committee received some support.

Of particular annoyance to the Aventura elected officials: That Gottlieb would dare cite examples of other municipalities. Why, didn’t she know this was Aventura? The crown jewel of Dade? The City of Excellence unique in the universe?

Aventura’s November election was a watershed event as three elected officials were forced to step aside due to term limits. For most of its brief history, Aventura had officials like Mayor Jeff Perlow and Commissioners Jay Beskin and Ken Cohen on the dais. But the voters hinted they wouldn’t mind a slight change when they chose Gottlieb, a Miami Beach commissioner between 1991 and 1998, over Commissioner Manny Grossman.

And Gottlieb is not the kind of person who shies away from a fight. Nor is she someone who will simply sit back and blindly let City Manager Eric Soroka set the agenda (hence the idea of hiring secretaries for elected officials). To do what she feels is right, Gottlieb will shake the condo Shangri-La that is Aventura.

And you know what? Aventura could use some shaking up. Prior to incorporation in 1995, Aventura used to have the highest voter turnout in the county. Now an election is lucky to draw 23 percent of its voters. Cityhood has made Aventura residents apathetic and far too relaxed when there are some real issues coming down the pike for this Northeast Dade city: slot machines in pari-mutuels in nearby Hallandale, development at Gulfstream Park race track, the future of the so-called Hospital District, continuing traffic problems, etc.

Yeah, Aventura needs a wake-up call: someone who will make politics interesting again. And Gottlieb, the new mayor of Aventura, is the person to do it.

Elaine Adler

Power Broker

Susan Gottlieb may have been elected mayor but the true constant in Aventura is Elaine Adler, president of the Aventura Marketing Council.

Established in 1988, the Aventura Marketing Council predates Aventura’s incorporation as a city, and, since 1990, Adler has been at the helm of this organization, representing the condominium-dominated neighborhood surrounding Aventura Mall as the face of the business community. Two years ago, when Adler first made the SunPost 50 list, we pointed out she has a Bachelor of Science degree from Nova University in public relations with a minor in mass communications that has a “special emphasis on psychology.” As such, Adler has sent out psychological and mass media signals to those living inside and outside of Aventura, through publications like Miller Publishing’s Aventura News, that the luxury condo area marches to the Aventura Marketing Council’s drum — and life is oh-so-wonderful there because of it.

It should be noted that since 1996 there has been something called the Aventura City Commission, which dictates the policies of the “City of Excellence.” Sometimes the commission agrees with the AMC. Sometimes it doesn’t. Yet there is now every reason to believe things are about to get a whole lot better between the AMC and Aventura City Commission.

Let’s do the math, shall we? Two years ago, advertising executive Zev Auerbach was elected commissioner; incidentally his wife, Bari, is a staff writer for the Aventura News. Newly elected to the commission, Luz Weinberg of the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center has also freelanced for the Aventura News. And finally, Michael Stern, publisher of Aventura Magazine, made it a point to thank Adler and the Aventura Marketing Council after his election. Considering that Weinberg and Stern are allies of commissioners Bob Diamond and Billy Joel … well you get the point.

Jeffery Allen

The Invisible Man

Gotta love Miami. Where else will you find a city commissioner, under investigation for improprieties related to the Community Redevelopment Agency, who just suddenly snaps and tries to run an unmarked police car off the road? In spite of his claims that he was protecting his wife, then-Miami Commissioner Art Teele was arrested, thrown out of power and convicted for the deed. But that left the little problem of no one representing Overtown, the poorest part of Miami that’s recently been rediscovered by developers. Terrified that a special election might herald the return of Teele, the mayor and commission majority sought a replacement ASAP. A lot of activist types applied for the job. In the end, they went with someone unknown in the Overtown community, attorney Jeffery Allen.

And unknown is just how he prefers it. Allen refused all media interviews after his appointment. That might be understandable because, while unknown to Overtown’s residents, Allen has received plenty of notice by the press. In 1989 the Miami Herald reported that Allen, who wanted to fill a congressional seat left vacant by the late Claude Pepper, lied about his party affiliation (he said he was a Democrat but was registered as a Republican), claimed to be a lawyer (he wasn’t accepted as a member of the Florida Bar until 1995) and even fudged on where he lived (North Miami Beach). In 1996 WPLG-Channel 10 caught Allen improperly soliciting business from the families of deceased victims of the ValuJet plane crash. And the New Times recently reported that, while registered to vote at his mother’s place in Overtown, he claims a homestead exemption in a three-bedroom house in Fort Worth, Texas.

In spite of the controversy, Allen is already emerging as quite an influential figure on the Miami City Commission, particularly in reference to Overtown. Since he took office, a deal paving the way for Crosswinds, a $200 million mixed-use project in Overtown, has been approved. So too has the Lyric Promenade, a $89.4 million project that includes a Hilton Hotel, condos and affordable units. Allen praised both projects as a means of bringing back the black middle class to Overtown.

And how do Overtown’s 7,000 residents feel about Allen? Depends on whom you ask. Allen has his supporters, those who either love the idea of him bringing economic revitalization to O-Town or love the fact that Allen is, in fact, not Art Teele. He has plenty of detractors too: people who don’t think Allen even lives in Miami, much less Overtown, and who fear he is a tool who will only invite the exploitation of the most screwed-over neighborhood of Miami.

But Allen is the commissioner representing the next frontier of development and as such, his voice and his vote carry a lot of weight.

Cesar Alvarez

The General

South Florida is really Greenberg Traurig’s world. We just live in it.

Pretty bold opening sentence, huh? Well, there is truth to it. Greenberg Traurig, a legal powerhouse with tentacles all over the United States and beyond, is among the most influential land use law firms in South Florida, particularly in Miami-Dade County, where its lawyers represent projects in Miami Beach, Miami, Aventura and Sunny Isles Beach.

Cesar Alvarez, president and CEO of Greenberg Traurig, is a general who leads his army of 1,300 talented lawyers based in 22 branches all over the U.S., as well as two in Europe, from his Brickell Avenue office. A 25-year practitioner in the art of corporate and international law, Alvarez has been credited with expanding Greenberg Traurig from just 325 lawyers when he first took the CEO job in 1997.

Not bad for a graduate of Miami-Dade Community College. Incidentally, Alvarez has just been appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to the board of trustees of Miami Dade College. It’s the latest in a string of influential appointments and organizations Alvarez has been affiliated with over the years. He is also chair of the United Way of Miami-Dade, chair of the Florida International University Law School Advisory Board, a trustee of the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, a member of the Florida Council of 100 and a member of the Miami Business Forum (formerly known as the Non-Group). Through these affiliations and chairmanships, Alvarez keeps a pulse on the powers that be as they shape and reshape Miami over and over again.

Michael Samuel

The Midtowner

The managing partner of the Midtown Miami Group, Michael Samuel’s task is not just to transform a vacant rail yard into a mini-city, complete with light-rail connections, hotels, condos and commercial retail. He is also to lead Midtown’s effort to invest in yet more properties that will either be redeveloped, or resold.

The son of a real estate investor from Brooklyn, Samuel founded Samuel and Co., a $2 billion property management and building maintenance firm and is said to have developed the “co-op concept in Miami.” It wasn’t long before he went into business with Joe Cayre, president of New York-based Midtown Equities, the very company that owned the World Trade Center. Soon after receiving a hefty sum to compensate for the terrorist attacks on the WTC, Cayre and Samuel embarked on investing in Miami real estate. Besides purchasing the old Banyan Bay Apartments in Miami to convert into the Nirvana condominium, Midtown Miami has received a $170 million subsidy from the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County to place the infrastructure needed to build a mini-city at the former Buena Vista Florida East Coast Rail Yard near Wynwood and the Design District. The logic: It will spur more investment in the area.

