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A War Over South ShoreSteve Muss, who built apartment houses and rescued the Fontainebleau Hotel, ran into stiff opposition when he tried to implement a controversial plan for South Shore. (MH) ~hen the halcyon 1960s began turning into the 1970s, it was becoming evident that Miami Beach was beginning to show its age, both in population and in structures--particularly south of Lincoln Road. There had been warning signals as early as April 2, 1965 when a Time magazine article--in a forerunner to its infamous "Paradise Lost" article of 1980--published a quote attributed to Doral Beach Hotel publicist Jerry Dobrin that Miami Beach was a "predominately Jewish resort." With 50,000 Baptists due in Miat'ni Beach for a convention that summer--in addition to the Miss Universe pageant--this was not an image Beach publicist Hank Meyer wanted to promote. Although the magazine article was generally positive about Miami Beach as a vacatior~ stop, Meyer saw the "Jewish resort" portion as being harmful to luring tourists from all walks of life. "For years I've been dedicated to the concept of Miami Beach as an All-American resort and [it] is contrary to the best interests of our nation, our citizens and our community to identify any area with an ethnic tag.''~ in addition to the ethnic identity, Miami Beach had an old-age identity; so much so that a Committee To Keep Greater Miami Beach Young formed in 1967 to attract younger people to live there. The Miami Beach City Council aided the committee with some money to help defray the cost 197 of making a film about young families in Miami Beach.: The committee met with some success in luring 23 families in the first six months, but the "senior citizen" image held firm. The area called the "South Shore" of Miami Beach was populated by a last generation of foreign- born elderly Jews. A study of the social and economic conditions in the area recommended that urban planners wait before doing anything about South Shore, because the existing population soon would die off enabling a fresh look at the situation without the need for significant social concerns) It is apparent that the study had little impact on those planning Miami Beach's destiny. Before a decade had passed, an overwhelming plan for South Shore had been drawn requiring a relocation of the older residents until new apartments could be constructed. It came in the form of the South Shore Redevelopment Authority, created in 19764 but contrived well before that. It also brought to center stage a New York transplant named Steve Muss who already had left his mark on Miami Beach in the hotel and apartment field but now was on a collision course with urban redevelopment and the social upheaval it sometimes brings. As the years moved along, Muss came to have an impact on Miami Beach greater than anyone since Carl Fisher. Muss, who was handling the family's New York projects while his father built in Florida, came to Miami Beach in 1961 in a role swap with his father. Alexander Muss & Sons was building homes, apartments and shopping centers in New York as early as 1952. Alexander Muss came to Miami Beach in 1961, built the first Seacoast Towers, then turned the Florida operation over to Steve.s Tall and overbearing, Muss quickly established himself in Miami Beach, particularly when he and a group he headed, rescued the Fontainebleau Hotel from bankruptcy. Ben Novack filed for personal bankruptcy in i977 after it became known that he owed his hotel $3.3 million. While Novack tried desperately to save his world-famous hotel, as well as other properties--the Sorrento Hotel and 400 acres of land west of Miami International Airport--the odds kept stacking up against him. In August 1977, Novack owed $7.4 million to creditors who did not hold mortgages or.liens on the hotel. Novack also needed to find someone who would finance a $35 million second mortgage.6 The creditors agreed to give Novack 30 days to come up with the money before the hotel was auctioned on the courthouse steps. Novack, however, was broke and on Dec. 2, 1977, his heart was broken as well. That's when the Muss team purchased the Fontainebleau in bankruptcy court for between $26.8 and $27.8 million.~ In I !)64, semor citizens filled the porches and rooms of South Beach hotels that later would be recognized as "Art Deco." Those living soutt~ of Sixth Street feared the relocation factor of South Shore Redevelopment. (MN) At that point, Muss embarked on a major renovation of the hotel and began a management deal with Hilton Hotels. Novack's Fontainebleau became the Fontainebleau-Hilton. For the first time since the hotel opened in 1954, there was a sign out front displaying the name. When Muss rescued the Fontainebleau, he already was in the midst of a huge controversy about the city's future. South Shore Redevelopment had become a factor in Miami Beach politics, and Muss was vice chairman of the redevelopment agency. What many saw in redevelopment, they did not like. There were no parades down lower Collins Avenue when Muss put his money into the Fontainebleau and kept its doors open. Residents saw him as a power broker, a man whose money could influence elections. Novack, meanwhile, could not accept the fact that the hotel was not his. He remained bitter and insisted that he be called "Mr. Fontainebleau" so that Muss could not adopt the title--if ever he wanted to.a In 1983, Novack auctioned off crates of artifacts he had remaining after his debts had been satisfied. When a reporter asked if this final sale left him sad, he replied, "The courts took all the sentiment out of me. The only things I feel bad about is what happened in general. These, these are things. Just things. Why should I be sad?''