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1675-24 Raleigh Hotel of 6, 2 Terms mn PERRY RIVKIND FINDS A NEW WAY 10/16/1984 THE MIAMI NEWS Copyright (c) 1984, The Miami News DATE: Tuesday, October 16, 1984 EDITION: THREE-STAR SECTION: PAGE 1 PAGE: lA LENGTH: 177 lines ILLUSTRATION: Perry Rivkind doesn't fit the mold of a bureaucrat: To detainees in Krome detention camp, INS director Perry Rivkind lends a willing ear (The Miami News - BILL REINKE) SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: KAREN PAYNE and MARILYN A. MOORE Miami News Reporters PERRY RIVKIND FINDS A NEW WAY The first day on the job, Perry Rivkind encountered a prison-like gate of iron bars that separated his office from the public elevator. "I didn't know whether the people were locked out -- or I was locked in, " said Rivkind, Miami district director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Anyway, I couldn't stand those bars. " Rivkind ordered the bars knocked down, in a move that has proved to be typical of his approach to his mission in Miami: Making INS more people-oriented. For example: * He personally reviews many deportation cases. In some instances, Rivkind has overruled State Department recommendations and has overturned or delayed deportations. Just yesterday, he ordered his staff to unite an 8-year-old Haitian boy with his mother in South Florida -- after the boy had already been sent back to Haiti for trying to enter the United States illegally. * For the first time in years, the director has allowed aliens to bring gripes directly to him. He opened his office to businessmen having trouble getting visas for overseas employees. "If someone has a severe problem, no one will be turned away, " he said. * He took on a local towing service after watching tow truck operators lie in wait for unsuspecting aliens who parked in the shopping center across the street from the immigration office at Northwest 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard. * He made his staff available to reporters, instead of forcing the media to rely solely on a public relations man. He cracked jokes. He made speeches. And he has helped to humanize and modernize one of the most antiquated federal agencies in Miami. "I always had the belief that government business is public business, " Rivkind said. "Government service is public service. I really believe that, and I always have. We should run this office openly and with respect for the other people. " So far, it's working well for Rivkind, who capped a 17-year government career spanning five federal agencies by returning to his hometown of Miami for the INS job. Even immigration attorneys -- traditionally the immigration service's harshest critics -- acknowledge improvements since Rivkind arrived 10 months ago. It's still hard to get requests approved, according to Philip Zyne, president of the local chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. He says Miami is the toughest spot in the country for aliens to get approval of what they want. "But under (Rivkind) the attitude of the officers has improved greatly, " Zyne said. "Now when they deny requests, they deny them with a smile." "He's doing real well, " said Steve Mander, another immigration lawyer. "I have noticed a change in attitude . . . It's just been kind of like a cold war until now, not knowing which side started it or on which side it was justified. He came to town and said this has got to end. He's taken remarkable steps and he's taken his goal very far. I see a better attitude on the part of all parties concerned. They're more congenial, more professional, and it's easier to do business. " INS Commissioner Alan Nelson in Washington said Rivkind seemed the "ideal choice" to head the Miami district after Joe Howerton, its former director, retired last year. "His mission was to go and apply his talents to doing the job and be sure we were doing the best we could, " Nelson said. "I was aware of a lot of concerns, and that clearly one thing for him to do was to open up better communications with the press and business community . . . He is not a career INS officer. He was chosen for his management skills. " Rivkind describes himself as a "career bureaucrat, " but he doesn't fit the stereotype. He once considered a professional boxing career. To unwind on vacations, he and his wife embark on 1, 000-mile trips on Rivkind's "hog" -- a 1200 c.c. Harley- Davidson motorcycle. The biggest problem Rivkind encountered when he took over in Miami was an agency "under siege." "Things were closed here, to the media and to the public, " Rivkind said. "I think people here felt under siege, and rightly so. They were probably