And it has spurred more investment in the area — namely Midtown Miami’s. Samuel and his partners have invested in properties just outside of the old rail yard at 2932-3030 NE Second Ave., 3110-2128 NE Second Ave., 2930-3090 NE First Court, 160 NE 30th St. and 145-169 NE 29th St. Thus, Midtown Miami is expanding well beyond its original boundaries.

Willy Bermello

Star Power

It’s who you know.

This is probably the trait that all SunPost 50’s have. Politicians, activists and businessmen all need contacts if they plan to make any changes, or make it big, in Miami-Dade. Face it, “what you know” just doesn’t cut it.

And Willy Bermello is not shy about showing he has the Who You Know thing down pat. “In addition to his many professional achievements, Willy is truly one of the power executives in Miami’s social elite,” a release from The Jeffrey Group states. “Naming many Miami-Dade and City of Miami politicians as friends, as well as the area’s business brokers, Willy truly exemplifies star power in South Florida.”

He showed off that star power with the launch party of Onyx 2. Among the celebrities in attendance were Tara Reid, Maria Helena Salinas, former Miss Universes Amelia Vega and Alicia Machado, MTV V-Jay Eglantina Zingg, “Apprentice” Bradford Cohen and NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown. OK, we’re not talking celebrities of the caliber of Jack Nicholson or Chris Rock, but for a guest list of a condominium groundbreaking ceremony, it is pretty darn impressive.

And Onyx 2 is quite a building. Developed by Bermello and Argentine developer Gustavo Miculitzki, Onyx 2 is the sequel to a neighboring project the duo built in Edgewater, Onyx. Rising 600 feet in the air, Onyx 2 is huge even by Miami standards, a fact that isn’t appreciated by all its Edgewater neighbors. Dana Murphy, a Miami resident and activist, vowed to the New Times that he would “sue the pants” off the city after the Miami City Commission approved Onyx 2’s designs. An interesting trivia point: Onyx 2 is being constructed on the site of the former Bliss House, a 1920s home that, prior to its purchase by Bermello and Miculitzki, was demolished without a building permit by its previous owners.

But that’s life in the development world, a realm Bermello is familiar with. Bermello has the “what you know” trait, too. He has been a practicing architect in South Florida for more than 25 years. He was on the board of directors for Terremark Worldwide, tracking more than $500 million of real estate development activity, according to the Jeffrey Group release. Bermello would later co-found two firms, one that worked for other developers and city and county governments, the other that sought to develop buildings everywhere. Bermello, Ajamil & Partners is an architectural and engineering firm that is also part of the Parsons Brickerhoof Quade & Douglas team under contract with Miami-Dade County to provide consulting for future transportation projects — projects that will, incidentally, make Miami’s booming development, including Onyx and Onyx 2, transportation concurrent in the eyes of county and state planners. (Parsons Brickerhoof and a joint partner are now being investigated by Massachusetts and federal officials for their poor work in the $14 billion “Big Dig” project in Boston.)

Which brings us to Bermello’s second co-owned company, BAP Development Inc., a real estate development company that has developed or is developing the Astor, Brickell View, Summit Brickell, Premiere Towers at Brickell Village, the Douglas Grand in Coral Gables, 610 Clematis in West Palm Beach and the above-mentioned Onyx and Onyx 2.

But getting back to who you know: Bermello is chair of Miami’s Urban Development Review Board (also convenient), director of the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, on the board of directors of Colonial Bank and past president of the Latin Builders Association.

Ian Schrager

Hopping Aboard

The condo-hotel trend has hit Miami. What is a trendsetter/trendfollower like Ian Schrager to do? Answer: Convert one of his hotel properties into a condo-hotel and seek out other investment opportunities.

We’ve knocked Schrager around in the past and at times the co-creator of the infamous Studio 54 of 1970s New York sort of deserved it. In 1996, the management of one of his hotels, the Delano, thought it was cute to have a back entrance that invited their guests to trample on state-protected beach vegetation that held together dunes meant to prevent beach erosion and storm surges in the event of hurricanes. A couple of years later, Schrager thought the rules did not apply to him when he opted to build a “beach village” behind his hotel property without having to ever take it down, a direct violation of city and state laws. (The controversy ended when the concession stand burned down.)

But we also have to hand it to Schrager: The man has an innate sense of style. The Delano Hotel is still the coolest spot in South Beach, regularly attracting all manner of famous types. (It should be noted that it was the Delano, and not certain subsidized hotels like the Loews, that attracted hotelier interest in South Beach in the early 1990s.) And then there is the neighboring Shore Club, home to happening Skybar.

Now Schrager’s new grand plan is to keep the Delano the way it is and renovate the Shore Club, ripping down some walls and reducing the number of rooms from 325 to 240, then selling them off for between $400,000 and $20 million apiece. Meanwhile, Schrager will be on the prowl to start yet more hotel-condos, seeking to acquire a Miami property on the bay and scouting for hotels in North Beach, an area he sees experiencing a new “golden age.”

Will Schrager drive the condo-hotel train to profit and hipdom? That’s a question to answer next year. In the meantime, though, Schrager is still Mr. Cool, an inspiration to boutique hotel owners everywhere, and worthy of being a 50.

Andre Balazs

The Other Schrager

Ian Schrager making it to the 50 list next year depends on two things: his gamble on condo-hotels being a profitable one and his reputation for style not being surpassed by the likes of Andre Balazs, a man who was touted in a December 2004 New York Times Travel section article as creating a buzz in Miami, New York and Los Angeles for the very things that made Schrager famous: style and attitude. And like Schrager, Balazs’ hotels have been described as “safe harbor for celebrities and other undercover scene seekers.”

“‘Hotelier’ captures everything I understand the responsibilities of the business to be, which is to be a host, a proprietor and the one who takes care of every aspect of the experience,” the New York Times quotes Balazs as saying.

He wasn’t always going to be an hotelier. The ex-husband of Katie Ford of Ford Modeling (and now said to be “linked” with actress Uma Thurman), Balazs has a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Journalism and attended Rhode Island School of Design before he went into business selling medical products with his father. By the late 1980s, he entered the nightlife business. Hotels were a natural leap. He opened a series of fashionable hotels in New York and Los Angeles, including a small but stylish hotel chain known as The Standard. Last year, South Florida came to know Balazs when he purchased the Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach and proceeded to Balazsize it. His next target: transforming the Lido Spa in Miami Beach’s Belle Isle, which he bought in 2003, and bringing it up to Standard, literally: He wants to re-christen the Lido Spa into The Standard Miami hotel, which would include 105 rooms, a spa and a restaurant.

The new Standard’s neighbors, though, are apprehensive about its opening in a few months. Some Belle Islanders fear their rights to quality of life might be stomped on, just like the beach vegetation behind the Delano in the mid-’90s, once patrons congest their streets and take their on-street parking. Will Balazs’ sense of hospitality extend beyond his clients, allowing The Standard to be a good neighbor?

Shaya Boymelgreen, Pinchas Cohen and Lev Leviev

The Triumvirate

Miami Mayor Manny Diaz compared their arrival to the Miami Heat obtaining Shaquille “Shaq” O’Neal and MTV. Their names are Shaya Boymelgreen, Lev Leviev and Pinchas Cohen and in the world of international business, they are rock stars. On July 2004 they announced their intent to invest $1 billion in developing parcels and properties they purchased in Brickell, Park West, the Performing Arts District, Edgewater and even South Beach.

So, who are they? Shaya Boymelgreen, president and CEO of Boymelgreen Developers, LLC began buying and selling Manhattan and Brooklyn residential buildings in the 1970s. His side gig is mining diamonds. Boymelgreen is said to have met Manny Diaz during a menorah-lighting ceremony; Diaz invited him to take a close look at Miami. Boymelgreen, in turn, invited Leviev and Cohen, partners in the Israeli firm known as Africa-Israel, to join him in the investment spree. “One of the reasons we are looking forward to being here in Miami is because of Diaz and the others,” Pinchas Cohen said at their July press conference.

