News arrives in the Herald of the latest but not last blow to the $190 million deal-- struck by Greenberg Traurig and its Herald executive pals-- at the height of the building boom to convert 10 acres of Herald real estate to condos/retail/parking. The busted deal to create a Times Square, squarely in the middle of nothing, stands for the hubris of the boom in more ways than one, but the one we have focused on at Eyeonmiami is how the parking lot deal distorted the editorial view from One Herald Square-- stripping from the city's only daily newspaper critical analysis of the housing asset bubble that might have tempered the boundless enthusiasms related to the boom that took root first, then rotted.
Credit the Herald for reporting its own embarrassing embrace, if not detailing who got paid how much and how many millions in compensation were distributed long ago to Herald executives based, in part, on benefits to shareholders of the imagined deal. That would make a far more interesting story than a collapsed promise. But the parking lot is also emblematic of a city that can't plan its infrastructure to save its life, and, a newspaper that can't report it because of internal conflicts.
Herald founders were right to place the newspaper's view and operations at the intersection of the main route from Miami to Miami Beach. At the time, Miami was a small city. Despite its ambitions, Miami in the mid 20th century was small minded and mean, with its share of bigots and racism. All that traffic flowed past the Herald, across the causeway to island homes; from which one could hop on a boat at lunchtime and return with a locker full of fish for dinner a few hours later. That Miami-- the Miami of John and James Knight and the rod and reel club-- is gone and vanished. All that remains are a few fish docks with cleaning tables whose purpose is all but forgotten.
The way the city filled in leaves another kind of view; a city cut off from itself. The tragedy of privatizing waterfront in downtown Miami cannot be rectified without tearing down Bayside Marketplace and refocusing the attention back to the bay. In the meantime, civic structures, a private arena, and condos have filled in; from the Miami Heat to the Performing Arsht Center and the empty Herald parking lot. Nothing on this stretch of Biscayne Boulevard makes sense. It is an unworkable landscape created with glad-handing, and former bubbly and coke in the VIP rooms of condo openings. The Herald sits, resolute, in the midst of this history and this disconnected landscape.
On evenings when the Performing Arsht Center is scheduled at the same time as the Miami Heat and the circus, the pathetic single lane Biscayne Boulevard exit from 395 causes traffic to backfill all the way to 95. I know it is easier to get downtown, if you live downtown or mid-town or uptown; but what the city fathers allowed to be built (and now we will have a science museum and art museum, in the same traffic vector) is an infrastructure mess no tout or public relations megaphone can explain away.
I know: Miami is a fantastic place to live and the winter weather makes the rest of the nation yearn to be in our shoes. This is the finest city in the world. It is the best place on earth. The water is clean and the Everglades are saved. And the Miami Herald also has a parking lot to sell you.
3 comments:
The Banks will have it all! They must have it all or they will die. $700 billion from the US Treasury in 2008 is not enough. Borrowing billions at 0% interest at the FED's Discount Window and investing it in Treasury Bonds and other interest bearing instruments at pure profit is not enough. Trillions more infused directly into the banks by the Federal Reserve is not enough.
The Banks must have the public employee pension money of workers in New York City. It will not be enough. The Banks must have all the pension money from New Jersey to Florida to California.
The Banks must have the money directed to stave off destitution among elderly Americans. The Banks must have the people's Social Security payments. It will not be enough.
The Banks must have the money directed to working people's health care. The Banks must have American's Medicare and Medicaid benefits. It will not be enough.
The Banks must have the funds directed to public education in the States. Schools must be shut down. Teachers must be layed-off, starting with the most senior. The teacher's with the highest salaries and benefits. The idea of universal public education must be discredited so the whole system can be shut down. It will not be enough.
The Banks must have the proceeds of the international drug trade. The Banks must have the funds generated by the payday loan business, the sub-prime auto and home loan businesses, the student loan money generated by the for-profit colleges.
The Banks must have it all! They must have it all or they will die. They will die anyway. The only question is, will we die with them?
Wall Street pay rises to a record $135 billion in 2010.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704124504576118421859347048.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
Bloomberg proposes to cut public employee pensions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/nyregion/03pension.html?hp
Your post headline is one of the best I've read in a long while.
Those proposed 50 story LED billboards slated for land now owned by the Herald looked disgusting.
Trash. They made Miami look crass.
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