Murmurs 

Villazzo specializes in providing four-star hotel and concierge services for rich homeowners interested in renting their houses out to rich and famous (and paranoid) travelers.

Gibbs Gate

Ah, the Christmas-Hanukkah-Kwanzaa-New Year’s holiday. It’s a time to give loved ones precious gifts, to kick back and relax. Except, that is, if you are a journalist. Then it’s a time to struggle to find stories when everyone is out of town and, for the most part, no one gives a crap about talking to reporters.

So Murmurs was sympathetic when Miami Herald editors decided to place on the front page of their Dec. 30 local section a story analyzing why Miami Beach locals and American paparazzi could hardly care less about British Prime Minister Tony Blair being in town.

“On the Miami Beach celebrity scale of J. Lo to your Aunt Hadassah at the Hebrew Home, British Prime Minister Tony Blair ranks somewhere around that homeless guy on Lincoln Road who wears a Santa suit all year round,” Elinor Brecher observed in her lead paragraph. But that isn’t true of the British press, which has obsessed over Blair’s arrangement with former Bee Gee Robin Gibb and his wife, Dwina Murphy Gibb, to rent their home to Blair while being protected by the Secret Service.

“Back in London a political row raged over the Blairs’ trip to the sun. On his return, Mr. Blair faces the prospect of a Parliamentary inquiry amid deepening confusion over who has paid for his family holiday,” reported the Daily Telegraph. “… Norman Baker, a Liberal Democrat MP, and Philip Davies, a Tory backbencher, said they had decided to call for an inquiry after Mr. Gibb’s wife Dwina claimed the Blairs had not been asked to pay for their stay at the 10-bedroom waterfront home, estimated to be worth more than 5 million pounds, in one of Miami Beach’s most exclusive areas.”

Blimey! Is this some sort of evil scheme for copyright legislation that the Gibbs, British citizens and Labor Party supporters really wanted and that Blair happened to back, as one tabloid reported? Or is this just a friendly arrangement, as Downing Street insisted, where Blair did in fact pay the Gibbs for renting out their home, the proceeds of which were then turned over to charity? “If the payment was less than the value of the benefit, then you are caught by the rules and a decision should be made to declare it,” Elfyn Llwyd (right), leader of the Welsh Nationalist Plaid Cymru, told the Telegraph.

We know what you are thinking. “Dude, Welsh Nationalist Plaid Cymru is the perfect name for a rock band!” Yeah, you’re right and we just copyrighted it under the recently ratified British copyright law. So piss off! What you should be thinking is, “Boy, Tony Blair better come clean, lest the Welsh fall under Plaid Cymru’s sway and declare themselves independent from the British Empire, sparking a nasty civil war.”

But there may be another factor not grasped by Baker, Davies and Llwyd. (Great name for a law firm, by the by.) It’s this: The Gibbs and Downing Street are being coy about the financial arrangement because (OK, don’t say this too loudly), it’s illegal to rent a home in Miami Beach’s single-family neighborhoods for less than six months.

Yep, that’s right. It’s all due to an “administrative interpretation,” which has something to do with resort taxes and stuff. We won’t bore you with the details. However, the city has been using the administrative interpretation to clamp down on single-family homeowners who think it’s cool to lease their homes for a day or so to promoters who then convert the million-dollar homes into swanky clubs.

When Miami Beach administrators proposed solidifying their interpretation into an ordinance aimed at outright banning house parties for private use, representatives of Villazzo LLC reacted with horror and much whining. Villazzo, a company owned by Miami Beach homeowner Christian Jagodzinski, specializes in providing four-star hotel and concierge services for rich homeowners interested in renting their houses out to rich and famous (and paranoid) travelers who would rather not stay at a hotel — for fear it won’t be private enough. Villazzo has rented out private, luxury-style homes all over Europe and the United States. They even have a few luxury homes in Coral Gables, Coconut Grove and Miami Beach. But business in Miami Beach is a bit of a challenge —thanks to the rule. “In Coral Gables there are no prohibitions,” Richard Freeman, general counsel to Villazzo, recently told Murmurs. The reasoning behind the Beach’s administrative ruling, he said, is “fallacious.” He added that his company does not throw “wild parties” and deals with clients who want to offset the high cost of maintaining and paying taxes on a multimillion-dollar home when said clients are not in the area.

