There certainly has been a lot of ink spilled over the discovery of an ancient Tequesta Indian site, including the line that will follow Miami white stocking attorney Gene Stearns, "Hokum".
"Hokum" sounds like a perjorative from a native American vocabulary, but the best I could tell from a quick search: it only has roots stretching back to segregationist era entertainments. Who knows what ancient enmities Gene Stearns was channeling when the word came to mind.
And who is the MDM Development Group?
If corporations are people, who are the people of MDM Development? I've argued for years -- but probably for a shorter period of time than "hokum" was in Gene Stearn's vocabulary -- that the Florida legislature must stop allowing individuals to hide their identities in limited corporations. We could all benefit from transparency in knowing the players in proliferating sprawl and condo canyons in South Florida.
It's the same thing with dark money in political campaigns. All should be in the sunshine.
But back to MDM. A few years ago, during the housing and real estate bust, we touched on MDM and its downtown activities.
By the way, if the City of Miami and the developer sends archeologists to dig in a prehistoric village site, wouldn't you expect those archeologists to find signs of a prehistoric village? And wouldn't you know those signs had been there all along? And wouldn't you know that forcing a development off one culturally significant site in downtown Miami cost Florida taxpayers about $50 million?
Some of us have long enough memories to remember both the controversy over the Miami Circle (check our archive) -- the inspiration! for Jorge Perez' idiotic Easter Island like sculptures at the ICON summoning meso-America -- and the handsome payoff for a developer who walked away from property he owned with tens of millions in taxpayer money so a site could be protected; a site that has never opened to the public and sits at the mouth of the Miami River like a forlorn comma dropped from a sentence that no developer misses unless it is in his own contract.
Readers, we don't know the half of the truth about insiders shielded by corporations pushing around chips on the Miami development scene but the half we do know is hokum compared to the rest.
"Hokum" sounds like a perjorative from a native American vocabulary, but the best I could tell from a quick search: it only has roots stretching back to segregationist era entertainments. Who knows what ancient enmities Gene Stearns was channeling when the word came to mind.
And who is the MDM Development Group?
If corporations are people, who are the people of MDM Development? I've argued for years -- but probably for a shorter period of time than "hokum" was in Gene Stearn's vocabulary -- that the Florida legislature must stop allowing individuals to hide their identities in limited corporations. We could all benefit from transparency in knowing the players in proliferating sprawl and condo canyons in South Florida.
It's the same thing with dark money in political campaigns. All should be in the sunshine.
But back to MDM. A few years ago, during the housing and real estate bust, we touched on MDM and its downtown activities.
By the way, if the City of Miami and the developer sends archeologists to dig in a prehistoric village site, wouldn't you expect those archeologists to find signs of a prehistoric village? And wouldn't you know those signs had been there all along? And wouldn't you know that forcing a development off one culturally significant site in downtown Miami cost Florida taxpayers about $50 million?
Readers, we don't know the half of the truth about insiders shielded by corporations pushing around chips on the Miami development scene but the half we do know is hokum compared to the rest.
24 comments:
The implication that MDM hit the jackpot is not far off point. All feels like staged theater. The suckers in the cheap seats would be the taxpayers.
Memo to FBI: in shallow places you don't have to dig deep to find what the law says you should be looking for.
I agree something is off, while Gene is a hired gun he does love Miami.. He is a huge supporter of worthy causes and not just as a rainmaker. He hates the failures of local government (he challenged the old 9 member BCC over diversity pro bono thus the present 13 districts) and singlehandedly started the incorporation movement with Key Biscayne as an alternative to infeective and unresponsvie UMSA.. Long a proponent of incorporation for downtown independent of the City as a way to keep the huge tax base maintaining downtown instead of being siphoned off by City of Miami politicians for neighborhood pet projects. Same for the Grove.
Plus Bob Carr falling on his sword over this one? What developer is going to hire him now? What's that about?
