Update! Funding passed. Commissioners Daniella Levine Cava, Rebeca Sosa and Xavier Suarez voted against it. Update!
The only redeeming quality of SPAMM -- that's the Sr. Perez Art Museum of Miami -- is its architecture. (By that standard, the Performing Arsht Center isn't even on the measuring stick.)
Driving to Miami Beach on the causeway one could view the Herzog de Meuron design from afar while sighing that it is impossible to reach by car. There's the problem with downtown Miami, and we saw it coming from a thousand yards away: transit is a nightmare.
A nightmare by design.
For as long as I've lived in Miami (early 1990s), the surrender of the public realm -- that is to say, Biscayne Bay -- has been the de facto standard for decisions by local elected officials. And while I'm on a tear, here: what do foreign investors (seeking EB5 visas or otherwise) care about the aesthetic of downtown Miami? They don't unless their condo views are being blocked! The only people who care are residents: we are taxpayers too!
Now the vista towards a building designed by one of the world's great modern architects is completely obscured. (I ask, as Miami New Times did just the other day, what private donors in their right mind will fund an art museum with someone else's name on it in a place no one can see?)
The monumental Frost Science Museum is tilting up against Herzog de Meuron, shoe-horned right next door. And I mean right next door.
On a large scale, it looks like a cavernous Spanish Mediterranean contemporary built on a zero lot line plot in South Miami right next door to a glass box. And then; look across the street where the PAC looms like a design for a stealth warship tossed into the wastebasket.
What do county and city commissioners see when they take the same Biscayne Boulevard exit as I do?
Don't they see what a disaster was created by votes they made to clog inadequate roadways with billions in construction and civic monuments that look, together, awful?
Across the nation, planners should be led on civic-design-pollution-tours: Miami would be number one.
Over the weekend we wept at the suggestion that the county commission would vote on the world's largest ferris wheel somewhere down there. It would go right with the world's largest American Flag, donated? by a Miami billionaire.
And today, the county commission gets to vote on the Nail Clipper Building and the request by its developer for public money.
Elected officials put little environmental groups with hands held out for a few thousand dollars for educational grants through the wringer of Kafka-esque audits while hundreds of millions are siphoned off, without bidding, at the airport or through grants to insiders.
Surely, dignity exists with respect to the public realm? Somewhere?
Commissioners should drop any and all schemes for more development in downtown Miami until the transit problems are fixed. Not one more dollar.
The only redeeming quality of SPAMM -- that's the Sr. Perez Art Museum of Miami -- is its architecture. (By that standard, the Performing Arsht Center isn't even on the measuring stick.)
Driving to Miami Beach on the causeway one could view the Herzog de Meuron design from afar while sighing that it is impossible to reach by car. There's the problem with downtown Miami, and we saw it coming from a thousand yards away: transit is a nightmare.
A nightmare by design.
For as long as I've lived in Miami (early 1990s), the surrender of the public realm -- that is to say, Biscayne Bay -- has been the de facto standard for decisions by local elected officials. And while I'm on a tear, here: what do foreign investors (seeking EB5 visas or otherwise) care about the aesthetic of downtown Miami? They don't unless their condo views are being blocked! The only people who care are residents: we are taxpayers too!
Now the vista towards a building designed by one of the world's great modern architects is completely obscured. (I ask, as Miami New Times did just the other day, what private donors in their right mind will fund an art museum with someone else's name on it in a place no one can see?)
The monumental Frost Science Museum is tilting up against Herzog de Meuron, shoe-horned right next door. And I mean right next door.
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| Science Museum (in Construction) from Biscayne Blvd, blocking the SPAMM Art Museum. |
On a large scale, it looks like a cavernous Spanish Mediterranean contemporary built on a zero lot line plot in South Miami right next door to a glass box. And then; look across the street where the PAC looms like a design for a stealth warship tossed into the wastebasket.
What do county and city commissioners see when they take the same Biscayne Boulevard exit as I do?
Don't they see what a disaster was created by votes they made to clog inadequate roadways with billions in construction and civic monuments that look, together, awful?
Across the nation, planners should be led on civic-design-pollution-tours: Miami would be number one.
