Preserve the Herald Building?
Dade Heritage Trust Wants Genting’s Miami Herald Building Declared A Historic Landmark
First Posted: 12/20/11 08:54 AM ET Updated: 12/20/11 10:29 AM ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/dade-heritage-trust-wants_n_1160253.html
Relegated to the left side of the Miami Herald online today is a story that could pause the march of one mega-casino in its path — or at least send its architects to bed with the vapors: the Dade Heritage Trust has said it will file an application to have the Miami Herald’s orange fortress declared an historic landmark.
That’s the same waterfront One Herald Plaza building that owner McClatchy Co. sold for $235 million early this year to Genting Malaysia, a gambling consortium who shortly unveiled site plans for what would be the largest casino in the world (plans that clearly included the demolition of the Herald building). The event kicked off anew both the push to allow a limited number of resort casinos in South Florida, and the snowballing movement to stop them.
The Dade Heritage Trust appears to have a very strong case for historic designation, which if awarded would prevent Genting from altering significantly the exterior of architects Naess and Murphy’s Miami Modern-style box, the paper’s home since 1963. If the so-called gaming bill also passes in Tallahassee, Genting will have to integrate the original exterior — and possibly the Herald signage — into their design.
The Herald building has grown in estimation amid the recent popularization of Miami’s tropical-modern architecture, along with two prominent structures built at the same time: the Bacardi complex on Biscayne Boulevard and the Miami Marine Stadium, both now designated historic. The city has also designated 30 blocks of the Boulevard, which include numerous MiMo buildings, and Miami Beach has created historic districts around its iconic MiMo hotels, including the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc…
To declare a site historic, proponents must show it meets criteria established by the U.S. Department of the Interior, including architectural importance and association with historically significant figures and events. If those requirements are satisfied — and supporters say the Herald building clearly would — under the law, the board and commissioners are supposed to approve designation, several experts said.
Genting, who will have no legal say in whether or not the designation is awarded, immediately responded with a statement declaring the One Herald Plaza “an affront to smart urban planning,” but Heritage Trust chair Becky Roper Matkov didn’t sound intimidated.
“I’m sure we will have a lot of opposition from monied interests,” Matkov told the Herald, who are rent-free tenants in the building until 2013. “That hasn’t stopped us before.”
Although a contentious fight between the Trust and Genting is expected, the integration of historic buildings is quite common. Consider the Sears Tower at the Adrienne Arsht Center, just down the street. Constructed in 1929, the Sears, Roebuck building was added to the National Register in 1997. When the Arsht Center was built in 2006, developers decided to incorporate the Sears Tower, the first Art Deco building in the county that even predates those on Ocean Drive.
But One Herald Plaza is no Sears Tower, its detractors say. The Miami New Times voted it Best Architectural Eyesore in 2005:
Clearly it was at the vanguard of a style (American Utilitarian?) that would inspire for decades to come the builders of high schools and inner-city housing projects. This is no Tribune Tower in Chicago, an Art Deco ode to that city’s daily paper. Nor is it the stately neo-gothic 43rd Street headquarters of The New York Times. It’s not even the Freedom Tower just down the road, for many years the distinctive home of the Miami News. This is just a generic orange splat gobbling up our precious waterfront. But there’s hope on the horizon. This past March the Terra Group bought the building and the property for $190 million. Terra hasn’t announced plans to raze the structure, at least not anytime soon. But one can always hope.
Dade Heritage Trust, who have been successful protecting the Miami Circle, the Freedom Tower, and the Miami Marine Stadium, clearly disagree. They cite the Herald building as a prime example of Miami Modern Architecture (the building was featured in the book “MiMo: Miami Modern Revealed”), that it has an iconic presence in the city’s skyline, and that it is a symbol of the newspaper’s considerable influence.
And it’s not just One Herald Plaza that concerns the Trust. In October, they wrote a letter to the editor of the Herald, asking whether Genting’s impact on surrounding historic sites had been considered. Included in Genting’s purchase is the Shrine Building, also known as the Boulevard Shops, and Trinity Cathedral, built in 1925, sits nearby.
