#1143 The Evolution of South Beach article The Miami Herald July 15, 2007The evolution of South Beach - 07/15/2007 -MiamiHerald.com
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Posted on Sun, Jul. 15, 2007 email print reprint or license
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The evolution of South Beach
BY LYDIA MARTIN
Imartin@MiamiHerald.com
Twenty years ago, South Beach was ~ .
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a tired seaside village best known °~
for Scarface drug deals and flocks of ~~ ' ~~ ~°~~' _
retired people rocking on the front b;n ~ ~ ~r 1
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porches of decrepit hotels. ,
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But a fight to save the old buildings ~ 9-' ~ • ' ~ ~ m ~ ~ ~'
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helped fuel a renaissance. `~ ~' ~- -~ ~'
Preservationists, artists, ~,, • ~ .. ~., ~ ~~~
photographers, designers, a `~~- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~'°,- - , r
performers and other avant-garde ~"~~' ~~`:
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types smitten with the promise of a !',
forgotten but architecturally unique '~ ~ fir,
corner of America joined forces to ~ ,~
turn the place around. By 1987, a ~~~` ~` . ~- ;~ r~~.
handful of funky restaurants, clubs _-
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and refurbished hotels began to
draw cool crowds. '°~, R i ~ ~ ., r ~
Today, South Beach, the one square ~~ ~ .1 ~ ~ ,,~~ ~® ~~
mile extending from Government a - il ~~ ~ ~'
Cut to 21 st Street, has evolved from ~ ~ "~ ~ ~ ~ ~, ;
a Bohemian playground where one _. _
could have dinner and drinks for $7 Yasit Sanchez, center, keeps the crowd at bay during the
to a world-class tourism hot spot opening night of Dream night club.
where a Kobe burger costs $30 and
atop-shelf cocktail is about $20. Slide show ~ Club scene, then and now
The small-town edginess is history. Slide show ~ Development then and now
But now the place boasts financial A look at Versace's murder 10 years on
and cultural maturity. Money has South Beach memories
brought more money. Fame more Five that are gone
fame.
Each December, South Beach hosts North America's most important contemporary-art fair. Art
Basel Miami Beach has helped deepen the local art scene as more and more galleries, like
France's Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, and private museums, like the Cisneros Fontanals Art
Foundation, pop upon the mainland to cater to the international art community that now
descends annually.
Basel has turned its international high-roller following sweet on buying into the glamorous new
condo towers shadowing the Art Deco district, like Apogee, where units set you back between
$3 million and $20 million. The South Beach Wine & Food Festival every February lures
culinary superstars, from the Food Network's Rachael Ray to avant-garde Spanish chef Ferran
Adria, and highlights a maturing local restaurant scene.
There's a growing roster of upscale hotels, with the W, the Mondrian and the Gansevoort slated
to join the Setai, the Ritz-Carlton, the Regent and others that make $600 rooms commonplace.
And, in the works, superstar architecture: Toward the east end of Lincoln Road, a new Frank
Gehry-designed rehearsallperformance space for the New World Symphony, aworld-class
training orchestra born in Miami Beach in 1987. Near the west end, a sculptural parking garage
by the cutting-edge duo Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Switzerland. And at 16th and
Drexel, a residentiallcommercial project by Mexico's Enrique Norten.
Factoring even economic ups and downs, it seems clear that South Beach now has a foothold
as a cosmopolitan, cultural mecca. High-stakes art, architecture and artifice define things today.
But there was simpler magic at play when the revival began.
"The energy was palpable. There's something about seeing the potential of a place and being
part of creating it," says South Beach pioneer Louis Canales, who moved down from New York
in 1986 and promoted many of the early nightclubs. He helped lure his New York fashion
friends and several magazine writers and editors, who went home and heralded "America's
New Riviera."
~~Back then, South Beach was not about things,"Canales says. "It was about ideas."
ARTISTIC CATALYST
It was the Beach that fueled the ideas of Carlos Betancourt, then a struggling artist with a $300-
a-month studio on tumbleweedy Lincoln Road. Today, his works reside in the permanent
collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian National
Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
"Things were very underground," Betancourt says. ~~There were so many artists. We were all
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The evolution of South Beach - 07/15/2007 - MiamiHerald.com Page 2 of 4
so immersed in our work, in Art Deco preservation."
In 1983, as a student at Coral Park High School, he volunteered with Christo's Surrounded
Islands project, which turned Biscayne Bay into a string of giant pink lily pads and put the place
in the international spotlight at a time when cocaine cowboys and their bloodbaths were the
area's biggest showstopper.
"We found out Christo was staying at the Leslie Hotel, and a bunch of us went to see where this
hotel was," Betancourt says. ~~It was my introduction to Ocean Drive. I was mesmerized."
As with most other gentrification movements around the country, artists seeking cheap studio
space and a creative community moved in first. Painters, sculptors and performance artists
mixed with a surging gay community, droves of drag queens, and club kids who went out in
eye-popping costumes. The atmosphere turned electric.
