“Brunetti has put his money where his mouth is as far as trying
to save the park for racing.”
It’s hard to
believe now, but there once was a time when Hialeah was the social
hot spot of Dade County—where the elite of the East Coast of this
nation would travel to enjoy the grand gentleman’s sport of
horse racing.
The Hialeah Park
racetrack was a thing of beauty in its prime — the 1920s through the
1970s. A huge complex of 220 acres, it featured lots of trees,
gorgeous Mediterranean architecture and a track with a lake in the
middle, complete with an island full of pink flamingoes from Cuba.
If you’ve never been there, at least you’ve caught a glimpse in the
old Miami Vice opening montage. But by the time we host
another Super Bowl in 2010, Hialeah Park may well be on its way to
becoming a huge mixed-use development not unlike Midtown Miami.
Hialeah is a very
different place now than it was in 1925. In 2007, Hialeah is a
pastiche of immigrant America, full of contradictions. There’s a lot
of poverty, but also a lot of wealth. The zoning is completely
screwed up, resulting in an endless sea of ugly strip malls, and
single-family homes with zero lot lines and illegal apartments in
the back, crammed next to restaurants, auto body shops, dog kennels
and/or hooker hotels. Yet everyone seems to have an expensive
vehicle or three parked out front and a young mistress with a taste
for couture.
Probably one of the
best examples of the contradictions of Hialeah is the new Starbucks
on West 49th Street. I met Hialeah Park activist Alex Fuentes there
for coffee a couple of weeks ago and the place was jamming. On the
surface, this is weird, right? I mean, here we are in the heart of
Cuban culture in South Florida, a place where the cafecito window is
sacred, and people are lining up to pay $5 for a fancy latte?
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