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1674-6 Whitman Family YWORDS: OBITUARY TAG: 8304070811 2 of 3, 6 Terms mh DYNASTY 07/03/1983 THE MIAMI HERALD Copyright (c) 1983, The Miami Herald DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1983 EDITION: NEIGHBORS SECTION: NEIGHBORS MB PAGE: 14 LENGTH: 180 lines ILLUSTRATION: photo: William Whitman Sr., Stanley Whitman with Leona and Bill Whitman, Bill Whitman, Dudley Whitman, Whitman-by- the-Sea Hotel, Stan Whitman, Randy Whitman SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: LAURA MISCH Herald Staff Writer MEMO: COVER STORY/LIFESTYLES DYNASTY Old Man Whitman would be proud. Upon a marshy site once crawling with land crabs and thick with fierce mosquitos, his sons built the most elegant shopping center this side of Worth Avenue. A surfer, a tennis player, a water-ski buff -- Bill, Stan and Dudley Whitman own Bal Harbour Shops, a world-class collection of expensive stores and the economic anchor of the small oceanfront community. Forty-five years earlier, their father, William Francis Whitman, used his money and vision to change the face of Miami Beach with hotels and apartment houses. "Bal Harbour Shops lends prestige to the community, " Village Manager Fred Maley said. "I think the town pays its proper respect to the Whitmans." The shopping center accounts for 7.2 per cent of the village's total tax base. Last year that came to $96,000. The resort tax generated by the center's five restaurants gave the village another $93,000 last year. The village also gets a percentage of the sales tax from the 80 stores in the center. Stan, 64 -- the only brother who doesn't live in Bal Harbour -- minds the stores, watching over the family business that grossed $104 million last year. He's the visible Whitman, the one who attends Village Council meetings and wields the corporate clout when anyone or anything threatens the interests of the shopping center. His brothers are into other endeavors, although each owns a third of the center. "I'm paid $1 a year to stay away," said Dudley, 63. He owns Commander Marine in Opa-locka, a small company that manufactures marine engines in conjunction with the Ford Motor Co. Thirty- five years ago, he was one of the first to use fiberglass to make boats, and in his youth he pioneered slalom water skiing. "Dad always said I'd be a wharf rat, " he said. Dudley lives practically next door to Bill and owns a vacation home on Eleuthera in the Bahamas, where he surfs. Bill, 69, is a noted horticulturist who grows rare tropical fruits a few hundred yards from Bal Harbour Shops on his own urban agricultural station. Like his brother, he's a surfing nut and still spends every summer in Hawaii w 'E catching the waves. He's there now. Stan followed in his father's footsteps and went into real estate after World War II. He bought the 15.3 acres upon which Bal Harbour Shops sits in 1957 for $2 a square foot when most shopping center developers were paying about 10 cents a square foot. "They all thought I was crazy back then, " he said. Not today. Neiman-Marcus, Saks, Gucci, Cartier, Bonwit Teller, Brooks Brothers, Mark Cross and dozens of other high-class merchants have made Bal Harbour a mecca for wealthy tourists and South Floridians. There is a gourmet chocolate emporium, a custom stationery store, a sweet-smelling toiletries shop that sells soap for $6 a bar. The landscaped, sunlit outdoor mall is frequently and favorably compared with Fifth Avenue in New York, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. "There isn't anything as fancy as this in the whole world," Stan boasted. He may be right. He has claimed for years that his stores gross more revenues per square foot and pay more rent than those in any other local shopping center, and no one has disputed him yet. The center is doing well. It is in the midst of a $25- million expansion that will double its original size to eventually include 100 stores. Right now there are 80. "We don't have the schlocks here," Stan said. "I like to think we sell something a little more high-class than toilet paper." But then, the Whitmans always did everything first class. William Whitman, a wealthy businessman from Chicago who owned one of that city's largest printing companies, brought his family to boom town Miami in 1914 after choosing it over Beverly Hills as a warm place to settle. In 1917, he built a palatial family home on the ocean at Collins Avenue and 32nd Street. The two-story, five-bedroom house had fireplaces, sunken gardens and a dance floor built into a sand dune overlooking the ocean. The