Monday, March 17, 2014

Al Crespo Speaks Out on Skyrise Miami. By Geniusofdespair

Skyrise Miami

Al Crespo, blogger, sounds off:






Eye on Miami does not necessarily agree with these video. Personally, I have not given it one iota of thought yet.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Al Crespo has E-mails and documents posted on his website/blog. It appears Jeff Berkowitz wants money and land from the taxpayers to build his 1,000' tower. As many people know, the proposed site is on the water and it is owned by the taxpayers.

Anonymous said...

It says that in the videos...

Anonymous said...

Miami is still king of tourist revenue scams. All these projects use public land and are now lobbying the state. developers should be thought of a meth heads. You don't want to do business with them.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, Jeff Berkowitz is one of Mayor Carlos Gimenez's "best friends". We might choose not to do business with Jeff Berkowitz but Carlos Gimenez will give away our taxpayer owned land and our tax dollars. City of Miami politicians are co-conspiritors.

Al Crespo said...

Hi Genius,

Thanks for posting my videos.

Let me simply my arguments.

1. A developer whose goal is to build a private, commercial project that he repeatedly stated would be built with private funds now wants the State of Florida - and the taxpayers - to help finance its construction.

2. No one knows how much money he wants - not even folks in Tallahassee, whom I've been in touch with. The amount of money being sought is a secret.

3. The building will be built on city owned waterfront property that is already leased to another company - the Bayside Marketplace folks - which means that this 1000 foot tall, $430 million building is going to be built on land obtained through a sub-lease.

4. There are no documents that I've been able to find that indicate whether this project will pay Impact Fees, and don't think that every project - especially all those high-rise condos and office building have paid Impact Fees, because some of them haven't, and almost all of the rest paid fees lower that what their impact to our qualify of life required that they pay.

5. The public records in the possession of City of Miami officials - specifically the Facilities Management Department - related to this project have been purposely withheld, as evidenced in Part II of my video where I detail the steps that I've had to take so far to get only a portion of the documents that HAVE to exist in order for this project to go forward.

6. The local news media, starting with Miami Today and the Miami Herald have failed to adequately report on this project - especially this effort by Berkowitz to go after public money after he stated that he wasn't going to do so - and consequently for the most part have acted as PR flacks instead of journalists.

There is absolutely no difference between Jeffrey Berkowitz wanting public money for this project and Steven Ross wanting public money for Sun Life Stadium, or Loria wanting public money for the Marlin's stadium or David Beckam wanting either public money or public land for his stadium.

I'm not opposed to any of these project, but I am opposed to the taxpayers having to pay the tab, given the myriad of serious problems that we have in this county that impact negatively on our quality of life.

That's where public money should and needs to be spent, not on a 1000 foot observation tower that Berkowitz expects to make him and his other investors gobs of money!

Thanks,

al crespo


Anonymous said...

Geez, just look up Berkowitz a on any incumbents campaign disclosure and you will find thousands of dollars in donations to just about everyone.

Anonymous said...

I believe Mr. Crespo also had some past concerns about the State of Florida’s involvement with the Film Industry.
He was one of the very few in the State of FL, and one of the loudest voices opposed to FL Film Tax Credits.
Apparently Governor Scott agreed with him and pulled out most of those FL Film Tax Credits that once helped
enormously to fuel Film and TV production here. As a result Georgia, Louisiana and Canada are now the
beneficiaries of the Film Industry, while Florida and especially Miami have significantly lost out.
For many reasons, we can only hope that Governor Scot is not reelected. Perhaps the next Governor will be
considerably wiser and reestablish FL Film Tax Credits for the benefit of our film industry and economy.

Anonymous said...

Dear Anonymous,

Contrary to your comments, while I was, and still am, opposed to tax incentives not only for the film industry but for a lot of other supposed economic development activities, I have not been engaged in that fight for the last 7 years, so anything that Governor Scott has done has not had anything to do with me.

I would suggest though that there are now a sizable number of folks, including economists and folks in public policy think tanks who agree with my original position.

Now, it wouldn't take me much to get back into that fight, so if you and any of your friends want to go down that road, you just take your best shot at fucking with me over this, because I've now got a blog with thousands of folks who visit it - including politicians in Tallahassee - and like I said, there are a lot of folks - and a sizable number of economic studies that I can draw on to do my best to help stop anymore incentives for the movie industry - which by the way has done serious and permanent damage to the local infrastructure.

al crespo

PS: How come you're such a coward that you were afraid to identify yourself????

Anonymous said...

Why should taxpayers subsidize the film industry? So they can tie up traffic all over the city for their ridiculous shoots even worse than they do now? Let them go to Canada, Romania, and where ever else.

Anonymous said...

Beerkowitz and his PR flacks promised he would fund the construction cost using private sector money. Now we learn he is trying to get taxpayers to pay. He never even bought or leased the site...