~ Novack died on April 5 at the age of 78, following a stroke. What Novack and Muss had in common, in addition to their desire to accumulate and possess, was a contempt for the media, particularly the Miami Herald. Novack often boasted that he made the Herald apologize for its 1967 claim of mobsters running the Fontainebleau, but the word "apologize" never appeared in the story the newspaper ran about the settlement of Nowick's libel suit. Muss, too, was seeing himself victimized by the press. He was Darth Vador before there was a Darth Vador.~° Muss was at the forefront of the South Shore Redevelopment Agency. When the Miami Beach City Commision gave the ad hoc committee on South Shore redevelopment the power of an Authority, it conferred the jurisdiction to condemn land, issue bonds and enter into contracts. ~ Muss was a member of the ad hoc committee and became vice chairman of the Authority. The chairman was Jim McDonnell, an executive with Andy Frain Services, a security and ushering service. Within two years, the Miami Beach City Commission purged McDonnell and appointed Muss chairman,hz As early as July 1976, with McDonnell as the helm, the less-than-six- months-old Authority had settled on a plan for its section of Miami Beach, which ran from ocean to bay and from Sixth Street to Government Cut. It was designed by Steve Siskind, brought in from San Francisco by Muss to be the full-time director of the agency. Siskind's proposal was stunning: a series of waterways or canals weaving through the entire district, with 2, t 00 new apartments on both sides of Fifth Street for people of all incomes--a proposal the agency later tried to disavow--several large hotels, smaller hotels and motels, tennis, restaurant and shopping facilities. The cost would be about $400 million with about $270 million Coming from private developers.~ The uproar could be heard all the way to Disney World. Environmentalists complained about the waterways, public officials fretted about the cost, senior citizens were traumatized over the fact that they would have to be relocated, property owners were stunned at the likelihood of a building and repair moratorium on their land and everyone seemed shocked that the plan called for razing every building south of Sixth Street, with a few exceptions such as Joe's Stone Crab. It all came at a time of an already-existing conflict between landlords and their tenants as a result of city-imposed rent controls. In 1974, the city had agreed to rent controls which dictated that the "legal maximum rent of an apartment is that rent which had been in effect on the freeze date of October The demolition o/Smith's Casino and the Beach End Hotel in 1964, marked the end of the place where much of Miami Beach's early history was made. It was also the birthplace o~ the infamous S & G Syndicate. (MN) 16, 19747 The act said landlords could apply for increases in rent only if there was mutual agreement between the landlord and tenant; or if there had been a major capitaI improvement in the property since October 16, 1973; or if there wei'e unique circumstances prevailing at the time of the rent freeze, such as substantially lower than usual rents. With no increases in their income, landlords were hesitant-- sometimes financially unable--to keep up their properties. That utopian situation for the renter came to a close in 1977 when the Miami Beach City Council voted down a proposal to extend the moratorium beyond its expiration date.is Up went the rents, as one would expect. And, at the same time, plans were made to uproot the population of South Shore in phases. For some, even what they could afford, they no longer could have. Muss, as a protagonist of the redevelopment plan, became a bogey man to many. Residents mounted emotional appeals through newspapers and at city council meetings to not be thrown out of their homes. A condominium apartment at 221 Washington Avenue, built in 1971, five years later was scheduled for demolition under the redevelopment plan? Trying to ride out the storm, Authority members listened, apologized, but continued with the plan--and altered it. The placement of 750 low- cost rental units among the 2,100 new apartments was in the original announcement in 197677 but, in 1977, some Authority members were balking at honoring that promise. Max Serchuk, a 76-year-old member of the Authority, threatened to hold up the entire project until the 750 low-cost units were authorized. By a 3-2 vote, the Authority reluctantly agreed to build the units. Voting against was chairman McDonnell, which may have been one reason that he lost his post. Also voting against it was Irwin Sawitz, married at the time to Jesse Weiss' daughter Jo Ann, and operator of Joe's Stone Crab. "I am not objecting to taking care of the people who are here now," Sawitz said, "but I'm opposed to creating a permanent burden on this city to take care of people who don't live here now--who may not even be born yet.''