ART CENTER'S ROLE
In 1984, the Art CenterlSouth Florida helped spark life on Lincoln Road -- then a down-an-out
pedestrian mall featuring dusty wig and girdle shops --with the establishment of an artists'
colony in 21 storefronts (the center is still there, in three buildings that hold galleries, offices and
more than 46 studios).
"The artists helped turn around South Beach," says art collector Richard Shack, who in the
early 1990s was chair of the Art Center. "Before the artists took over some of those empty art
spaces on Lincoln Road, you didn't go there. It was a scary space. But once the artists were
there, people started walking down the Road."
The Art Center had the foresight to purchase some of the buildings it occupied while they were
still affordable, which is how it has survived after scores of independent artists and galleries
were pushed off the Beach by soaring real-estate prices.
"We had bought 1035 Lincoln Road for about $300,000 in the 1980s,"Shack says. "In the
1990s, we sold it for $3.8 million to what is now Pottery Barn [and Williams-Sonoma]. That
money we used to redo our other spaces."
Miami Vice debuted the same year as the Art Center, and it delivered the fresh version of Deco
to the living rooms of middle America and the world. None of the changes could have happened
without the Miami Design Preservation League, which had been fighting since the mid-1970s to
preserve the decaying hotels that had popped up in Miami Beach toward the end of the
Depression to give snowbirds cheap places to stay.
In 1979, led by Barbara Capitman, the league got the district and its inventory of Tropical Deco
buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1982, league co-founder Leonard
Horowitz got a grant to paint a shabby block of Washington Avenue. Out went the beiges; in
came the pinks and lemons and blues.
"It all started with Barbara Capitman walking around Miami Beach and thinking that it should be
revisited as a historic district," says Dennis Wilhelm, a preservationist who joined her fight. 'But
the buildings were barely 50 years old, so people were saying, 'How can you call that historic?'
Getting her point across was the major accomplishment of Barbara Capitman."
Out-of-towners started to buy up real estate --from weekend crash pads to buildings to whole
blocks.
"I was buying like a drunk," says developer Tony Goldman, credited with turning Manhattan's
SoHo around in the late 1970s and then with helping to reinvent the Beach. He is now working
to redevelop a chunk of Wynwood with son Joey.
"I first saw it in 1985," Goldman says. "There was a lot of poverty and desperation in the air. But
I bought a building a month for the next year or so. I bought 18 properties." They included the
Park Central Hotel, the Tiffany and the building that in 1988 became home to the landmark
News Cafe.
"On Ocean Drive," Goldman says, ~~the vision was a promenade for cafe life. Those of us who
were working on it were very clear we had to keep The Gap out. This couldn't be any old street
anywhere in the country."
PHOTOGENIC MODELS
As Deco buildings created a sherbet rainbow, the fashion industry grew, drawn by fresh
backdrops, the crystalline winter light and cheap hotel rates. By the early 1990s, the fauna had
become intimidatingly gorgeous. Eight major modeling agencies had established Beach
branches, and thousands of models were posing for cameras by day and draping nightclub
sofas in newly invented VIP rooms by night.
"In those days, the permitting [for photo shoots] was very liberal," says Bruce Orosz, head of
ACT Productions, a print and video production company that opened in 1983 and rode the
wave of international fashion catalogues and superstar photographers --Bruce Weber, Annie
Liebovitz, Patrick Demarchelier -- elbowing one another for picturesque corners.
"Anywhere you went, there could be 15 or 20 photo teams fighting for spots," Orosz says. "Up
and down Ocean Drive, on the beach itself, in funky alleys. The fashion industry fell in love with
the place, with the colors, with the dynamics. They all wanted to be part of the scene."
CELEBRITY SCENE
The celebs wanted to make the scene, too. Some, like Madonna and Gianni Versace, came
early to frolic off the radar in a sexy, subtropical vacation spot that was still an inside secret.
"I remember Gianni would invite us over for tea, and it would be Elton John, Sting, Cindy
Crawford, Madonna," says Ingrid Casares, who in those days gained the "Madonna gal pal"
tag. "We would all walk to News Cafe and sit to organize our night out. Then we'd walk to
Warsaw [Ballroom] or wherever, and nobody bothered anybody. There was no paparazzi yet."
By 1995, when Chris Paciello and Casares opened Liquid above an unglamorous Payless
ShoeSource at 14th and Washington, the stars had the run of the town. Stallone, Cher and
Oprah all had pads here.
In 2000, Paciello pleaded guilty to charges of robbery, racketeering and murder for his
involvement in the 1993 home invasion that left a Staten Island housewife dead. His plea came
after police caught him on tape saying he wanted club competitor Gerry Kelly sleeping with the
fishes. Paciello received aseven-year sentence and, according to South Beach friends, is now
living in Los Angeles.