Looking into the eyes of Leviev and Cohen, you can tell these men have seen things. Africa-Israel, their publicly traded company, has investments in Israel, Russia, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada. Boymelgreen is their partner in all their American investments. Oh, yes, like Boymelgreen, Africa-Israel has interests in diamonds too. They have a subsidiary known as LLD Diamonds, which maintains the Samicor offshore mining rights in Namibia, the largest diamond-cutting factory in Africa, according to The Namibian Free Press. Lev Leviev, the company’s direct owner, is even said to have dared encroach on the business of the De Beers’ century-old diamond cartel. So far that dare has paid off with LLD Diamonds setting up a subsidiary of its own in India, not to mention offices being set up in Hong Kong, Japan and Italy.

So these aren’t fly-by-night investors trying their luck in real estate. These men are, for lack of a better term, badasses who know what they are doing.

Jeff Soffer

The Replacement

Just erase the name “Hilton.” That’s right, you can now say the name of that landmark Miami Beach resort without uttering the hotel chain’s name. Fontainebleau. Fon-taine-bleau. Fontainbleau Hil — no! Bad! Try again. Fontainebleau H…

OK, it will take some time. After all, it has been a few decades since Stephen Muss made the Fontainebleau a Hilton in 1978. As part of the deal, Hilton was limited in its ability to open other Hiltons in Miami Beach.

Well, that’s over. Aventura-based Turnberry Associates were joint partners of Stephen Muss in their bid to build the Fontainebleau II and III high-rises on the property next to the original “Mi-Mo” Fontainebleau. Since then, Turnberry has bought Muss out and doesn’t see much point in doing business with Hilton any longer. Jeffrey Soffer is even thinking about using the name in future hotel ventures. “I think the Fontainebleau name has got tremendous legs to it,” Soffer told the Miami Herald. “In fact we might be looking to continuing that on.” As another Turnberry executive put it to the Herald, the Fontainebleau might be the first resort it will run on its own, but it “won’t be the last.”

Jeff Soffer’s dad, Don Soffer, is a former professional football player who developed Aventura Mall and a series of condo towers from what was once essentially swampland. Don Soffer is still the boss at Turnberry but his son has been in charge of Turnberry’s ventures into Las Vegas, developing a series of giant condo towers known as Turnberry Place near the strip. But Soffer still found time to spearhead development of Turnberry Ocean Colony in Sunny Isles and oversee the construction of Fontainebleau II and Fontainebleau III in Miami Beach.

And, if Jeffrey Soffer has his way, there will probably be more Fontainebleaus set up around the country. Of course, the Turnberry move does allow Hilton to re-enter the Beach market with a vengeance and perhaps spark a Fontainebleau-Hilton hotelier war the likes of which the world has never seen. We’re talking cats and dogs living with each other … mass hysteria.

Yeah, we are being a tad melodramatic. But then again, in a capitalist tangle, which heir would you bet on? Jeffery Soffer, who has worked his way up in the Turnberry company? Or Paris Hilton, famous for falling off bar stools and performing various acts on the Internet we can’t describe in a PG-13 newspaper?

Fontainebleau. Fon-taine-bleau.

Ed Roberts

The Motivator

In an age when giant corporations such as Coldwell Banker dominate the Florida real estate market, it is almost a miracle to find out there are still independently owned realty companies out there.

One of them is Beachfront Realty, the second largest privately owned real estate company in the state of Florida, according to the Miami-Dade Board of Realtors. The “owner” of Beachfront Realty is Ed Roberts. But in reality the real estate agents working for Ed Roberts are their own bosses. That was the idea behind Beachfront Realty when Roberts started the company in 1995: to build a company to accommodate agents who didn’t mind working from home and didn’t want to be surrounded by a “corporate structure.”

“Agents like working here. We basically leave them alone,” Roberts is quoted as saying in a bio. “We provide advice, office space, services, a mortgage company, a title company, an in-house marketing department …and we have no sales meetings, no quotas, very few restrictions and rules.”

It works like this: Agents are paid at least 90 percent commissions but are responsible for their own expenses. Roberts provides the contracts, riders, listing agreements and disclosure forms. Agents who don’t have computers are allowed to use those in the office.

“We make it easy for them, but they must be motivated,” Roberts said. “We do not generate business for them. However, sometimes we get referrals that I give to the agents. I’m a non-competing broker who’s available seven days a week to answer any and all questions agents may have. That’s the way I do business with my agents. We also pay them instantly, which is rare.”

Roberts’ army of independent real estate agents has grown from two 10 years ago to 1,000 today. The company also claims to have completed $800 million in closings last year.

Jeff Morr

Developer Friendly

When the Boymelgreen/Africa-Israel partnership announced its intent to invest more than $1 billion in Miami real estate, Jeff Morr’s Majestic Properties was named as the consultant who would figure out the “best use” for the partnership’s first three ventures. In a way, Morr was the best man for the job: He not only knows South Florida real estate but he is also an Israeli, much like the CEOs of Africa-Israel.

Yet Morr, president of Majestic Properties, has a knack for being in on new deals in Miami’s up-and-coming areas, whether selling condo units or storefronts, acting as a developer’s exclusive broker, assisting with a project’s marketing, or assisting with site acquisition.

Why the continued success? Two words: developer friendly. Morr has a special division known as “The Collection” that offers anything developer clients might need, such as marketing, land acquisition, building design, presales, etc. Morr, in partnership with Fabien Tremoulet and Jeremy Green, is even a bit of a developer himself, forming Urbana Development, a company that seeks to build “cutting-edge” residential, retail, commercial and mixed-use projects. His first project: Aria, an 18-story loft condo in the Design District.

Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia

The Arquitects

“This office building is being designed by Arquitectonica…”

“This mixed-use Arquitectonica-designed project…”

“Arquitectonica thinks our building should be blue and…”

“The developers have retained Arquitectonica to design this 450-foot-tall building…”

At any given planning board or design review board meeting in any city in Miami-Dade County, you will hear some form of the above phrases at least once. Arquitectonica, the hard-to-spell firm run by Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear, both critically acclaimed architects, is very, very busy designing office buildings, high-rises and sports stadiums all over South Florida. Axis on Brickell, Paramount in Edgewater, 500 Brickell Avenue, One Miami, Regent South Beach, Artecity and Grovenor Hotel, the Venture in Aventura … these are just the recent projects Arquitectonica has designed in Miami since its founding in 1979.

Actually, the Brickell Avenue-based firm isn’t just working in this neck of the woods. Arquitectonica projects are all over Planet Earth. For example, the firm designed a future UN memorial for fallen peacekeepers; the Smithsonian has an exhibit on the firm focusing on The Westin New York at Times Square Project; and Miami Herald design writer Beth Dunlop published a book last August on the firm, titled simply Arquitectonica.

There are now lots of talented Miami-Dade-based architects designing high-rises during this development boom. This could be one of the boom’s benefits, an interesting skyline. And the architects are all interesting in their own right. Having said that, we have to give props to Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear for not only consistently designing outstanding projects of all forms all over Miami, but the rest of the world as well. Talk about making an impact.

Jim DeFede

The Writer

The Miami Herald has made some boneheaded moves in recent years. There was the unfocused Street Weekly idea, the picking up Street off the streets just when it was getting good idea, the Jewish Herald idea, the hey-let’s-recommend-Jose Cancela for mayor of Miami-Dade County idea.

All those bad ideas, though, are totally negated by the hiring of Jim DeFede as a columnist.

DeFede is among the superstar alumni of the Miami New Times. When Kirk Semple, Robert Andrew Powell, Steve Almond, Judy Cantor, Kathy Glasgow and Jim DeFede were New Times writers in the early to mid-1990s, the free weekly rose from being an “alternative newspaper” to a legitimate print news alternative to the only daily in town, the Miami Herald. DeFede was arguably the most talented of the New Times writers. Of particular delight over the years were his observations — and near-consistent trashing — of Alex Penelas’ mayor’s seat. Ironically, it was also DeFede who wrote stories on the “Incredible Shrinking Herald,” where he recorded how that paper was cutting back on its newspaper staff in favor of the bottom line.

