Miami Beach

Money Talks

 If you want to demolish a historic structure, pay off your neighbors

By Ben Torter

The Dorick Apartments will soon be replaced by a Walgreens. Photo by Angie Hargot

The Miami Beach City Commission unanimously voted Jan. 16 to expand the Flamingo Park Historic District to include the east side of Alton Road between Eighth and 14th streets, but tough questions from freshman Commissioner Ed Tobin revealed some behind the scenes deal-making that generally isn’t made public.

“If we want transparency and for people to be part of the process, we need to let people know what’s going on,” Tobin said.

The Flamingo Park Historic District includes the areas roughly between Sixth Street and North Lincoln Lane, and from Washington Court to Lenox Court. The district expansion added six blocks along the east side of Alton Road.

Preservationists cheered the expansion as a victory. However, the newly added area suffers from severe flooding. In some spots, water percolates up through 28 feet of muck below the surface.

Israel Magrisso, owner of the Phillip Gardens Apartments at 835 Alton Road, asked commissioners not to include his property in the new district because he may need to demolish his building, raise the ground above the flood plain and rebuild.

“The recommendation is that if I want to solve the problem I should go and build a different building,” Magrisso said. “So I can keep … building new floors, because the floors rot, or build a new structure.”

It will be difficult for Magrisso to get a demolition permit with his building in a historic district. But he might find it easier if he hires the right attorney and pays off his neighbors. That’s what Walgreens did recently as part of its successful effort to get permission to tear down the historic Dorick Apartments at 10th Street and Alton. The 1948 building is still standing, but not for long.

“Walgreens paid money to the adjacent property owners in order to help get their approval and I just don’t know if Mr. Magrisso, with his little building, will be able to afford to pay his adjacent property owners to help get consensus for his demolition,” Tobin said, holding up some letters.

The three letters — dated July 16, Aug. 14 and Sept. 10, 2007 — were signed by Walgreens’ attorney Michael Larkin and addressed to Assistant Planning Director William Cary and Planning Director Jorge Gomez.

Larkin’s first letter asked to postpone the Aug. 14 demolition hearing for the Dorick Apartments, the future site of Walgreens, “to continue dialogue” with the homeowner associations of the two adjacent properties — the Palms Association of Alton Road, Inc. and Lenox Villas Condominium Association, Inc.

The next two letters detailed the continued dialogue.

“Pursuant to a settlement agreement, [Walgreens] will make a financial contribution to [Lenox Villas] to be used for general improvements to its property,” Larkin wrote to Gomez in August. Then in September he wrote, “One of the terms of our settlement agreement with Alton Palms involves the payment of financial compensation to the association to obtain their support of the application.”

The letters complied with a city law that requires such payoffs to be reported, although the amount of money involved can be kept secret, as it was in this case.

Erika Brigham, a member of the Historic Preservation Board who voted to allow the demolition, said the board determined there was no other reasonable way to deal with the flooding issue. “I’d also like to point out, that whether or not the Walgreens gave some kind of financial compensation to the owners, we had absolutely no idea of that,” she said.

Another bone of contention Wednesday was that the historic district expansion did not include the 700 block of Alton Road. The Historic Preservation Board voted Sept. 11 against including the 700 block because, Brigham said, it was worried the former City Commission would otherwise vote down the entire expansion. That commission (before the November election) voted 6-1 not to include the 700 block. Commissioner Saul Gross was the one dissenting vote.

Gross said South Shore Hospital owner Russell Galbut, who owns property at 725-45 Alton Road, was “persuasive.”

Last week, the commission decided to begin the process of actually including the 700 block. But Galbut tore down the two structures before that vote, leaving only two buildings on the entire east side of the block. Workers were still carting away the rubble Monday.

“There’s a lot going on that people should know,” Tobin said.