During the PacielloCasares reign, nobody paid a celeb to appear at a club. Today, celebs like
Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and Vin Diesel are flown in, put up and promised ared-carpet
flashfest at some of the top spots. As the nightlife grew sleeker, and more and more celebrities
increased the gawk factor --they were coming to play, buy houses, record CDs at local studios
and tape music videos by the surf -- tourism multiplied, everybody looking to be part of the
sexy, high-octane mix they were reading about in glossies from middle America to South
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The evolution of South Beach - 07/15/2007 - MiamiHerald.com Page 3 of 4
America to Europe
The hotels became as polished as the celebrities themselves. In 1995, the redo of the Delano,
the Ian Schrager hotel at Collins and 17th with its Philippe Starck interiors, became the
benchmark for cool and triggered a host of copycats working the white-on-white aesthetic.
Then, in 1998, the 800-room Loews opened at Collins and 16th. The Beach's first major new
hotel in 30 years, it started to draw deep-pockets convention crowds. In 1987, there were 6.7
million visitors to Miami Beach and the mainland; in 2007, twice as many.
"When we survey visitors, more than two-thirds put the Art Deco district at the top of their list of
places they visited," says Rolando Aedo, vice president of marketing for the Greater Miami
Convention & Visitors Bureau. "There's no question about the role South Beach has played."
But along the way, there were difficult times. Versace's murder on the steps of his Ocean Drive
palazzo 10 years ago today cast a dark shadow over what until then had been seen as a
carefree paradise. Versace had blithely partied, strolling to News Cafe for the Italian
newspapers, hosting famous friends at his Medusa-filled mansion.
After his death, Madonna and Stallone sold their Miami mansions and bolted. About the same
time, the models decamped because of escalating room rates and stricter production rules.
Tourism stalled after 9111, sending room rates at posh hotels like the newly opened Shore Club
plummeting to $100 a night.
The modeling industry never returned to its heyday, but the stars keep coming --and buying
flashy homes -- among them Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Diddy. MTV twice hosted its annual
Video Music Awards in Miami, bringing scores of stars and their followers for seemingly endless
days of partying.
CONDO PROLIFERATION
Today, the South Beach skyline is cluttered with building cranes as more and more multimillion-
dollarcondos go up. Scoring a parking space is increasingly frustrating, and Lincoln Road
keeps raising its rents and forcing out even such landmarks as Pacific Time, the first upscale
eatery on the Road, which recently closed after a 14-year run.
Some naysayers fear that the Beach is blown out, that the proliferating condohotels will tank in
a questionable real-estate market, that there's nowhere to go but down.
But, at least for now, the party is still on. The Gehry-designed music hall, which can only help
the cultural scene mature, is a go, thanks to a recent $90 million gift from an anonymous donor.
And the big-money investors are still banking on the Beach.
"We just had our best year ever at China Grill," says New York-based restaurateur Jeffrey
Chodorow, whose 250-seat China Grill at Fourth and Washington became the first big build-out
restaurant in Miami Beach in 1995.
Chodorow, who grew up in Miami Beach and also owns Tuscan Steak, Social Miami and The
Blue Door at the Delano, says he plans to open new restaurants in the Mondrian and
Gansevoort.
"The Blue Door breaks records every year," he says. "We do phenomenally well in Miami
Beach. In Los Angeles, people complain when parking goes up to $8, and they have to wait 10
minutes for their car. Here, parking is $30, and you have to wait 45 minutes for your car. But it's
amazing what people will put up with here. Because it's Miami Beach."
And Miami Beach is still ground zero for trendiness, which makes it perfect for high-end
branding. At Art Basel last year, vodka makers, condo-hotels and clothing chains attached
themselves to glitzy art-related parties that cost into the tens of thousands.
Slated to open within the next three months on Lincoln Road in the space recently vacated by
the bankrupt Cafeteria restaurant is a Guess store. It joins a proliferation of other chains --
Williams-Sonoma, Anthropologie, Apple, Victoria's Secret and three Starbucks --that have
opened outposts on Lincoln Road. They're there as much for the branding as for the bucks.
"The big stores are on the Road not so much because they do great numbers in terms of sales.
People do more shopping at a regular mall," says commercial broker Lyle Chariff, who sealed
the Guess deal. "[But] it's very important for them to have a presence here.... South Beach
for those retailers is just a trendsetting town where you have to be."
But can the antsy magic of the past ever be recaptured?
"That's totally lost," says preservationist Wilhelm, archivist for architectural firm Arquitectonica.
~~The only place we have felt this again is in Shanghai. We were recently there, ...and it felt
like South Beach in 1986. There is a small group opening restaurants and clubs, and it's all
happening around the preservation of these great buildings from the '20s and '30s. There is this
artistic energy. Just like South Beach back in the'80s, when there was no pretension or
discrimination. If you were into the architecture and art, you fit right in.
~~Now you have to be on the list."
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