Fortunately for us, the Herald hasn’t held it against him. And DeFede has proven he can crank out regular, interesting columns on, well, anything. Yep, recording the mutterings of the local political scene is his forte. But DeFede has even written a series of interesting columns, and blogs, on traveling across the country’s heartland with a grilled cheese sandwich that looked like the Virgin Mary. It started as a joke…and ended with a serious picture of ordinary Americans’ faith. And you’ve gotta love DeFede’s post-election column on slots in pari-mutuels: “Having proudly cast my vote against the evils of slot machines, I immediately drove north, across the border into Broward County, and straight to the Seminole Indian Casino, where I spent the rest of the day waiting for election results and playing poker,” DeFede wrote in his March 10 column. He explained he wasn’t against gambling. He just considered slots “the crack cocaine of the gaming industry” and didn’t like the way the pari-mutuels “exploited children” as a means of getting their prized referendum passed.

Whether you agree with a DeFede column or not, it is hard to argue against his high value not only as a commentator, but as a writer.

Gil Dezer

27 Acres

Why is Gil Dezer a 50? How about 27 oceanfront acres in Sunny Isles Beach, the city that, thanks to the leadership of the late and founding mayor Dave Samson, is second only to Miami in high-rise-friendly zoning laws? How about counting as partners not only his dad, Michael, but Donald “You’re Fired” Trump and Jorge Perez of the omnipresent development firm The Related Group? How about the fact he has broken ground on a 55-story Trump Royale with 391 oceanfront units and recently completed Trump Palace, a 278-unit luxury condo tower on Collins Avenue and 180th Street? How about the idea these towers are only the beginning?

“Well, what about the possibility that the development bubble may soon burst?” you ask. Assuming the burst does happen, rules do not necessarily apply to oceanfront property, especially oceanfront property in prosperous Northeast Miami-Dade County. Short of Sunny Isles sinking beneath the ocean or a toxic waste spill washing ashore on the beachfront, people are going to continue to want to live in Sunny Isles Beach. And Trump Dezer Development’s control of 27 acres of oceanfront property places the firm in a most enviable position. Even if the projects do for some reason go bust (they won’t), there will be plenty of developers who would buy up that property or team-up with the Dezer. Why do you think Jorge Perez is suddenly a partner?

Sure, Gil Dezer does have his detractors. They say he’s crass, an uncouth bore. As one critic put it to Miami New Times’ Kulchur, “Yes, he’s been an incredible success so far, but putting Gil in charge of a company is like giving a machine gun to a monkey.” (Ouch!) Gil readily admits he owes his father for the success he is facing and makes no apologies for his rough style. “Yeah, I can rip into somebody pretty good,” he told the New Times. “And you know what? It works, because whatever they were doing, they don’t do it again.”

Now aspiring business owners and developers, the question is this: Is cursing at your staff and allegedly throwing t-shirts and other objects at them the proper way to motivate? Probably not. But then again it should be noted Dezer’s projects are getting built, even as a few other approved high-rises in Miami and North Bay Village have seen zero activity in recent months. And did we mention Gil Dezer is the heir apparent of 27 acres of oceanfront land?

Rudy Crew

Make It or Break It

The chancellor of the New York City Board of Education is responsible for 1.1 million kids and tens of thousands of employees, from janitors to teachers and principals to superintendents and deputy chancellors.

Such was Rudy Crew’s job between 1995 and 1999, before he had a falling out with his one-time friend, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, over school vouchers. Now Crew is superintendent of the fourth largest school system in the United States and yet is one of the nation’s highest paid school system employees — raking in an annual $400,000 a year for a department that oversees 360,000 kids. Not counting a $240,000 home loan from former school board member and influential businessman Paul Cejas, that works out to about $1.11 per kid.

But don’t let the numbers fool you, Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ deal with Crew may have been a bargain and he doesn’t have an easy task ahead. Besides the fact that qualified school superintendents (or chancellors) are in high demand all over the nation, Miami-Dade’s School Board oversees public schools in multiple municipalities — not just one, like the New York City system. Crew is also working in an atmosphere where a campaign is under way to break up the Miami-Dade district into mini-school systems that are more accommodating to schools of the charter and private nature. This background came about after a series of school board-related scandals and bungling (such as Dade Schools’ tendency to pay too much for land parcels). As such, Crew has the potential to make or break the public school system as we know it — depending on his actions.

Crew is known as a tough-minded reformer who didn’t mind going after inept administrators and principals (he liked to call them “lemons”). It was that reputation that made the usually fractious political class of Miami-Dade not only unite behind the idea of hiring the ex-chancellor, but also offer him a lucrative salary to take the job. There have been a few bumps along the road as Crew learns how to deal with a different system than the one he dealt with in NY, how to deal with his temper pertaining to feisty School Board members such as Marta Perez (‘‘Not now, not ever, am I going to be your Fetchit,’’ Crew told her at a recent school board meeting) and how to deal with his very large and rambunctious sons, Russell and Ryan Crew, each of whom weigh at least 200 pounds and were arrested for stealing the wallet of a homeless man then beating the crap out of a Cocowalk patron later that night, according to a Miami New Times article. But the elder Crew will likely overcome this somewhat bumpy start. Less than a month into his job, he even predicted during a speech at Miami Edison Middle School last August that he would make a few missteps.

“Now those of you who know anything about my career know that I have not always chosen wisely,” Crew said. “I didn’t choose wisely when I made some offhanded remarks in my career. And I haven’t chosen wisely when I’ve pushed on people too hard. I haven’t chosen wisely when I lose my temper. But in the end, the truth of it is, I’m as human as you are, and I’m going to have to choose wisely as well.”

And his choice in working for Miami-Dade Schools was to “be an artist as a leader, to paint renditions of children’s lives and possibilities for them that maybe even … their parents have not conceived of.”

He continued, “I choose to lead with the notion that it is possible for us to do anything that we put our collective minds to and I make the choice to believe that you [school administrators] are going to do this.”

With that a fire alarm rang in the background, according to the transcript. And Crew joked, “You know, in New York, when things like this happen, what it ultimately means is you’re about to get fired.”

And the crowd of administrators laughed. They knew better than to mess with the Crew.

Adrienne Arsht

Mommy

Adrienne Arsht likes to be friends with influential men living and working in Miami-Dade.

Originally from Delaware, Arsht is the wife of Washington, D.C. lawyer (and former presidential counsel) Myer Feldman. Since 1996 she’s been the chair of the board of TotalBank, a Miami-based commercial bank with 12 branches and assets of $700 million.

With her 90-year-old husband still living in the Northeast, Arsht has spent her time being a philanthropist in both her native Delaware and here in Miami. Local activities include fund-raising and support for the Performing Arts Center, the Actors’ Playhouse, the Concert Association of Florida, Amigos for Kids and Adopt-A-Classroom.

But she also loves to rub elbows with the influential. Besides being the secretary of the Miami Business Forum, a network of powerful businesspeople (including Miami Herald executives) who say they get together to talk about ways of sparking the region’s economic growth, Arsht has opted to put together her own little networks. She started FABulous Group, an organization of women senior management bankers (the FAB stands for females are bankers) and TotalBank Rana Society, which seeks to “promote career opportunities and advancement for business and professional women,” as described by a TotalBank chart. She also started Breakfast, Etc, a breakfast series held three to four times a week at her Brickell home. Between eight and 10 people “who significantly contribute to the community” are invited.