blamed for a lot of things beyond their control, the illegal alien problem and problems here in Miami. They felt the brunt of it, with people asking why were there such long lines? Why can't you serve the public more efficiently? So everyone kind of withdrew. The public didn't really know what we do." Under Rivkind, the agency has tried to "become more friendly. " "That doesn't mean that everyone who seeks service is going to get what they want. If we did, I'd be worried that we were giving the store away. But it's up to us to try to improve service, and devise new methods and techniques. " Among those techniques is a new requirement that certain applications be mailed in. That means delays for aliens seeking service, but cuts down the number of people standing in line, he said. Rivkind believes that the image that INS officials are quick to deny immigration claims is unjust. He said 93 to 94 percent of all applications processed in Miami are approved. Nonetheless, 90 to 95 percent of political asylum claims are turned down -- because the INS is following State Department recommendations. "It's never going to be perfect, " Rivkind said. "Certain people are going to be upset, and we're going to deport some people. But that's what the law requires if you're not qualified to be in the United States. People get angry, but that's the law. " Still, Rivkind wants the agency to be more "humanitarian" and to that end, he has gotten personally involved in some immigration cases. For instance, he forced an immigration attorney to refund $3,500 charged to an alien in the Krome detention camp. Rivkind said the attorney promised the alien freedom, something that he knew he couldn't deliver. The alien was deported, but Rivkind saw to it that he wasn't penniless. Another time, Rivkind saw a Haitian man standing in the parking lot of the INS building. "He was totally confused, " Rivkind said. "He said he'd been waiting for two days to get a number (in line) and each time they ran out of numbers just before he got there. He was almost in tears. I had him come up to my office and handled it myself." In yesterday's case, involving the 8-year-old Haitian child who was sent home by an INS airport employee, Rivkind was so disturbed he took extraordinary measures to try to bring the boy back to the United States and began looking into disciplinary proceedings against the employee. "You generally do not send children back like that, " he said. "You don't put them on a plane and ship them back. There's a certain hazard and risk to the child. What's the rush to do such a thing? "The whole issue is that if a government agency does something incorrectly, the government has to correct it. So I corrected it, I hope. " Rivkind insists that he's not going soft on immigration laws. "Immigration has to be controlled vigorously, but you can individualize cases, " he said. "We do enforce immigration laws. There are 530 people at Krome that are aware of that. But you have to do it with humanity, with common sense. " Rivkind, 54, was a Dade police officer and chief investigator for the Dade State Attorney's office before moving to Washington, D.C. , to work for the federal government. Rivkind's older brother, Leonard, is a Dade circuit judge. In Washington, Rivkind served as executive assistant to the director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, as assistant director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and headed the Justice Department's anti-terrorism unit. He joined the INS in 1981 as associate commissioner for management. Rivkind's family emigrated from Russia in the late 1800s. Born in Boston on Jan. 22, 1930, he came to Miami in 1943. He lived and worked in the Raleigh Hotel, which his family owned during the years it was one of the first-class resorts in Miami Beach. His teens were spent at the hotel, where the guests included high-ranking politicians from the U.S. and abroad, theater people and wealthy tourists. The lure of working at the hotel was so great that he dropped out of high school in the 10th grade. He finished high school while serving in the Army during the Korean War, going on for a bachelor's degree in criminology from Florida State. He got a master's degree in human behavior from Florida Atlantic University while working swing shifts as a Dade cop. During the early 1950s, Rivkind was a middleweight boxer. He fought exhibition bouts at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach and at other clubs and considered turning pro. He still works out with weights and punching bags to stay in shape. Rivkind was running his own hotel, the Tropics, when he met his wife, Dolores, a singer and