On February 7, the city’s perseveration board will consider whether the application has any merit, before scheduling a second hearing. Historian Arva Moore Parks, former chairwoman of the city’s planning board, told the Herald, “There’s just one issue: Does it meet the criteria? Then you have to follow the law.”
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Beyond Casinos – Dumping on Virginia Key. Is There a Relationship Here in Terms of Weak Public Oversight?
Virginia Key Landfill Fix Delayed By Politics: Blood, Sewage, and Chemicals Still Leach into Bay
By Michael Miller Mon., Dec. 19 2011 at 8:00 AM Miami New Times
A blood pump in Virginia Key Landfill, 1976
Twisted metal. Bags of blood. Broken needles. Human excrement. Mysterious orange drums full of God-knows-what.
Like a giant shit-filled anniversary cake, the Virginia Key landfill has been stuffed full of the nastiest crap Miami has to offer. The dump has been boiling, belching, and burning for 50 years.
But instead of finally cleaning it up with millions already sitting around in the bank, city and county officials are too busy bickering over the terms of — what else? — a new waste management contract.
Miami-Dade County raised $46 million from bond sales six years ago to begin a cleanup, but officials admitted last week that they won’t release the money until the city signs a lucrative new trash contract. Environmentalists are crying foul.
“This is a toxic dump site,” says Alexis Segal from the clean-water advocacy group Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper. “It leaches horrible things into swimming water adjacent to several highly used public beaches. It should have been moved up on the priority list decades ago.”
City and county officials, naturally, blame one another.
Sewage pouring into the landfill, 1976
The county’s Department of Solid Waste Management says it needs a new city trash agreement to pay off bond interest before releasing cleanup cash. “As a condition of receiving the $46 million landfill grant, the County is insisting that the City extend its waste disposal… agreement,” the department said in an email to Riptide.
But Alice Bravo, Miami’s assistant city manager, says that’s nonsense. “It was their study that identified issues with the landfill and it was their vision to [fix] it,” she says. “I don’t know why you would identify a need and then make it so difficult to resolve it.”
County Commissioner Xavier Suarez has tried to play the adult, suggesting a compromise on a new ten-year waste contract that would kick-start landfill cleanup. So far he’s gotten nowhere, although he says he’s scheduled to meet with the mayor this week to discuss the disastrous dump delay.
Meanwhile, just last week beaches were closed in nearby Crandon Park because of toxic bacteria floating in the water.
“I share the impatience,” Suarez says. “It’s a gorgeous island. The fish used to practically jump into your boat.”
These days, not so much.
A fire at the landfill, 1976
Barrels of dichloride herbicide left at the Virginia Key landfill
The wasteland
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Beyond Casinos – Baseball Stadium Investigations Should Warn us of the Perils of Easy Fixes With Large/Dazzling and Poorly Thought Out ProjectsEasy
Where is the state attorney in Marlins stadium fiasco?
By Michael Lewis
The most distressing aspect of the US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of the Marlins ballpark fiasco is that it’s the only investigation.
Also distressing is that many who saddled taxpayers with the worst government giveaway ever here, all $3 billion of it, left office before a probe began, forcing successors to battle the fallout.
It’s unfortunate that it’s only securities investigators because their hunt is tightly focused yet may take years. Even if they file no charges, many illegal acts that might be involved don’t fall in their jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the publicly funded stadium opens in 3½ months under a cloud as more and more of the deal’s pitfalls get wide attention.
Despite seeking voluminous data, federal investigators target only misdeeds that affect buyers of city and county bonds issued to support a stadium deal that robbed the public blind.
Their job is to protect nobody else — certainly not commissioners who were misled in voting.
Federal investigators might not care what went on in one-on-one meetings of Marlins and Major League Baseball officials, the county manager, and city and county commissioners if securities laws weren’t broken.
Somehow, most elected officials were persuaded to approve a deal so lopsided that it couldn’t have been mere incompetence or indifference. But unless it involves securities law, federal investigators won’t tell us what they find.