Who are these eight to 10 people she insists on having breakfast with practically every other day? Probably various members of a group Arsht likes to call the “Lost Boys.” Basically they are 20 or so local politicians and businesspeople who are influential and yet “lost” in some way, at least as described by the Local Section front page Miami Herald March 14 article headlined: “Elite Group of ‘Lost Boys’ Gets Motherly Guidance,” a piece that even included a chart that featured photos of Miami Commissioner Johnny Winton, failed county mayoral candidate Jose Cancela, German lawyer Alexander Reus, Cuban American National Foundation Director Alfredo Mesa, Father Alberto Cutie and OneUnited President Alex Fraser, all connected by spokes to a photo of Arsht.

“But what exactly constitutes a Lost Boy?” Herald writer Oscar Corral rhetorically asks in his article. “For starters, they are all men younger than her. Because, as Arsht notes, ‘girls are not lost.’ Second, they must be either movers-and-shakers, or on their way. And third, Arsht must like them. A lot.”

And if she likes a Lost Boy a lot, Arsht will invite him to social functions, offer sanctuary at her place during the bad times (sometimes to sip wine) and maybe even raise money for him if he decides to run for office — just as she did for Cancela and perhaps even for Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, also linked to Arsht as a “friend” — should he run for governor.

“I like to watch people grow like flowers. What I hope that I accomplish is for men to have a better understanding of the female animal,” Arsht tells the Herald.

And offering motherly advice over wine or farmers omelets to key members of Miami-Dade’s power base sure doesn’t hurt one’s career as a banker either.

Eric Sheppard

The Rancher

When hipster Ian Schrager mentioned he was looking at properties north of 63rd Street in order to get in on North Beach’s “new golden age,” he gave Canyon Ranch as an example of the future of North Beach. Marked by glowing yellow pillars promising a healthy paradise, the future Canyon Ranch Miami Beach has been billed as the nation’s “first residential wellness community,” consisting of a redeveloped MiMo hotel and two condo towers 20 and 38 stories in height. The developers raked in $260 million in sales within the first six months the project was announced, inspiring other investors to pour their money into once-neglected North Beach. That property would still be marked by nothing but a fenced-off empty lot and an 18-story abandoned structure with busted windows if it weren’t for Eric Sheppard.

Sheppard is developing the old Carillon property with his WSG Development Company partner Phillip Wolman. A resident of North Beach, Sheppard remembered the Carillon as a happening place. Built in the 1950s, it was one of the busiest hotels in Miami Beach, especially in the 1960s when Frank Sinatra and the Beatles were known to perform at hotels in Mid-Beach and North Beach. That ended by the 1970s, when the Army Corp of Engineers was struggling to renourish the sandy beach that washed away into the ocean. In the 1980s investors of questionable morals sold the old hotel rooms as residencies. Turned out the man who sold units never held the ground lease, sparking a war between the “condo owners” and landowner. It ended in 1991, after the power was shut off, the pool turned green with algae and the city was forced to “evacuate” the building. In spite of ambitious proposals from Swiss hoteliers, the building remained vacant and untouched.

That is until about two years ago when Sheppard actually did what he promised to do, commencing renovations on the Carillon and enticing more investment in North Beach.

Katrina Campins

Apprentice This!

Among the first wave of contestants in the realty television show known as The Apprentice, Katrina Campins makes no apologies for using her sex appeal to get what she wants: mainly sales. “A woman that claims she doesn’t use her sex appeal to sell, simply hasn’t learned how to use it to her advantage” was Campins’ catch phrase.

But neither sex appeal, abilities nor winning ideas that enabled her to sell renovated apartments and Planet Hollywood gear was enough to prevent Campins from hearing the dreaded words from Donald Trump: “You’re fired!” Campins finished in sixth place.

But that’s OK. Just as Campins sought to use her sex appeal to her advantage, so too did she use being fired on The Apprentice (or at least being on The Apprentice) to her advantage when she opened her own South Florida real estate agency, The Campins Company, and utilized her profile status to network properties. Besides, it isn’t like Campins (a top producer at Wimbish-Riteway and Jeanne Baker Realty prior to her journey to New York in 2002) was on Trump’s blacklist after her termination. Among her clients is the Dezer Trump Grand (which, technically, is really owned by the Dezer family and the Related Group, but there is no need to dwell on that).

But Campins doesn’t just spend her time selling properties at the Dezer Trump. This University of Miami graduate and Coral Gables native also attends every A-list party in the tri-county area as a celebrity guest. She was even one of the few celebrity hosts who actually showed up to Ocean Drive’s VolleyPalooza.

But seriously, the Campins Company has been making real inroads in the real estate market. For example, condo offices at 605 Lincoln on Lincoln Road (often referred to as the Sony Building) are nearly sold out, thanks partly to Campins, who marketed, well, herself. On the bottom floor, where four years ago passerby once watched young broadcast journalists toiling in their craft at a television station before USA Network sold the station, putting the slammy on WAMI, there are plastered posters of Campins in a business suit, her top three buttons of her white shirt unbuttoned, with the phrase “She is no apprentice when it comes to real estate.”

The move exuded boldness or, for lack of a better term, ballsiness, something that many entrepreneurs wishing to invest in South Beach real estate appreciate. And besides, there is something about having a former Apprentice as a middle person — particularly a sexy former Apprentice who once regularly appeared on magazine covers — that is, well, alluring.

Lee Brian Schrager

Food and Wine Overlord

If there is one thing Melissa Franz has learned, it is not to mess with Schrager.

No, not Ian Schrager, the Studio 54 guy mentioned a few times already in this issue, but Lee Brian Schrager, the director of special events for the giant Southern Wine & Spirits and the founder and director of the South Beach Food and Wine Festival. Yes, food addicts who can afford to part with $100 general admission or are able to somehow obtain a press pass in order to sample premier food, wine, liquor and water and watch superstar chefs from the Food Network such as Giada De Laurentiis, Tyler Florence, Nigella Lawson, Rachael Ray and Paula Deen, that was his event.

And that was probably enough to convince fanatical gourmet food and wine lovers of Schrager’s worthiness to be on the 50. He did, after all, throw the most acclaimed food and wine tasting event of the entire year. Ironically, it attracted less people than last year. In 2004, 12,000 people journeyed to the main event. This year it was only 6,000. Ahhhhhh, but the slash in attendance was all by design as the whole idea was to have a less crowded event by charging more for admission to the people who just really had to be there. Schrager’s plan worked. Although patrons left $100 poorer ($300 to $500 poorer for those who attended events in Miami and Coral Gables), they left buzzed, stuffed and happy. And as for the chefs, according to Schrager, “Every chef felt it was a great experience and loved the hospitality and the crowds.”

And so what if a competing food and beverage event was virtually crushed? Getting back to the aforementioned Melissa Franz. Franz ran the South Beach FAB Fest, basically a premium beer tasting event that was thrown at Ocean Drive’s Lummus Park in 2004 and coincidentally, the same place where the South Beach Wine and Food Fest held its Grand Tasting Double Tent event. The two events were also less than three weeks apart. And so, Franz has told the SunPost, Schrager began a campaign to make her life miserable until she changed the event’s name. Business owners, tourism officials and even her so-called partners in the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce began making frantic calls to her. “Everybody started to throw me to the wolves,” she complained. “I had a really bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t want to deal with it again.” The experience left her so shaken that Franz moved her event from Miami Beach to Miami’s Bayfront Park. A combination of poor weather, expensive parking and distance from significant foot traffic drew a dismal response for Franz’s FAB.

Schrager, meanwhile, said his only objection was her event’s Web site address was almost identical to that of Southern Wine and Spirit’s shindig. The South Beach Wine and Food Festival’s cyber site: sobewineandfoodfest.com. The FAB Fest of 2004’s: sobefest.com. So Schrager sent in the lawyers. “I don’t have anything against her. She is a hard-working lady. … I thought the event was great on the Beach,” Schrager commented. The more food and beverage events, the better it is for everyone, he claimed.

So Schrager says he doesn’t mind more events, even those taking place in the same location and near the same period. Probably true. For now, Schrager is at the top of his game and welcomes any competition. But a word to the wise for wannabe food festival organizers: Make sure your online address is nothing like the South Beach Wine and Food Festival’s.