~ Muss, citing political pressure, voted in faw~r of the low-cost housing, as did the remaining two Authority members, Serchuk and David Klevens? The saga of South Shore moved on to the next stage in July 1978 when the South Florida Regional Planning Council gave its approval to the project after the Authority agreed to redesign the proposed canalwa¥ to prevent water stagnation and decrease tb.e prospect of hurricane damage. Construct ion was prohibited within 50 feet of the beach erosion line; residential units would be built for the people to be relocated. Additionally, the school board agreed to build a new elementary school in the district,z° More than a dozen of the biggest developers signed up by the August 1978 deadline to build all or part of the project? The Worsham Brothers of Atlanta won the contract. There was no letup in the assault on the redevelopment plan, nor was there any letup by Muss and the Authority in trying to implement it. Environmental groups continued to challenge the concept of canals, and in November 1979, the scales appeared to tip against the entire project when two opponents of redevelopment, Murray Meyerson and Mel Mendelson, won city commission seats-- Meyerson as the mayor. Mendelson owned a business in the South Shore district, one that would have to be uprooted if the plan progressed. While the Authority was bringing Worsham into the project as a partner, based on a preliminary handshake, Meyerson sought a referendum on redevelopment, while allowing existing plans for the bayfront to proceed. There was not much give elsewhere. Commissioner Alex Daoud, who was in favor of Model of South Shore Rede~;elopment plan called for almost complete razing of the area and a network of man-made canals (MN) Card Cubnno and guayberas added a new element to the continuing t~ ansfc;rmation o)Miami Beach Large numbers of C'.uban refugees arrived there in 1980. (NIH) redevelopment, was facing a recall campaign as opponents bought full-page ads calling for his ouster. And former city attorney Joe Wanick was preparing a lawsuit on behalf of the Taxpayers, Homeowners and Tenents Protective Association that would challenge even the bayside compromise alloxved by Meyerson in his call for a referendum,z2 As the calendar turned to mid- 1980, there was an unexpected tidal wave of new people arriving in Miami Beach. They weren't particularly welcome. They were Marie[ refugees. Most of them simply were fleeing communism but with them came a good number of criminals whom Fidel Castro released from jail to send to the U.S. With South Beach in a decaying situation (the building moratorium was in effect) many previous residents had moved out and were replaced by the refugees, many of whom were settled there by public agencies. Between the arrival of the Mariel refugees, who were seen by many as inferior to the first wave of Cuban refugees, and the outbreak of a riot across the bay in Liberty City, the entire area was taking a terrible pounding in the press. That's when Time magazine dropped its bomb on Greater Miami's image with its "Paradise Lost" cover story. For people planning a revitalization of Miami Beach, the bad press coupled with a rising crime rate on South Beach, particularly muggings of older people, did not help with luring investors to the project. In 1981, Miami Beach Commissioner Simon Wikler proposed the abolishment of the redevelopment agency, witt~ the city taking over the project and scaling it down considerably, This came just as the agency was planning a $15 million bond sale to begin the first phase of construction, South Shore Marina.z~ The continuing debate and challenges to redevelopment wore Muss down; he threw up his hands in frustration and retreated to his hotel, declaring that he was thr~mgh with public ventures. He wanted to be left alone, particularly by the press. "I don't call the press the Fourth Estate," he said, "I call it the Fifth Column.''z4 The death knell for the South Shore plan came on December 13, 1982, when the Authority admitted that redevelopment, as envisioned by its planners, never would take place. "This is probably the end of redevelopment as ~ve hoped it would be for the last seven years," commented acting agency chairman Marwin Cassel.2s "This is just what I expected," said Mayor Norman Ciment. "We don't need an agency for redevelopment. We can have redevelopment in South Beach through a rezoning plan and private enterprise.''z6 Within the week, the city commission voted to lift the building moratorium. The battle had ended but the battlefield reflected the clashes of the previous eight years. Buildings were in an unrepaired state, vacant lots ~vere overgrown with weeds, the population had changed dramatically. Meanwhile, Muss had become the largest property holder in Miami Beach, as well as the biggest taxpayer. He had placed the Fontainebleau-Hilton back atop the pedestal of world-class hotels, and now was appealing to tourist-oriented businessmen with what he believed to be an overhaul of South Beach that would bring tourists back to the area by the millions. Despite his detractors, the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce honored Muss in 1979 as the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce's "Man of the Year." One of those who did not speak on Muss' behalf was Mayor Jay Dermer. "I think he has control of the commission," Dermer gruffed. "Anything Muss wants, Muss gets.''27 Must insisted his goal "was to make a statement for Miami Beach that ~vill be heard around the world and to recreate Miami Beach as a world-class resort, the Fontainebleau-Hilton making an immediate statement and redevelopment making a somewhat longer-range statement.''2s Much of Muss' woes could be blamed on his gruffi~ess, his insistence on having it all his way. He was discredited for what people did not like about him but rarely credited for what good he did for the community, as a developer, a taxpayer and as a civic activist. Dr. Leonard Haber, a psychologist who also was on the City Commission and was previously mayor, assessed the years of Muss' public activity: "We rarely get a glimpse of a man like Steve Muss, yet with Muss we've had three full- length movies .... He's made himself available to public scrutiny, whether it be denigration or respect, and he's certainly ignited the gamut of feelings in people, from the most positive to the most negative. He's afforded the public an unusual long view into the personality and ambition and workings of a very immense figure, normally a very private figure.''~9 To keep pace with the rest of the country, the Miami Beach Convention Hall expanded in the '80s. The city commission honored Muss by renaming the building for him: The Stephen Muss Convention Center. It was to honor the man for his lobbying efforts with the state to permit a local tax to pay for The Hilton Plaza Hotel, opened in 1967, is credited with being the last major hotel built in Miami Beach. Now essentially a condominium, it is on its seventh different name: the Castle Beach Club. (MN; HASF) the center's expansion, and also to provide the City of Miami with funds to build a sports arena)° The decision was reached without a public hearing. Mussphobia was ressurected. A petition to restore the original name was signed by more than 6,500 Miami Beach residents. Shortly before a referendum vote was to be taken in 1989, Mayor Alex Daoud reported that Muss had contacted him and requested that his name be removed from the building.3~ Demographics, lifestyles, fortunes and names were changing elsewhere in Miami Beach. For one, the era of the "Hotel of the Year" had come to an end. When the Hilton Plaza opened in December 1967, few expected that it would be the last major Miami Beach hotel built for decades to come but that is what it turned out to be. (Some may argue that the Alexander, which opened as a hotel in 1983, was the last but the Alexander was built in 1963--as the Seacoast Towers North Apartments. Muss converted the apartments to a hotel with a $35 million renovation.) Not only were there no new hotels, but many apartment house owners began converting their buildings to condominiums at a time--the late '70s--when renters in South Beach were seeking new rentals in order to vacate the decaying district. At a state legislative hearing held in Miami Beach in 1979 regarding condo conversion, State Representative Hal Spaet, a former member of the city commission, testified that Miami Beach residents over the age of 65 had the highest suicide rate in the U.S. He blamed it on "loneliness, isolation, the tensions of living on a fixed income and the feat of being uprooted from their homes.''~2 The soaring rental rates north of Lincoln Road, the prevalence of recently-arrived Cuban refugees in the southern portion, the conversion of existing apartment houses to condos and the decline of major hotels contributed to tough years for Miami Beach. So much was tentative. A case in point was the odyssey of what started out as the Hilton Plaza Hotel at 54th Street and Collins Avenue in 1967. After the first year oftl~e hotel's existence, the owners ended their franchise agreement with Hilton and changed the name to the Hotel Plaza. Behind that name was a cost-savings effort to retain the same initials, as all the dishes, cups and towels were inscribed with the initials "HP." In August 1970, the hotel was sold to Hugh Hefner, who renamed it the Playboy Plaza. Hefner held on to it for three years, then sold it to Harold Konover, who brought in Hyatt to manage it as the Hyatt Konover. Within a year, Konover ended the relationship with Hyatt and modified the name to the "Konover." After becoming ill, Konover sold the hotel to Miami Beach Commissioner Abe Hirschfeld, who brought in the Premier hotel chain to run it as the Castle Hotel. The relationship between Hirschfeld and the Premier was just as brief as other relationships regarding the hotel. Hirschfeld--whose reign as owner of the hotel was just as stormy as was his time as a Miami Beach City Commissioner and as, briefly, publisher of the New York Post--sold the Castle to Crescent Heights, Inc., a condo conversion specialist outfit run by Russell Galbut and Sonny Kahn. The hotel was renamed the Castle Beach Club and converted into a condominium, with a hotel component remaining but under the ownership of HI Development Corp.