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Gordon’s Last Stand
The owner of the last house in a Beach neighborhood
finally sells out
By Keyvan Antonio Heydari
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Conni Gordon leaves a legacy behind. Photo by
Richard M. Brooks |
Just
days before Conni Gordon moved out, her home was still
crammed with her possessions, including the 87 boxes
sitting in the back vestibule, ready to go out the back
door. The door had peeling paint and holes. Wood chips
of bark fallen from a nearby tree lay on the roof.
Inside, water dripped and holes exposed the underside of
the roof. Termite droppings fell from the ceiling onto
books and papers as we spoke.
Gordon occupied the last house in the
Collins
Park neighborhood, an eight-block strip of
Miami Beach
that is home to numerous arts institutions such as the
Bass Museum, the SoBe Music Institute and the
Miami Beach
Botanical Garden.
That is, until she moved out Jan. 24.
Gordon is an art teacher, entrepreneur, TV personality,
motivational speaker and a Guinness Book of World
Records holder. Her crumbling house, which has an
empty lot in the front yard and about 150 feet on a
canal on the north side, occupies an entire block at
22nd Street and Collins Avenue, just west of Miami
Beach’s new regional library. Developers have been
salivating over that site for quite some time.
Now, the neighborhood is part of the city of
Miami Beach’s
newly minted Cultural Arts Neighborhood District
Overlay, which is designed to encourage the
establishment of cultural institutions within its
boundaries. But while the Collins Park neighborhood is
on its way toward becoming an arts community, the woman
who arguably started it all had to leave it.
“I’ve been an icon on the Beach and I hate to go, but
times do change,” Gordon said.
“It leaves a void,” said Ray Breslin, president of the
Collins Park Neighborhood Association, which honored
Gordon with an award in January. “It’s a great
neighborhood that’s undergoing a resurrection. The
building is historic and [Gordon’s school] was the first
thing in that neighborhood that had to do with arts and
culture.”
In an area once rich with strip joints, Gordon’s house
was formerly a dance and supper club, gay cabaret and
tea house.
According to Manny Meland, a
Miami Beach
historian, the house, built in 1923, has “a lot of
stories to tell” in its incarnations. “The house has had
some illustrious tenants,” Meland said. “Conni was a
remarkable lady. It’s probably the end of an era.”
After teaching in a studio on
Lincoln Road,
Gordon bought the 10,000-square-foot house — which has
few interior divisions and a cellar — in 1979 for
$80,000 and used it as a headquarters for her art
classes and a depot for her books and inventory.
“I couldn’t call it a house,” Gordon said. “It’s
certainly not the way most people live. This building
has helped me continue my creativity. This is so
important to me. The building itself has helped keep me
going. That’s why I don’t want to leave. Location,
people … the cultural atmosphere of the neighborhood has
contributed to my creativity. Even though I’m 85, most
people want to check out. Not me. I want to continue.
Bigger and better.”
Gordon sold the house, the façade of which must be
preserved because it is a historic structure, to the
developers of Arte City, a project that will span from
20th to 22nd streets and promises to provide its
dwellers with rich cultural lifestyles. She’s not sure
what the plans are for her house, but believes they want
to use it as a coffeehouse and gallery space.
The art teacher received numerous offers for her
property through the years. Proposals included merging
it into a larger project, turning it into a tea house
and building a parking garage on top of it. “That turned
me off,” she said. One potential buyer offered her
$100,000, she said, and the Setai offered her $3 million
for the property — $500,000 more than she finally
accepted.
“There wasn't a week I didn’t get an offer,” she
boasted. “Everybody wanted a piece of this rock.”
Marjorie Weber, a business counselor affiliated with the
nonprofit small business assistance group known as
SCORE, finally convinced Gordon that it would be more
productive to sell the land and move her art school
elsewhere.
“After two or three years, she finally listened,” said
Weber. “We sold it in three weeks.”
Gordon’s decision was influenced by Hurricane Wilma,
which reduced her “Connie Gordon Art School” sign to a
mere “Go.” Gordon believes that was the sign.
“I don't want to run a school,” she said. “The building
is falling apart. My insurance was canceled. Marjorie
[Weber] made me decide to go.... I'm totally alone. I
gotta feel free. People say, ‘Take the money and run.’
Where am I going to go? I’ve taken more cruises than
you've got hairs on your head.”
Then, the offer from Mo Zarif, president of Build Tech
Group Inc., to preserve the arts school touched a chord
inside Gordon. The opportunity to maintain the building,
in whatever reincarnation, as a structure devoted to the
arts appeals to her need to leave a legacy. The new
owners of the building even offered to display some of
her paintings.
Inside the house, Gordon’s assistant Joel helped her
sort through 60 years of clutter, including stacks of
documents and vintage painting books that filled several
rooms of the house from floor to ceiling.
“There’s $1 million worth of books,” Gordon lamented.
“What to do with them?”
She pulled out faded newspaper clippings and brochures
from seminars she held around the world to help
cultivate creativity for executives of such companies as
IBM.
Gordon spoke humorously about her former students,
including such artists as Leonard Horowitz (he created
the colors for Art Deco), and celebrities and friends
such as Art Deco pioneer Barbara Capitman, Sammy Davis
Jr. and Johnny Carson.
Gordon, the daughter of theatrical agents from
Connecticut,
has a performer’s showmanship and need for attention.
While serving in the Marine Corps, Gordon was in charge
of organizing shows to entertain troops. Then a no-show
performer left her alone in front of an audience. She
improvised and told them to pull out a piece of paper
and put a line on it — and, instantly, her method and
mission of teaching art to the masses was born.
The Marine Corps saw her sketching lessons as a morale
builder, and before she knew it, she was teaching
audiences of 50,000 at a time, with the help of
projectors and large screens.
In 1989, Gordon made the Guinness Book of World
Records as “most prolific arts teacher” for having
taught more than 3 million students with her method.
However, Gordon said her most rewarding tribute was the
letters she received from Marines who said her art
methods and lessons helped them keep their sanity in
foxholes.
“I believe people have creative ability that should be
developed,” Gordon explained. “Be more creative in what
you do. Don't rely on the computer. Use your hands and
brain.”
While teaching in Australia in the mid-1980s,
entrepreneur Kim Aunger saw potential in marketing her
painting kits and offered her $1 million a year in
royalties for the rights. Gordon saw a commercial
opportunity, but Aunger died in a helicopter crash in
1991 after starting the venture. Gordon spent years
recovering the rights to her signature painting kits.
As she sorted through the materials she’d collected over
time, she talked about her impending move to an
apartment at the Palm Bay Club on the mainland.
An ocean breeze blew a pile of papers off her desk. Then
a gust knocked a vase of roses to the ground.
“It will be changed,” she said, her blue eyes looking
out of the door. “I’m going with the changes.”
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