Al Cardenas

The Professional Republican

Al Cardenas is the former chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Why former? Likely because the title cramped Cardenas’ style as he sought to increase the connections of his “government relations firm” (cough! lobbying) in Tallahassee and Washington., D.C. Of course, the fact that he is trusted by both Bushes who reside in those capitals sort of helps.

As a recent article by The Hill (posted on Cardenas’ law firm’s Web site) states, “Few can ring up the White House, ask for an appointment with President Bush, and stroll into the Oval Office that afternoon. Al Cardenas, the former chairman of the Florida Republican Party-turned-lobbyist, is one who can, but chooses not to do so.”

And why should he? Cardenas is employing former members of the Bush Administration in his law firm, such as Emilio Gonzalez, once the director of Western Hemisphere Affairs on National Security. He also hired Eric Gould, a former advisor to Bill Clinton. For in the lobbying world, it isn’t about red or blue; it is about getting the green.

Yet Cardenas does have his partisan favorites. Cardenas is said to have achieved a “ranger status” reserved for those who raised more than $200,000 for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. Cardenas also claims to advise on campaign strategies, the United States policy on Cuba (Cardenas is an exile) and what he calls “immigration reform.” Here would be a good time to mention that his law firm, Tew Cardenas, has signed up various Central and South American countries interested in having a say in America’s immigration policy as clients.

As for Tallahassee, well, according to the Tew Cardenas Web site, “The Tew Cardenas Advocacy Team also provides direct lobbying through personal contracts with key decision makers in the Executive Office of the Governor, Cabinet Agencies and the Legislature to either create opportunities or solve problems. The firm’s strategic vision, understanding of government processes and operations, and strong relationships are leveraged to bring value to the clients we serve.”

So Cardenas himself doesn’t necessarily have to go right over to the governor’s office and have a chat about state-owned flyovers or comprehensive plan regulations or anything like that. The firm can just go to those decision makers they have “personal contracts with.” Whatever that means.

Neisen O. Kasdin

Busy, Busy, Busy

Now that the statute of limitations on former public officials representing clients in their own cities has past, Neisen O. Kasdin, Miami Beach’s former mayor, is a regular at public meetings, including the Miami Beach City Commission.

A lobbyist/attorney for Gunster Yoakley, Kasdin has long been considered a workaholic. A late-1980s Miami Herald article once quoted Kasdin saying how he enjoyed the first vacation he took in several years. That was way back in the day, when Kasdin was chairman of the Miami Beach Development Corporation and prior to his being elected to the City Commission in 1991.

Yet even though he chaired the economic wing of an organization dedicated to preservation (Miami Design Preservation League), that doesn’t mean Kasdin won’t take work from property owners nervous about restrictions on knocking down historical buildings, as commissioners found out in a March Miami Beach City Commission meeting when they discussed a proposed revision to an ordinance on demolition permits.

“When you were the mayor, you said we needed to improve the process,” Commissioner Saul Gross said in surprise.

“I was afraid someone was going to say that,” Kasdin said, half-jokingly.

“But you didn’t think it would be Saul,” laughed Mayor David Dermer.

Hey, work is work, and Kasdin is good at getting that in volume. During his tenure as a commissioner and a mayor, he was forced to recuse himself 80 times due to conflicts of interest (clients appearing before the commission). Even after his mayor-ship ended, Kasdin was able to use his old position as mayor, his standing as an urbanist and his affiliations with organizations such as the Southeast Chapter of the Urban Land Institute (of which he is president) and the Beacon Council (of which he is chairman-elect). Kasdin, for instance, was among the “consultants” for the FEC Corridor Redevelopment Plan, a study that paved the way for the 56-acre Midtown Miami, the heralded mini-city to be developed in a vacant rail yard. Kasdin later became the attorney for Developers Diversified Realty, an Ohio-based firm contracted to purchase some of the acres to build commercial development. A couple of years ago, when the time came for the Miami City Commission to give Developers Diversified the zoning they needed, Kasdin stood ready to speak but didn’t have to. The zoning was approved at warp speed.

But Kasdin does speak when needed. When a multibillion-dollar corporation dared challenge the North Bay Village Commission’s right to question the method high-rises are approved — in spite of the lack of independent traffic studies and growing opposition to overdevelopment, Kasdin encouraged the city to investigate whether Clear Channel Communications had a right to use AM radio towers that had been in use by WIOD since the 1920s. Emboldened by that request, the NBV Commission is now doing just that. (That pesky corporation still insists on suing the city, though.)

So Kasdin is working hard for his money and his clients, working every angle he can.

Jeffrey Chodorow

Mashed Potatoes

Jeffrey Chodorow’s hobby happens to be flying all over the world opening restaurants — 24 in all at our last count — or closing them, as was made brutally clear by the reality TV show The Restaurant, when he took over and then shut down the New York restaurant known as Rocco’s on 22nd Street. It wasn’t something Chodorow, who co-owned the facility with Chef Rocco DiSpirito, wanted to do, as he told the SunPost last year. (Chodorow, incidentally, was a reluctant cast member who refused pay — hence freeing him of NBC’s instructions.) “The bottom line is that there is no bottom line. There’s a considerable amount of waste. We’re going to cut back where we need to without hurting the experience or the quality. Now it’s time to come in and be smart about how you run a restaurant,” Chodorow said.

Through the use of good chefs, interesting menus, competent management and talented nightlife promoters, Chodorow’s restaurants in South Beach also happen to be the most popular: the Blue Door at the Delano, China Grill and Tuscan Steak.

Chodorow has dabbled in a lot of careers and ventures, some more successful than others … and a few that got him into hot water. For example, Chodorow served four months in a white collar prison and four years supervised probation for allegedly defrauding the U.S. Department of Transportation in relation to the bankrupt Braniff Airlines in 1994.

Ironically, after his probation ended, Chodorow became a frequent flyer, opening up restaurants all over Planet Earth. His first was China Grill in New York City in 1987. The secret to his first restaurant’s success wasn’t the $3 million he poured into it to give it an Asian feel, but mashed potatoes. “One day I told the chef to put mashed potatoes on the menu. That turned the restaurant around. Mashed potatoes made China Grill a success. The restaurant needed something that was more of a comfort food item, something that was out of the craziness of this Asian influence, which, at the time, no one had heard of before.” After placing mashed potatoes on the menu, the restaurant increased its profit margins ever year for the next 17 years.

By 1995 he was ready to open China Grill South Beach. Unlike the New York version, China Grill South Beach was an instant hit with locals and celebrities.

Soon afterward, Chodorow partnered with Ian Schrager, owner of the Delano (who also served 13 months for tax evasion related to his nightclub Studio 54), and opened The Blue Door. Tuscan Steak opened in 1998 followed by Red Square, which was the only publicized casualty among Chodorow’s South Beach ventures. No amount of good food, nightlife décor and mashed potatoes could save that place, thanks to the high rents. His other restaurants, however, have been chugging along. Under the management of Steven Haas, Tuscan Steak has been quite the family dining spot. And thanks to uber-promoters TAI (Tommy Pooch, Alan Roth and Ingrid Casares), China Grill is at the height of its popularity.

And since operations are running well, the staff at Miami Beach’s Chodorow operations have come to know the nice Chodorow. “He’s a very powerful and wealthy man, but he couldn’t be nicer, warmer and couldn’t be more humble,” said Tuscan manager Steve Haas. “You don’t find too many people like that in his category.”

Describing his philosophy of running a great restaurant, Chodorow said, “What could be better than to walk out of a restaurant where you’ve spent top dollar and say, ‘We just had the best time!’ It means the ambiance, the food, the service all worked for them and they were embraced. They felt good. That’s what we try to create.”