The investigators might not be concerned, either, why commissioners who the night of a bond vote repeatedly asked county manager George Burgess the cost of repayment were never told.
Investigators might not care why Mr. Burgess told commissioners they already had the number, then admitted days after commissioners approved bonds costing well over $2 billion that, no, he hadn’t sent them data after all.
The investigators might not care that Mr. Burgess, whose specialty is finance, never used the word “billion” as commissioners sought a cost. They voted without a price tag.
Federal investigators also might not worry about balloon payments on those bonds — one $91 million issue alone will cost 14 times its value to repay — that imperil county operating funds.
Mr. Burgess sold a deal funded by tourist tax receipts, saying repeatedly that operating funds were exempt. But — surprise — if tourist taxes fall short, bondholders are pledged operating funds.
A shortfall is likely. Even bond raters the county paid, Standard & Poor’s, reported “the backloaded debt service schedule requires revenue growth to continue at a strong compounded pace of 3%-5% beginning in 2011 without interruption for 40 years, which we believe is unlikely.”
That might not concern securities investigators, because general revenue can pay bondholders if tourist tax revenues can’t. But it should pain taxpayers whose bills would soar to fund those payments.
No, federal probers don’t represent misled elected officials, those who pay taxes or voters who got no say whether the county should sell its soul for no payback to support the Marlins owners, whose names government wasn’t told and whose finances government never checked.
The investigators also mightn’t care why county mayor Carlos Alvarez, Miami mayor Manny Diaz and county manager Burgess, all now gone, pushed through this outrageous deal in 2009, or why both city and county commissioners, some now gone, mortgaged our future for it.
Unless illegal acts affect bondholders, they’re not in federal investigators’ jurisdiction.
But every bit of this deal, who supported it and why is in the jurisdiction of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. Smoking guns are everywhere.
The only issue is whether those guns were fired illegally.
It’s a question the state attorney should have probed long ago, but it’s not too late to start. The securities investigators are gathering data that would aid a local investigation, one with far broader targets.
When smoking guns are everywhere, why is the securities commission the Lone Ranger?
It’s distressing that a local investigation hasn’t begun. If, as is possible, there were no payoffs, no illegal promises, no crimes, a thorough probe would dispel lingering suspicions that certainly aided the vote to recall Mayor Alvarez.
And, if there were crimes — well, isn’t that what the state attorney’s office is supposed to be hunting for?
MIami Beach Convention Center- Revamp It Without Casinos
Support builds to revamp Miami Beach Convention Center
By Scott Blake
Facing the prospect of giant casino resorts competing with or becoming a part of the beachside tourism industry, Miami Beach commissioners are reaffirming their opposition to gambling and pressing ahead with plans to renovate the Miami Beach Convention Center.
And they apparently have an ally in Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez.
In a Beacon Council forum on casino gambling Monday, Mayor Gimenez said county government’s focus should not be on gambling but on upgrading the Miami Beach Convention Center to world-class status — and he pledged to make it happen.
“That should be our number-one priority in this forum, to build a first-class convention center,” the mayor said. “I’m going to ask the Board of County Commissioners to take concrete steps to build a world-class convention center.”
During a workshop Friday, Miami Beach commissioners lamented that the county has helped fund other big projects — from the controversial deal to build Marlins Stadium to the Port of Miami tunnels — while the convention center has been largely ignored.
Miami Beach City Manager Jorge Gonzalez acknowledged at Friday’s workshop that Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn has expressed interest in the Miami Beach Convention Center site, but added: “I don’t think the [city] commission will consider a proposal with a casino.”
Asked Monday if a new or upgraded center would be in Miami Beach or elsewhere, Mayor Gimenez said: “My druthers is Miami Beach as the legacy convention center. My druthers is we do another at that site… so we don’t continuously lose large conventions to other destinations. One way or another, this community needs a world-class convention facility.”
The City of Miami Beach, meanwhile, is moving ahead with ideas for the convention center. “We have a consultant group working with us to develop a plan and financing model that could work with a public-private venture,” Mr. Gonzalez said Friday.