Earlier post may be right, Gene maybe setting the stage to get his client a windfall from those if-I-can't-beat-them-let-them-pay idiot politicians
Either way, EOM is right, there is more to this than meets the eye and knowing the players is key.
I've been on this site and it's very cool the white sand from the original banks of the Miami River are all the way up by the people mover
In Paris they have a very similar situation by the Seine, the Archaeological Crypt lying beneath the square of Notre Dame. From ground level very small and nondescript, Looks like a mini Métro entrance, but one flight down, remains discovered during archaeological excavations. (Crypte Archaeologique du Parvis de Notre Dame)
"A visit to the crypt allows you to explore successive layers of Parisian history, featuring parts of structures dating from the Antiquity to the 20th century, and admire ruins from the classical to medieval period" . would absolutely work here and would have worked at the Miami Circle too had somebody gotten creative.
The Miami Circle site is open to the public. And the public uses it as a dog park and Miami River stroll. There are some interpretive signs that recall the struggle to save that parcel and the Tequestas. That being said, the shame is that the site did not become a part of the National Park System, though a study did take place. Unfortunately, it was done during the George Bush years, where the NPS was directly to not add any National Park properties. That being said, there is a greater opportunity to revisit that injustice, incorporated the newly documented Tequesta Circles with the Miami Circle site and Virginia Key and Biscayne Bay to create a new National Park gateway park for Miami. That is getting creative, responsible and inspired. Let's do it Miami!
Authorized Person(s) Detail
Name & Address
Title MGRM
MATEOS, DEREK
1717 E. BUSCH BLVD
SUITE 601
TAMPA, FL 33618
Title MGRM
DAHLHAUSER, MATHEW
1818 ASHBOROUGH CIRCLE SE, UNIT B
MARIETTA, GA 30067
Do we need another dog park?
Attorney Gene Stearns lives in a bubble - His "performance" at the Historic Board hearing was embarrassing. A professional representation of his client's interests could still have been done respectfully and with dignity and respect to Miami's history, indigenous cultures, the other professionals in the room - county and state archaeologists, historians and the public. And it was not. Mr. Stearns would do well to think hard about the frailty and vulnerability of even the most powerful, rich and strong people and civilizations. We all fail. We all die. We are all extinguished. One look at his client's dust-filled parcel will confirm that. Mr. Stearns: was it really worth it to demean others and in so doing, demean yourself? Instead of appealing, work with the community and the real experts to create something better than yourself and your client's short-term profits to preserve the site. Use your power for lasting good.
I am often perplexed by antiabortion people who don't care about the babies once they're born. The same goes for these historic sites. We spent millions and a lot of effort to get the Miami Circle site. I was part of that effort. Now the Damn site is a dog park. I am not putting one iota of effort into saving anymore historical sites in Miami because people don't value them and no one protects them. I agree with the reader above, do we really need another dog park so dogs can shit on our history?
Gene Stearns outlived his time and usefulness.
Gene Sterns embarrassed himself. He will forever be known as the bully who abused numerous witnesses at the Feb 14th, 2014 HEP Board meeting. I hope his out-of-town clients paid him well.
Sadly, the time to have preserved the MDM site has long since past. The holes in the bedrock marking whatever prehistoric structures were associated with them are undoubtedly of interest, but they are collectively but one of thousands of artifacts that made the site significant. The rest have all been dug up and are now in baggies and boxes that likely may never be opened and the artifacts analyzed. Such is the fate of most artifacts that are excavated during "salvage" archaeology jobs that (literally) pave the way for development of once historically important sites. It was no secret that the MDM site promised the discovery of arguably the most significant archaeological finds in all of South Florida. Anyone with the most elementary knowledge of local history knows that the north bank of the mouth of the Miami River was ground zero for cultural activity in this area, from pre-Columbian times through the post-contact pioneer period. It is where the City of Miami was born. So why wasn't this debate taking place over ten years ago after the Miami Circle imbroglio, or even only a few years ago when Carr and his crew excavated a prehistoric cemetery containing 100+ human burials nearby? The sad truth is that most people in Miami, and certainly the profiteers written about so often in this blog, do not value local history, which I feel contributes to the shortness of our collective memory.