dancer. "She came in and asked to rent a room," he jokes. "I liked her so much I rented her a room for 30 years. " They have two children, Bob, a 28-year-old attorney in Houston, and Valerie Kirk, who lives in Hallandale. Although he is on the one hand interested in humanizing his agency, he remains serious about immigration problems, about "getting control of our borders. " He gets fired up talking about the controversial Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill, which proposed broad immigration reforms but died in Congress last week, particularly because he feels that a proposed $1,000 fine for any employer who knowingly hires an illegal alien was not enough of a deterrent. He is furious at "political demagogues" who have presented the bill as anti-democratic. "If it was up to me, the penalty for employer sanctions would be more severe, " he said. "These people are violating the law. Why reward them? You're arresting the illegal alien, but not the employer . . . It's rather ludicrous. " Rivkind calls Simpson-Mazzoli "benign, decent and democratic. " He says that fears of a national identity card are "hypocritical" because identification is already required to cash a check or obtain credit. But he acknowledges the bill will probably not discourage illegal immigration. "There's no magic wand that's going to be waved to stop aliens from coming to the U.S.," he said. "I think there's going to be a dramatic push of people coming here, from places like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where the middle-class can't make money, and from nations where there's tremendous poverty. " KEYWORDS: ALIEN REFUGEE TAG: 8401310500 5 of 6, 2 Terms mn UNUSED ALARM SLOWED AID IN BEACH FIRE 04/23/1984 THE MIAMI NEWS Copyright (c) 1984, The Miami News DATE: Monday, April 23, 1984 EDITION: THREE-STAR SECTION: INSIDE LOCAL PAGE: 4A LENGTH: 95 lines ILLUSTRATION: FIREMAN LEADS DELANO HOTEL RESIDENTS TO SAFETY (Delaney) SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: MARVA YORK Miami News Reporter UNUSED ALARM SLOWED AID IN BEACH FIRE Failure to pull a fire alarm last night in a blaze which ran through an Art Deco hotel filled with 150 elderly residents might have been costly, according to Miami Beach's top fire official. Fire Chief John Reed said the failure of on-duty managers to pull the alarm at the Delano Hotel, 1685 Collins Ave., caused a five- to seven-minute delay in the firefighters' response. Reed said some of the "extensive" damage to the 12-story Art Deco hotel could have been avoided if firemen had been summoned by an alarm instead of a telephone. The cause of the blaze had not been determined by late morning, nor had the damage estimate. "The fire department pulled the alarm (when units arrived on the scene) . I can't answer why it wasn't pulled earlier," Reed said. Delano Hotel owner Cyrus Mehr declined comment. Five residents suffering from smoke inhalation were taken to area hospitals -- two of them were admitted in fair condition -- and about 20 more were treated on the scene, authorities said. Fifteen firefighters were also treated on the scene for exhaustion and smoke inhalation, said Miami Beach police spokesman Howard Zeifman. South Shore Hospital emergency room doctors admitted two victims. Two others were taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center, where officials reported that one woman refused treatment while another was treated and was expected to be released. Their names were not released. Smoke from the fire, which was reported shortly before 10 p.m. , filled several floors as residents climbed down stairwells to safety. "I didn't expect to spend my vacation standing in the streets of Florida, with a big audience and a towel wrapped around my head, " said resident Helen Friedman. Wearing a nightgown and a bathrobe, Friedman, a Brooklyn resident who spends five months a year in Miami Beach, said, "I was in bed watching 4 television when the fire alarms went off. We had no idea what was happening. Then, the firefighters came up and asked us to evacuate." Zeifman said the fire, which required about 80 Beach and Miami firefighters, was contained inside a shaft within the building's interior, with the exception of a couple of rooms that were destroyed by fire or flooded with water. Zeifman said firefighters arrived at the hotel at about 10 p.m. after receiving a telephone call from a hotel manager asking them to investigate a fire in the building. When the fire alarm finally was pulled, it did sound in the building, Zeifman said. "Two fire crews arrived and split up, " Zeifman said. "One crew started in the basement and worked their way up and another crew started