Rodrigo Niño

Alive and Thriving

In 2003, Rodrigo Niño had just called it quits with Fortune International and, with little more than his wits and laptop computer, decided to go into business for himself by establishing the real estate brokerage firm Prodigy International. Yet, even with such limited resources, Niño managed to obtain an exclusive contract with real estate developers Groupe Pacific from Fortune’s clutches to sell Brickell on the River.

“Sixty days after I left, Brickell on the River came to me. They said they weren’t comfortable with the situation at Fortune after I left,” Niño told the South Florida Business Journal.

Since then, Niño’s staff has expanded to employ 352 agents while his Brickell Avenue Four Seasons office claims to have contact with 22,000 brokers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Boston. His client list has also grown beyond Brickell on the River and Sole on the Ocean in Sunny Isles Beach (which incidentally sold out), to include Solaris in Brickell (sold out), Spiaggia in Surfside (sold out), Paramount Beach in Sunny Isles, Paramount Park in Miami, Parc Central at Aventura, Racquet Club in North Bay Village and Beach House in Bal Harbour.

This isn’t the first time Niño has been in business for himself. In 1998, he founded International Brokers, which specialized in assisting Colombians interested in buying property in Miami. That got the attention of Edgardo Defortuna, who hired Niño’s company to help sell Jade Residences at Brickell Bay, M Resort Residences and Uptown Marina Lofts. Niño eventually became senior vice president of Defortuna’s company but then opted to split in 2003.

Things have been going well for Niño ever since. In les than two years, Prodigy has amassed a sales portfolio of $1.7 billion.

Jay Senter

Revenge of the Cat Feeder

Jay Senter’s road to the SunPost 50 started one morning before dawn on the beaches of Surfside. As usual, the former New Yorker rose at 5:30 a.m. and prepared breakfast for himself and the dozens of cats that made up this charming seaside neighborhood. As Senter took his morning walk, hungry cats ran out of bushes and dropped out of trees to greet him, rubbing their coats against his legs as he made his way down to the beach. Before long, Senter and the procession of cats found a nice spot to enjoy their breakfast. That’s when the kitty litter hit the fan.

As soon as the cats hit the chow, a raging-mad Surfside official came charging at the picnickers, ranting and raving that they didn’t belong there. Senter, confused, stared at him blankly.

“Do you know who I am?” asked the angry stranger.

By the time Senter realized who this man was, a sitting elected official of the Surfside Town Commission, he was mixed up in the “Surfside Cat Wars” and thrown into a legal battle with the town regarding the right to feed stray cats on public property. During that conflict, Senter would come to know Surfside’s town charter and town code, becoming a source of information for town policies and procedures. Through it all, Senter found a way to continue feeding his cats.

But it didn’t end there.

With his newfound knowledge, he became a behind-the-scenes champion of those who were critical of the current Surfside government. After breakfast with the cats, Senter would run over to Town Hall, where he would ask for pages and pages of public information requests. He became so involved with town politics and issues that town officials accused him of overwhelming the town clerk with public information requests.

But Senter didn’t care. The way he sees it, there are major issues with the town’s code enforcement policies and he’s not going to sit around while the town makes life impossible for his neighbors and friends. As such, he has taken a major advocacy lead on behalf of homeowners who have been mercilessly cited by Surfside officials. (It isn’t that unusual for a home to be fined well over $1 million for infractions the town refused to correct.)

Lately the conflict between the Surfside government supporters and critics, and the reporting of said conflict by the media and Internet bloggers, have made public meetings standing room affairs in this sleepy little town. And somewhere in the audience is Senter, seen and not heard and staring right at the elected official who gave him hell for simply sharing his breakfast.

Donna Shalala

Debate Diva

Google “Donna Shalala” and you will get more than 65,000 hits.

A former Clinton Cabinet member with a long history of public policy and education, Shalala is a prominent figure. When she took a job as the president of the University of Miami in June 2001, the buzz that surrounds Shalala followed her South of the Beltway.

It was Shalala who successfully brought the first presidential debate between Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush (the one that mattered) to Miami – oh, excuse us, make that Coral Gables, as the 2,000 or so media who showed up were no doubt informed by the City Beautiful.

Shalala had designs on the debates as early as her going away party as secretary of Health and Human Services under then-President Bill Clinton.

“This kind of foresight she had in setting this up many months ago is what’s been the genius of her success as a president,’’ Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin, retired Barry University president and Shalala’s friend, told the Miami Herald.

Early on Shalala contacted the Commission on Presidential Debates and in her own words “lobbied every member of the commission.”

“I also was shrewd enough to know that the first [of the three planned debates] is the one you want. The first one has the largest audience, so I begged for the first one,” she told the Herald.

Along with the debate, she coordinated a variety of special programs under the theme “Celebrating American Democracy and Diversity.” Thanks to her powerful connections, Shalala scored visits to the campus by author-poet Maya Angelou, Washington power couple and political strategists James Carville and Mary Matalin and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. A certain U.S. Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, dropped by last December.

On top of drawing some 50 million television viewers to her campus to watch the debate, Shalala then tackled the Old Boys Network and won. After a female attorney contacted her about being denied entry to the all-male, football-oriented Miami Touchdown Club, which sometimes co-hosts UM events, Shalala responded by applying to the club herself and, soon after, in December 2004, was invited to be the group’s first female member.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1941, Shalala has a Ph.D. from The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She is also among the original Peace Corps volunteers, having served two years in Iran. After several stints in academia, Shalala served during the Carter administration. Bill Clinton appointed her U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in 1993.

Shalala is also on the board of directors of Gannett Co. Inc. (an international news and information company), UnitedHealth Group Inc. and the Lennar Corporation. She also serves as a trustee of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

In addition to the debate, she reportedly launched UM’s largest fund-raising campaign ever, opened a new Convocation Center (where the debate took place),and moved the university from the Big East athletic conference into the more academically respectable Atlantic Coast Conference.

The number of freshman applications and median SAT scores have risen during Shalala’s reign. And the school’s national ranking is up from 64th in 2000 to 58th in 2004, according to the U.S. News & World Report College Guide. Sweating the small stuff, too, Shalala added thousands of chairs to the campus to create more gathering areas, expanded the library’s operation to 24 hours and added Starbucks coffee to the cafeteria, stated a college trustee. No word yet on kegs.

As for 2008, is there another debate in UM’s future? “I don’t know if we want to do it again. We’ll do something else next time,” Shalala told the press. Like what? The Summer Olympics?

Mitchell Kaplan

The Power Book

In a city like Miami, power usually relates to developers, politicians and nightlife impresarios.

So it says a lot about local businessman Mitchell Kaplan, a bookseller, that he’s considered one of the people who give Miami its trademark appeal. Without Kaplan and his Books & Books stores, which have become an institution, Miami’s rep as a cultural and intellectual void would be that much harder to combat.

Never underestimate your audience is what Kaplan recognized and banked on more than 20 years ago when he opened up shop. “There was a sophisticated audience here,” he told the New Times recently.

Because of Kaplan’s dogged enthusiasm for the written word and his business acumen, the nation can now get a taste of our city via C-SPAN’s Book TV (during the Miami International Book Fair) and not just on E! Channel’s Wild On and the like.

But don’t take our word for it. Kaplan also was named among Poder magazine’s 50 most powerful people in Miami earlier this year. About Kaplan, Poder said, “Not only [does he own] the city’s premier independent bookstore, he also founded and organizes, along with Miami Dade College president Eduardo Padron, the Miami Book Fair International. His bookstore is the venue of choice for authors who swing through town on book tours. Just ask Hillary, Bill, Rudy Giuliani and Madeleine Albright.”

No doubt Kaplan’s extensive network of connections with locally and internationally known authors has helped build the respectability and renown of the book fair, which he co-founded in 1983. More than 20 years later Kaplan continues to coordinate author panels for and serve as honorary chair of a fair that draws crowds in the 500,000s annually and is considered the largest event of its kind in the United States.

Kaplan also has forged reading-related relationships with the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, Art Basel and other community groups.