No one who was active in getting the Miami Circle preserved, and none of the tax payers who helped pay for it, should regret the preservation of that site. It was and is fundamentally different from the MDM property. A good portion of the Miami Circle site still contains archaeological deposits that remain to be professiuonally excavated at some point in the future and not by salvage archaeologists. It is also one of a very few publicly accessible locations on the Miami River. It is a shame that it has been taken over by Brickell dog owners who fail to clean up after themselves and their pets, but it is still an awesome location to visit and to take visitors from out of town.
Can you define "white stocking attorney"?
Urbandictionary.com has blue
stockings but they're fresh out of white.
Thank you,
A Daily Reader
Lol. Yeah, but I like the image of a white stocking attorney in this context.
Guarantee whatever MDM is paying Stearns, they'd pay 100 times more to prevent disclosure of their investors.
I think you do a disservice to label the word "hokum"as "a perjorative from a native American vocabulary."
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives this as the definition of hokum: "1. a device used (as by a showman) to evoke a desired audience response 2. pretentious nonsense"
To be fair, that I think more correctly describes what lawyer Stearns was alleging.
I can live with being criticized for referring to parts of the "interpretation" of the Met Square archeological dig as bogus. Worse language would work also. I can also live with being criticized for vigorously cross examining public officials whose testimony is relied on for important public decisions. There should be more people willing to challenge authority, not fewer of them.
Whether the presentation and cross examination on Friday will help or hurt in reaching a good conclusion for both a commercial venture and posterity remains to be seen. This is not a popularity contest and in the course of offending some of you we learned a great deal that will help going forward.
Everyone agrees that this land has enormous historical value. Sadly, most of the evidence of that history was stripped away with the development of the Royal Palm Hotel by Henry Flagler at the end of the 19th century. But there remains much to save and much has been learned that will, if properly presented, provide an enormous teaching opportunity.
If anyone really wants to know what is going on with regard to this project they should call. I'm not hard to find.
Clients hire lawyers to lie for them. If people want the truth they should do their own research.
Citizens would be interested to learn exactly who owns MDM?
Neither Mr. Stearns nor his developer clients are the people to determine how the site's historical "value" should be presented. The fact that they think it so, is what was particularly disturbing about the historical showdown at the Hearing Board public hearing. Back off MDM - let the site continue to be studied, let the public continue to be educated. We can all wait a little longer for that movie theater, casino hotel and WholeFoods Market.
I'm with the first speaker with the ancient unpronounceable name who started her comments talking about how this land was stolen from the Tequestas. "We are not artifacts. Our ancestors bodies are not artifacts." Not to mention that unpardonable act by our forefather, Mr. Henry Flagler, of using the crushed bones of interred Tequestas as road fill. Time to make amends Miami! We've been living a cursed life for so long, our final fate is the prophecy of apocalyptic flooding. There may be something more powerful here that we can understand or handle.
That site is the birthplace of soccer. My ancestors told me.
To be fair, Gene Stearns could have corrected the 3rd Anon regarding his involvement in the Meek case. Thomasina Williams from his firm was a participant, but Mr. Stearns was not a visible advocate. Accepting undue praise is not a noble trait.
Advancing the incorporation movement, seen by many as an effort to escape being governed by the minority-majority county commission following the Single-Member District ruling, was definitely his campaign.
Trying Meek with Thomasina and defending it on appeal is a highlight of my 41 year career. From the last comment I can narrow the anonymous author down to one of the 300 million people who was not there.
Crushed bones? Curse? That explains it. The invasion of Banana Republicans is the consequence of that, perhaps.
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