on the roof and worked their way down until they met in the middle, on the fifth floor." Zeifman said the firefighters discovered the blaze on the fifth floor inside a metal shaft of some kind, possibly for air-conditioning, located near a closet that held linens, mattresses or maid's supplies. He said building managers, who had telephoned fire officials, thought the blaze had begun on the roof because that's where the air-conditioning system had fanned most of the smoke. When the fire spread upward along the shaft from the fifth floor to the 10th floor, fire officials said utility crews were called and asked to shut off power to the building. The 150 evacuees -- some barefoot as they stood in the cool night air dressed in wet clothing -- were offered oxygen, chairs, blankets and other forms of assistance from police, paramedics, a fire chaplain and the Greater Miami Code One Association, a group that hands out doughnuts and coffee at large fires. Many of the homeless spent the night in the Catalina Hotel, 1732 Collins Ave., which also is owned by Mehr. Others were taken in at the Raleigh Hotel, 1777 Collins Ave., when the Catalina Hotel filled up, evacuees said. Police said Red Cross officials had been notified that hotel residents and guests wouldn't be allowed to re-enter their rooms and apartments for at least 48 hours and were asked to help find temporary lodging. "I thought something was wrong when my television became snowy," recalled Sally Ruth Mindlin, a snowbird from Queens who is a beach resident for five months out of the year. Goldie Redder, of the Bronx, said she was "scared of the wet steps because they were slippery" as firefighters helped her downstairs. Jack Schwartz, whose 82-year-old mother, Margaret Eisen, is a 10th-floor resident of the hotel, said Eisen was one of the victims treated at Mount Sinai. Schwartz, who is visiting from Toronto, Canada, said it was the second time and possibly the third time in two months that he has known about a fire in the Delano. Schwartz said he summoned fire officials twice to the hotel in March to investigate a fire in the elevator shaft of the building and a week later to investigate when he smelled something burning in the hotel. Fire chief Reed confirmed that fire officials had been dispatched to the Delano on March 14 when they doused a piece of carpet that had been set afire in the elevator shaft, possibly from a discarded cigarette butt. On March 19, firefighters found no fire despite smelling a smoke in the Delano's lobby, Reed said, adding that the two calls in March were "minor incidents" not uncommon among buildings in the row of hotels strung along Collins Avenue in South Beach. KEYWORDS: FIRE DEFECT CAUSE ELDERLY MB DELAY TAG: 8401110717 100-ROOM DECO HOTEL FETCHES $2.95 MILLION 09/02/1991 THE MIAMI HERALD Copyright (c) 1991, The Miami Herald DATE: Monday, September 2, 1991 EDITION: FINAL SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 17BM LENGTH: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: photo: NETHERLANDS HOTEL SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: MICHAEL Y. CANNON Herald Columnist MEMO: REAL ESTATE 100-ROOM DECO HOTEL FETCHES $2.95 MILLION NETHERLANDS Inc. has purchased the 100-unit Art Deco Netherlands Hotel built in 1936 at 1330 Ocean Dr., Miami Beach, for $2.95 million, or $29,500 per room. The seller was Florida Hotel Corp., represented by Kenneth F. Zarrilli Jr. , president. Prior sale was in April 1990 for a reported $2.45 million, or $24,500 per room. County National Bank of South Florida provided a loan of $1,715,000, dated April 1990. The oceanfront property, built in 1936, is assessed by the Dade County property appraiser's office for $2,003,431, or $20,034 per room. Bank resells office First Nationwide Bank has resold a three-story office building at 11601 Biscayne Blvd. for $500,000, or $18.66 per square foot. Buying the 26,789-square-foot property, built in 1973, are William and Alam Lea Berke of North Miami Beach. The building is assessed by the Dade County property appraiser's office for $1,340,550, or $50.04 per square foot. First Nationwide took title to the property in December 1990. It paid a nominal price to the borrower and former owner of the building, 11601 Biscayne Boulevard Corp., whose principal was Jack Bergman. Bergman's company purchased the property in November 1984 for a reported $1,435,000, or $53.57 per square foot. First Nationwide's loan was $815, 000. Prior sales of the property were in December 1980 for $1.25 million, or $46.66 per square foot; in December 1977 for $1.1 million, or $41.06 per square foot; and in September 1974 for $1.15 million, or $42.93 per square foot.