~3 The advent of condominium living in Miami Beach began with the Carriage House in the 1960s and spread like wildfire. Hotel owners were caught unaware of the danger. Condominiums took away winter guests from their hotels. Rather than fly to Miami Beach for a few weeks in a hotel, they purchased condos and spent time there whenever they cared to, getting the same view and the same beach. In addition, many Northern businessmen were able to write off much of their Miami Beach condo costs by sending business prospects to their condos and charging it off on their taxes as a business expense. Just prior to the condo explosion, business at Miami Beach hotels was excellent. "When business is good," commented Stu Blumberg, president of the Miami Beach Hotel Resort Association, "you don't see what's coming up from behind you. By 1972, you could see there was a softening of the hotel business.''~ An expansion of the Convention Center for the national political conventions of 1972 brought other conventions to Miami Beach. But the world was getting smaller. Jet airliners now made it easier to go elsewhere. New competitive markets were opening: the Bahamas, the Caribbean. A New Yorker could fly to San Juan, with its different culture, for not much more than it cost to fly to Miami Beach--and San Juan was not subject to an occasional cool front in the winter as was Miami Beach. To counter that, tourist industry people created package tours that made it cheaper and more convenient for the Northern tourist to go to Miami Beach. Then Disney World came to Orlando. The odds were stacking up against Miami Beach. By the late '70s, the Convention Hall again was seen as too small compared to convention centers in competing cities, the hotel product was becoming old, and when Novack went bankrupt, it appeared the bottom was dropping out. Also, crime became an issue in Miami Beach. Statistics showed that in- season tourism was down 10 percent from 1982 to 1983 and 25 per cent from 1981 and that only 35 percent of available hotels rooms were taken during the 1983 summer months)s Mayor Norman Ciment blamed the Visitor and Convention Authority for not doing its job well and Bob Dickinson, chairman of the VCA, countered by laying the blame on "the provincialism and parochialism of people like Mayor Ciment.''~6 The hotel industry blamed the decline on a drop in business from Great Britain and Latin America and a domestic tourist market that did not recover from the publicity of Liberty City and Mariel. "It's the worst I've ever seen," Leonard (Doc) Baker, president of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, was quoted. "Our hotel people are desperate??The Sea Isle closed down, the Sea Gull closed for the summer for the first time in a decade, the Barcelona shut down temporarily. "It's like a cemetery," complained Max Berger of the Welworth Hotel? South Beach tenements housed what was perceived by many to be the breeding ground of crimes perpetrated by Mariel refugees. Police answered 57 calls and made 36 arrests in a five- months period at just one apartment house on Jefferson Avenue)9 In the neighborhoods of South Beach, the elderly became terrorized, practically every time they heard someone speaking in Spanish. Dickinson's condemnation of the soon-to-be one- term Ciment being provincial and parochial had come on the heels of a plan by the mayor to put up roadblocks to keep Mariel refugees out of Miami Beach. "The city attorney tells me that as long as we stop every car on the causeways, we do it legally?© Ciment's proposed ordinance got nowhere. The idea was universally ridiculed as being as being even more detrimental to Miami Beach's image. Crime, indeed, Right: One of the few successes of the Sou~h Shore Redevel- opmen~ plan was the mandated new South Pointe Elementary Schoot. (MH) Below: South Pointe Towers, built on the site of the Miami Beach Dog Track, stands as a singular beacon in ~he >romising but yet un/ulfllled South Shore. (MH) was prevalent, but looking for a scapegoat was not going to cure it. The fear Ciment, and most people in Miami Beach, had about the Mariel refugees was not necessarily unfounded but out of proportion. Of the 1,307 Hispanics arrested in Miami Beach for crimes such as homicide, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, theft and arson during 1981 and 1982--the period when many Marielitos were released from jail and came to the Beach--only 144 were Mariel refugees.4~ But the pereception persisted, both locally and internationally. Just when it was thought that Miami Beach was buried, it arose from the ashes from a direction no one ever expected. It had its beginnings in the fierce dedication of a woman named Barbara Capitman. At the time, she had no idea what she was starting. A HISTORY B Y H 0 W A R D K L E I N B E R g Chapters ! The Long Sandbar 2 The Coconut Plantation 3 John Collins' Avocado Grove 4 "Meet Me In Miami... Nice Little Town" 5 A Town Is Created 6 The Early Hotels 7 The Flamingo Hotel 8 "A Regular American Of The Approved Type" 1 9 17 27 37 49 59 69 PHOTO EDITOR: Arva Moore Parks CURRENT PHOTOGRAPHER: John Oiilan EDITORS: Donna K. Born Martha Reiner ART DIRECTION/BOOK DESIGN: James Kitchens PROaECT DmEC'rOR: Regina Dodd Miami Beach: A History is an official project of Miami Centennial '96 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUE CARD Number: 94-068440 ISBN: 0-9629402-3-2 ~ Copyright 1994 by Howard Kleinberg Published by Centennial Press P. O. Box 011830, Miami, Florida 33101-1830