"New" Tropic Magazine: Perplexed ... by gimleteye

NOTE TO READERS: I regret the attribution of New Tropic to Miami Herald ownership. Sorry for the confusion. Gimleteye

Hello,

I'm the editor at The New Tropic, following up on my comment on the blog.

Could you please correct the post in regards to linking us to the Miami Herald?

This is what it says:

"I'm not a reader of the Herald's online venture, New Tropic, unless someone sends me an article as was the case last night with "The Coconut Grove we love is getting wiped out."

We have no connection to the Miami Herald. No overlap in staff, funding, etc. Better description would be "I'm not a reader of the new local online venture, The New Tropic..."

Additionally, there are some criticisms in the piece that are based on the assumption we're connected to the Herald. I would appreciate some clarification on those.

We've covered these issues in the Grove a bit previously, in case you missed it:
https://thenewtropic.com/historic-preservation-coconut-grove/
https://thenewtropic.com/west-grove-development/

Thanks for reading,
Ariel

I'm not a reader of the Herald's online venture, New Tropic, unless someone sends me an article as was the case last night with "The Coconut Grove we love is getting wiped out."

Miami has always felt a little like the “wild west,” a place where law and good taste take a backseat to the highest bidder. But the Grove is the ancient pearl inside the fly-by-night city—a world-wonder with a rich history and lush landscape that is worth protecting and preserving for future generations.

We agree with the principled view of protecting and preserving for future generations. Yes we can! But let's be clear with respect to Coconut Grove's and the conversion of canopy to McMansion tendencies visible through Coral Gables, South Miami and Pinecrest as well: that train left the station a long, long time ago. (A-Rod's sideline construction business just destroyed a beautiful canopied couple of acres in South Miami.)

First of all: Miami isn't the wild west. For as long as I've lived here, about twenty five years, Miami has been the Hong Kong of Latin America.

I mean that in the sense of a city driven by massive and mostly anonymous foreign capital, bundled into untraceable LLC's, energizing suburban sprawl in wetlands and condo canyons.

In the 1960's Coconut Grove, by all accounts, was a pearl of a community. Cocowalk blew that up the way Bayside blew up the promise of downtown Miami.

There were plenty of objectors at the time. Afterwards, you had wealthy bankers and developers who threatened neighborhood activists with SLAP suits and who controlled the city of Miami politicians through powerful lobbyists like the black hats at Greenberg Traurig.

The Miami Herald editorial staff never set out to draw a bright line to protect Coconut Grove or anywhere else. The media offered no push-back, because push-back harms profits. Complainers, for example, like Armando Codina and Sergio Pino who famously invited themselves into the Herald newsroom to address reporters (or to dress them down).

History does count. We are happy at EOM to hand over our vomit buckets to "New" Tropic, or, you could just read our archives.