He said the city has designated 52 acres, including the convention center, for the project.
“The city will explore expanding the height limits on the site now,” Mr. Gonzalez added. “We’ve been meeting with developers and private interests who perhaps would be partners with the city. We’ve been talking with hotel operators… This will be a competitive process.”
Whatever plan emerges, he said, the public will have a say. “It will be a local referendum so residents can decide for themselves whether the project” is worth doing, he added.
Miami Beach will first seek qualifications from prospective developers, then ask them to submit designs, Mr. Gonzalez said. “We’re going to kick-start the process with the new year.”
At Monday’s forum, Mayor Gimenez cautioned the audience not to focus on the Genting Group’s proposal for a massive casino in downtown Miami.
“Genting will be only one of a dozen different proposals that comes down,” he said before launching into his proposal for county action to expand and upgrade the Miami Beach Convention Center. He gave no details of project size, financing or schedule.
Miami Today Says Casino Passage by State Legislature Looks Dim – But Keep up the Emails/Letters to Legislators
Florida mega-casino bills destined to die, insiders say
By Scott Blake
So-called “destination gaming” bills before the Florida Legislature that have ignited a statewide debate on casino gambling don’t seem likely to be approved, according to officials following the legislation.
“I think most observers today think the bill will not pass,” Fausto Gomez, a lobbyist hired by Miami Beach officials to track the bill in Tallahassee, told Miami Beach city commissioners during a workshop on the issue Friday.
Mr. Gomez said the Florida Senate apparently will vote on the pending casino bill but it doesn’t seem likely at this point that the bill will come to a vote in the Florida House of Representatives.
Miami Beach City Manager Jorge Gonzalez said House Speaker Dean Cannon, a Winter Park Republican, was not optimistic about the bill during a recent meeting with him and Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower.
Rep. Cannon “publicly hasn’t stated his position, but he certainly made me feel like the odds of the bill coming out of the House are not good,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “We understand the Senate is committed to having a vote on the floor. But, in the House, it may not even get to a floor vote.”
State Rep. Richard Steinberg, a Miami Beach Democrat, said the bill’s chances for approval will fade the longer it stays in committees without being heard by the full Senate or House membership.
“Every day that goes by without it being heard, there’s less of a chance of it being passed,” Rep. Steinberg said.
Still, the city manager said the situation could change before or during the upcoming session, which begins in January.
“This bill has a lot of money behind it,” Mr. Gonzalez said, “and bills that have a lot of money behind them have a way of working their way through the process.”
Although Gov. Rick Scott has not stated his position, several members of his cabinet — Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam — all have come out to oppose the bill, said Mr. Gomez, the city’s lobbyist.
In addition, Mr. Gomez said, the bill recently received “a hostile reception” in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee, which handles gambling legislation.
As a result, state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, the Fort Lauderdale Republican sponsoring the Senate bill and a member of the committee, was expected to amend the proposal, he said.
According to Mr. Gomez, the proposed changes would be to create parity on taxes and other issues between the proposed $2 billion-plus casino resorts and existing, smaller pari-mutuels; eliminate gambling at storefront Internet cafes; and increase the casino resort licensing fee to $125 million from $50 million.
“A significant amount of opposition has emerged publicly” to the bill, Mr. Gomez added. “But, obviously, saying it is not going to pass doesn’t mean that the debate [in Tallahassee] can’t go on for the next four or five months in an overheated political environment.”
WLRN Radio Program Dec 15 Betting on the Future
That’s The Story from Beacon Council Meeting? Herald Blows the Lead
GAMBLING
Genting: Our Miami casino won’t be the largest in the world
The Malaysian company under fire for wanting to build the world’s largest casino in Miami says the charge is a “myth.” It blames an architect for getting the numbers wrong.
BY DOUGLAS HANKS
DHANKS@MIAMIHERALD.COM
The Malaysian company pushing for a massive resort on the Miami waterfront said Monday it does not want to put the world’s largest casino there, calling that idea a “myth.”