Lately Kaplan has become a leader in the fight for preserving the independent bookstore. He was elected president of the American Booksellers Association, the national trade organization of independent bookstores, in June 2004. “I want to say how much I am looking forward to serving as your president this year and doing whatever I can to ensure not just the survival — but the success — of independent bookselling,” Kaplan wrote in his introductory letter to ABA members.

Generic a name as Books & Books is, there’s no mistaking it for anyplace else, so well is it branded in the minds of Miamians and visiting book lovers from around the nation. Integral to that brand is the name Mitchell, or Mitch, Kaplan.

With Books & Books stores in Coral Gables and on Lincoln Road, at Levenger in Delray Beach, and a new outpost in the Bal Harbour Shops (which hasn’t housed a bookstore since 1994, according to the Miami Herald), one wonders how much longer it will be before Books & Books itself is considered a chain.

Still, in the David and Goliath struggle independent booksellers (and reading in general) face today, it’s nice to see Miami has its own “little guy” who’s a formidable contender.

Fredric Snitzer

The Artrepreneur

When Fredric Snitzer originally moved to Miami after receiving a master’s degree in sculpture from Penn State in the late 1970s, he had just intended to set up shop and find a compelling new place to live. Things were slow at first. He couldn’t find a job (hard to get one with a sculpture degree, even during the decade of disco). Then a “crappy gallery,” as Snitzer describes it, gave him employment and he learned how to make frames.

Almost 30 years later, Snitzer established himself as one of the most recognized art dealers in Miami’s burgeoning scene, respected enough to be a member of the Art Basel Selection Committee for the past three years. As such, Snitzer is sought out by art collectors both near and far.

But you can’t credit Snitzer’s ability to make picture frames for his success, rather his entrepreneurial spirit. After his stint in the Crappy Gallery he founded Opus Art Studios in downtown Coral Gables, a space that evolved from showing posters and wall décor to selling prints by the likes of Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Katz and Stella. By the early ‘90s, Snitzer was representing strong Cuban artists such as Jose Bedia and Luis Cruz Azaceta and had changed the space’s name to the Fredric Snitzer Gallery. Since 1992, he’s been teaching at the New World School of the Arts, where he often discovers soon-to-be-made, fledgling artists.

Currently based in Wynwood, the Fredric Snitzer Gallery has become a prosperous venue for “hot” emerging local talent looking to get noticed as, well, artists. A 1998 art show at the Snitzer Gallery known as The Fashion Issue marked the first time the Rubells, a noted family of art collectors, bought the work of artists Hernan Bas and Naomi Fisher. (Important note: Bas and Fisher worked for the Rubells at the time. See how a Snitzer show can get people noticed?) In addition to Fisher and Bas, Snitzer’s roster includes six other New World graduates, some of whom have reached greater limelight in the art world. While some have claimed favoritism for NW kids on Snitzer’s part, he brushes off such comments.

“My only suggestion to the disgruntled artists is to look at their work,” he says. “New World certainly doesn’t pay me enough [for partiality], but it does attract a lot of interesting people — partly because of the location, and also the extreme selection process. But I can do whatever I want.”

Dorothy Jenkins Fields

Opportunity Knocks

True South Florida natives are rare. Those who can trace their family’s routes in Miami through several generations are even fewer in number.

Dorothy Jenkins Fields’ family has lived in Overtown since 1903. Fields grew up there, graduating from Booker T. Washington Senior High School prior to leaving to Atlanta for Spelman College. She would get her B.A. at Spelman, a master’s degree from the University of Colorado and a doctorate in public history and African-American history from the Union Institute in Cincinnati. Armed with those degrees, Fields founded the nonprofit organization Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida in 1977. Through that organization, Fields was able to place the Lyric Theater, the Cola Nip Bottling Company, the Greater Bethel A.M.E Church, Mt. Zion Baptist Church, St. John Institutional Baptist Church, and the Dorsey House on the National Register of Historic Places. Fields even organized the Miami-Dade Black Heritage Trail in 1992 “so all schoolchildren can learn about locations that are important to black history in the county,” states Fields’ bio. The tours are now sponsored by Miami-Dade Public School’s Office of Cultural Diversity.

Recently, Fields has taken on a new role: that of developer. The Black Archives started a for-profit subsidiary of the Black Archives called the Overtown Folklife Village, according to materials distributed to the city of Miami. (Sunbiz.org, the Web site for the state’s Division of Corporations, only lists Holland & Knight attorney Lynn Washington as a registered agent of the Village and no one else.) This subsidiary has partnered with Brickell Ventures LLC and The Carlisle Development Group for the purpose of building the $89.4 million Lyric Promenade, which will consist of 826,839 square feet of Hilton Garden Inn (149 rooms), residential condominium (160 units), affordable housing (150 units) a B.B. King Blues Club, a restaurant and an expanded circa-1913 Lyric Theater.

Of course, since this partnership wanted to build on city-owned land, they had to bid for it first. That was the easy part largely to the association of the Black Archives and Fields with the venture. In just 15 minutes the Miami City Commission (sitting as the Community Redevelopment Agency) chose Folklife over four other competitors.

Oh sure, critics such as the Power U Center for Social Change whine that all the project will do is jumpstart gentrification in Overtown, thus making current impoverished residents living in Overtown history. But city officials love the Lyric Promenade, calling it a homegrown spark that will revitalize Overtown.

“There have been a lot of disappointments,” Fields told the SunPost when asked about the skepticism of some residents and affordable housing advocates. But this time will be different, she added. After all, the community can trust her. “My family has been here since 1903,” she said.

Daniel Adache

Infinity Man

Daniel  Adache is a principal and the CEO of Colonial Development Group, a limited liability real estate company that is building the Infinity at Brickell, W Fort Lauderdale Hotel and Residences, Europa-by-the-Sea and Palazzo Las Olas. The company’s main financier: CL Financial Limited, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate based in Trinidad with more than $5 billion in assets and 62 subsidiary companies involved with insurance, financial services, banking, energy and petrochemicals, manufacturing, worldwide beverage distribution, communications and technology, forestry, agriculture and health services. Adache is also the founder and chairman of Adache Associates Architects, P.A., which has designed more than 150 hotels and resorts worldwide and more than 10,000 condominium units over the past 30 years and as such is involved with the pre-construction planning coordination, design quality control, consultants management, as well as the day-to-day management of the development process. Adache is an architectural graduate of the University of Illinois, a member and past president of the American Institute of Architects, Florida Chapter, and listed in “Who’s Who” in Leading American Executives.

Honorable Mention

SunPost 51

Rabbi Irving Lehrman

The Pillar

Rabbi Irving Lehrman passed away at Mount Sinai Medical Center on March 11. He was 94. Lehrman will be remembered as a man who sought to bring spirituality to Miami Beach’s Jewish community but also as a man who built bridges with Christian churches.

Lehrman was installed as a rabbi at the Miami Beach Community Center in 1943, soon after graduating from the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He journeyed to a city where Jews were still barred from living in certain neighborhoods and apartment houses and from staying at some hotels.

The Jewish community continued to grow and Lehrman’s congregation grew with it. The Miami Beach Community Center soon became known as Temple Emanu-El, now a landmark synagogue at 17th Street and Washington Avenue.

Lehrman also sought to bring interfaith relations between South Florida’s Jewish community and local Christian churches. For his efforts the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami, at the direction of Pope John Paul II, awarded Lehrman the Pontifical Medal Benemerenti.

But according to relatives it was the founding of a Jewish day school in North Beach that Lehrman considered his crowning achievement. “It was very important to him that Jewish families could educate their children and not be barred by financial hindrances,” said his grandson, Richard Lehrman. A few years ago, the school was renamed the Lehrman Community Day School.

“He treasured the school,” said Rabbi Lev Herrnson, head of the Lehrman School. “While he was a rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, he always brought all his dignitaries to show them the school he cherished so.”

(c) 2004 Miami Sunpost