In recent weeks, city officials have been sympathetic to the plight of the rich and famous. “The short-term rental issue has been removed from the ordinance at this time,” Assistant City Manager Hilda Fernandez explained to Murmurs via e-mail, referring to the proposed commercial house-party-ban code that will come before the Miami Beach City Commission on Jan. 17. As for the administrative interpretation: “The Planning Board requested that they be provided the opportunity to consider the issue and make recommendations to the commission.”

In the meantime, we invite the right-honorable Prime Minister to present this column to Parliament as evidence in order to prevent Wales from splitting away from the United Kingdom. God Save the Queen!

Meanwhile …

The Miami Design Preservation League, a nonprofit organization created in 1976 that happens to be the oldest Art Deco society in the world, may, in the very near future, have to work a little harder in the fundraising department.

“We’ve had Bacardi as a sponsor for eight or nine years,” says MDPL Executive Director Bill Farkas. “This year, budget cuts won’t allow them to sponsor us.”

The MDPL created Miami Beach’s Art Deco Weekend, an annual festival that includes Deco-themed guided tours, film series, lectures and an Ocean Drive street fair featuring talented street performers and vendors selling neat Deco-style items and nasty artery-clogging food.

“Our Art Deco Weekend budget for this year is $400,000; only $30,000 of that will come from Bacardi. We do have a lot of corporate sponsors, government grants and money from merchandise sales for the event,” Farkas said.

As far as day-to-day operations at the MDPL, “We will just have to work harder to pay our bills, which we have been doing so far,” Farkas says.
This year’s 30^th Art Deco Weekend will run from Jan. 12 - 14.

Incidentally, we blame Alcoholics Anonymous for Bacardi’s budget cuts. The more people abstain from rum, the less money there will be for Bacardi to donate to MDPL. C’mon, guys, for the sake of preserving all things Art Deco … have a drink.

Politics

Here is something that will surely get people on the Beach drinking again — election season has arrived and is heating up.

Yes, in anticipation of what will surely be a competitive race (thanks to term limits), more candidates have submitted paperwork to run for seats on the Miami Beach City Commission in November 2007. This is especially true of the Group 6 seat, which Matti Bower will vacate in 10 months to run against fellow Commissioner Simon Cruz for mayor (and whomever else wants to run for that seat).

The latest contender for the Group Six seat: Deede Weithorn, a Miami Beach Budget Advisory Committee member and accountant who recently lost her bid for Luis Garcia’s vacated seat to Michael Gongora.

Far less media shy is Frank Kruszewski, a real estate associate affiliated with Gary Hennes Realtors who volunteered to be on the Budget Advisory Committee as well as the Miami Beach Police Citizens Relations Board and the executive board of SAVE Dade. A release was sent forth to Murmurs, prepared by former SunPost editor/contributor-turned-political consultant Michael Sasser, announcing Kruszewski’s candidacy. “The election of 2007, with four commission seats up, provides the voters of Miami Beach with the opportunity to set a direction for the future of Miami Beach that will go well into and beyond the next decade,” Kruszewski stated, via the release.

And then there is Michael Stern  —most known for being part owner of a very old coral rock house façade on Collins Avenue. Stern is running on a platform of lowering property taxes.

Stern’s partner-owner of the coral rock house, Ivor Rose, has also submitted paperwork to run for commissioner against Gongora (he was elected to only a one-year term) for the Group 5 seat. Also in the running for Group 5: handicap-access activist Lee Weiss.

In the Group 4 race, so far there’s only lawyer Jonah Wolfson.

We talked about the mayor’s race already, right? Bower vs. Cruz vs. someone to be named later? Yeah? Good. We have to contribute to MDPL’s preservation fund now.

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