A casino planned for the current Miami Herald site would be comparable to some of the biggest in the United States, a top executive for Genting Group told a gambling forum at Miami-Dade College. That’s still a sizeable venture but not the gargantuan casino that critics have seized on in warning Genting’s plan would overwhelm downtown Miami.
“That’s simply false,’’ Christian Goode, Genting’s top Florida executive said when a fellow panelist talked of bringing the “largest casino on the planet” to Miami. “It’s not even close to being the largest.”
Goode’s assertion comes more than a month after its project manager from a top Miami architectural firm outlined the components for a Genting casino that would make it the world’s largest. Company representatives said Monday those well-publicized statements were wrong, but offered no explanation as to why they waited so long to correct them.
The company also has been pushing a bill that would allow Genting to build a casino larger than anything else in the gambling industry, since the legislation caps the casino floor at 10 percent of a resort’s property. Genting has proposed a 10-million square foot, 5,200-room vacation destination on the Herald site and surrounding property called Resorts World Miami.
In an interview after his remarks at a day-long casino forum sponsored by the Beacon Council, Goode said Resorts World will likely have a casino with between 5,000 and 6,000 slot machines. That’s considerably fewer than the 8,500 slot machines that a Genting architect told the Herald were being contemplated in the design of the property.
The architect, Sergio Bakas, a senior vice president of Miami’s Arquitectonica and project manager for the Genting venture, said in an Oct. 26 interview that he thought Resorts World would have the largest casino in the industry, an assertion that wasn’t refuted by other Genting representatives.
But on Monday, Arquitectonica’s top Miami executive, Bernardo Fort-Brescia, said Bakas misspoke, using assumptions based on industry formulas for how large casinos normally are. While Bakas described an 800,000 square-foot casino, Goode and Bakas said the actual gambling space will take up far less — about 300,000 square feet.
“He should not have said that,’’ Fort-Brescia said of Bakas. “I apologize.”
Bakas could not be reached for an interview Monday. A Genting spokesman said Bakas would not be made available for one.
The sudden pushback against the “world’s largest casino” charge comes as Genting is under pressure to scale back its Miami plans.
Mike Eidson, chairman of the board of the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center, which sits across the street from the Herald site, said over the weekend that he could not think of any improvements to the surrounding roads that could make Genting’s plans workable. A rival casino company, Las Vegas Sands, is touting its plan for a roughly 2,000-room casino in downtown Miami as a more workable option for the city.
And Genting’s allies in the Legislature, the sponsors of the casino bill, have both said Genting’s detailed plans for Resorts World Miami have proven a distraction by giving opponents a large target.
At the same time, supporters point to the project’s large scale — including an estimated development tab approaching $4 billion — as a major boost for both the construction industry and the region’s roughly 250,000 unemployed.
Malaysia-based Genting, southeast Asia’s largest casino operator, paid $236 million in May for nearly 14 acres of bayfront land, currently home to The Miami Herald. Under the terms of the sales contract, the Herald can stay in its current location rent-free through May 2013.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/12/2543221/genting-our-miami-casino-wont.html#ixzz1gNPwu2PF
Arts Only? Miami Herald Frames Debate in Narrow Terms
GAMBLING
Miami’s arts scene frames casinos as threat
BY DOUGLAS HANKS
DHANKS@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Anti-casino advocates gathered in Miami’s artiest neighborhood Saturday morning and warned that bringing mega-casinos to South Florida threatens to reverse the city’s cultural progress.
“Downtown is finally becoming what we want downtown to be,’’ former Miami-Dade commissioner Katy Sorenson told a crowd of about 120 people at the Light Box Theater, a performance space in Wynwood. “We’ve got some unique, funky Miami kind of things going on. Why do we want to these huge mega-resorts to come in?”
The speakers at the Urban Environment League forum covered the full range of anti-casino arguments, from worries over gambling addictions to traffic woes if Florida approves a bill designed to bring three $2 billion Read more
Norman Braman on Gambling