Over the weekend we wept at the suggestion that the county commission would vote on the world's largest ferris wheel somewhere down there. It would go right with the world's largest American Flag, donated? by a Miami billionaire.
And today, the county commission gets to vote on the Nail Clipper Building and the request by its developer for public money.
Elected officials put little environmental groups with hands held out for a few thousand dollars for educational grants through the wringer of Kafka-esque audits while hundreds of millions are siphoned off, without bidding, at the airport or through grants to insiders.
Surely, dignity exists with respect to the public realm? Somewhere?
Commissioners should drop any and all schemes for more development in downtown Miami until the transit problems are fixed. Not one more dollar.
15 comments:
Forget about common sense or sense of decency from the majority of the County Commission. It's all about the lobbyists. And what they want, individually and collectively. Forget about transit funding. It's about the tax monies from new condo development to pay off old debt like the port tunnel, stadiums and the underfunded PAC and PAM and Frost Science Museum. And forget about the future, where Miami faces the apocalyptic consequences of Climate Change sea level rise. Even if resilience measures like bigger water pumps could solve the flooding problem, will there be any money set aside to buy them when it's either tied up in debt payments or siphoned off by CRAs for pet projects or returned to developers as "tax credits" as in the case of Miami Workd Center.
Forget about design, how about just the fact that this another backroom deal with pie in the sky promises shilled by an army of lobbyists, attorneys and con men, which NO ONE from the public sector has ever vetted. (Private analysis say this is destine to epic fail)
Instead the mayor just cuts and pastes Jeffery's math challenged sales brochure promises, adds a bunch of "whereas"s and calls it due diligence.
And how Jeffery can stand in the well and say he never misled the public says all you need to know about this deal and it's leadership.
The Science Museum looks like a prison with those little windows.
It's all about Friends and Family with the majority of the. Commission and the. Mayor. If any of them had true vision and a commitment to what was promised in the GOB, they would have clearly defined specific target areas where the $75 million grants would be focused. by being vague it's nothing more than a give away.
The Miami Art Museum Board of Directors promised to raise $120 Million from private donors. They failed. Its endowment is pennies, plus some pledges they will never collect. What collector will ever donate art to a building with condo salesman Perez on the wall? Now the view of Biscayne Bay is blocked by the overly tall concrete buildings.
One positive about the museums in the park is we got half the public park back. For now.
Remember all of these complaints at election time. Only 18% of us vote and at least 10% of those who do vote do not follow the issues or give away their absentee ballots to campaign managers. Start by voting against the greatest corruptor in this town, Carlos Gimenez, and work your way through the commission.
Miami made an epic mistake giving museum naming rights to a condominium developer. Nobody enforces building codes on the interior of units.
Audrey Edmonson just insulted her constituents and voted Yes to give $9 Mil to SkyRise...
Someone needs to run against Audrey. Pepe.
not the first time Audrey vote was brought, and not the last.. She is very street smart.. votes no on close stuff just to be a needed swing vote.
and that ridiculous "who am I to say the people didn't know what they voted for" was just her FU.
County and city commissioners are squandering whatever windfall in tourist and real estate taxes they have been given in trust in this latest boom. When it all collapses, we will have nothing to show for it because there will not have been the proper investments made in hard and soft "infrastructure"- " transit, water and sewer, educational and job training, affordable housing and assets that make communities liveable and attractive - amenities and services like public libraries and parks. Take a look at Atlantic City - when the overbuilt casino land collapsed, there were the same uneducated, impoverished and now unemployed people living in the same blighted community and now in greater debt. It's truly criminal what is happening in Miami-Dade County.
Sosa voted no? Whats that story about? Maybe Sosa is angling to be Mayor? She may be the underdog choice that would appeal county wide. With Rubio's friends she might be able to tap into some fundraising power. A little more polish for the Northern and Southern county and she might just challenge the Gimenez Machine.
Again people, this is not real economic development. It appears to just be a pass through for immigration visas, with tax money subsidizing these ventures.
Audrey really screwed up, again. Voters will remember this vote. Audrey votes Yes to give $9 Million of the taxpayers money to Jeff Berkowitz over the strenuous objections of Mayor Tomas Regalado and every one of her constituents with an IQ over 100.
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