Saxony Hotel stands on the site now. "I remember growing up in that house, I loved that house, " Stan said. "We used to build our own surfboards and surf in the ocean right off our back yard." Carl Fisher's elephant, Rosie, would make an appearance when there were birthday parties and tow the neighborhood children around in a cart. The pachyderm once relieved herself on the Whitman's driveway, and Stan remembered that his father was "furious" and told Fisher off about it. Back then Indian Creek, across the street from the Whitman home, was full of crocodiles and alive with mosquitos. "This was a scrubby, sandy, mangrove-y place in the old days," Stan said. "People try and make it sound like it was paradise, but believe me, it's a lot better now than it was then." His father was busy remaking the barren town. William Whitman built the first apartment house on Miami Beach after the 1926 hurricane, the luxury Indian Creek Apartments at 3300 Collins Ave. In the winter of 1936, a three-bedroom, top-floor apartment went for $3,300 for the season -- January to May. The price included maid service, lights, gas, heat and laundry. No dogs allowed. "The wealthiest people in the United States rented those apartments, " Stan said. "Those people could buy and sell these shoppers here at Bal Harbour Shops many times over." His father also developed Espanola Way, which was almost named Whitman Way. (As things turned out, the family was glad it was not. ) Whitman's aim was to build a neighborhood in the heart of Miami Beach where the houses and streets would have the atmosphere of a quaint Spanish village. He erected Spanish-style bungalows and buildings in 1922 but his dream quickly soured when the street became a thriving hangout for bookies, bootleggers and prostitutes. Espanola Way has remained seedy ever since. Three years ago, a young preservationist, Linda Polansky, bought some of the buildings on the street and began a restoration effort. William Whitman's biggest project was the Whitman-by-the- Sea Hotel at 34th and Collins Avenue, the first major hotel to be built in Dade County during the Great Depression. It was torn down in 1945 to make way for high-rises. Designed by architect Roy France, who also designed the Edgewater Beach, Saxony, Casablanca and a half-dozen other grand Miami Beach hotels, the Whitman was the last word in style in 1935 when it opened. "Pleasant people, your own kind," reads an old brochure with photos of people dancing and dining in the Sea Island Room. "Check your hat and your worries at the Whitman. . .Only the hat will be returned." At one time, William Whitman owned the 3100, 3200 and 3300 blocks of Collins Ave. plus other Beach real estate, including part of Lincoln Road Mall. He gradually sold some parcels off to developers Ben Novack, George Sax and others. "My father had a chauffeur, a cook, two maids and a gardener, " Stan said. "My father knew how to live." The boys' mother, Leona Whitman, is 97 years old now and lives in Bal Harbour. She was a Miami Beach socialite in the 1920s and '30s. "Our parents never took us to the clubs, " Dudley said. "We wore plain clothes to school. We weren't Little Lord Fauntleroys." But Stan remembers being quick with his fists when other boys would gang up on him because he was a Whitman. William Whitman died in 1936, just a year after his hotel was finished. In 1945, Leona Whitman sold their oceanfront home to developer George Sax for $250,000, helping to usher in the era of wall-to-wall high-rises along Collins Avenue. The three young Whitman boys were fresh out of the armed services and doing what most wealthy young men would do under the circumstances -- having fun. Bill and Dudley got into the motion picture business, making nature and adventure films for Warner Bros. , RKO, Disney and Paramount. The two specialized in underwater photography and one of their short subjects, Five Fathoms of Fun, was a runnerup for an Academy Award. Another film they worked on, The Sea Around Us, did win an Oscar for its writer, Rachel Carson. But Hollywood producers told the Whitman brothers that if they wanted to continue making films they needed to become a union shop and become better organized. "That just could not have worked out, so we got out of the business, " Dudley said. He began building boats and Bill got interested in horticulture. Today, neither visits Bal Harbour Shops very frequently. They let Stan handle things. Although the shopping center for the most part coexists peacefully with the tiny town it dominates, there have been problems. In 1976, a hostile council slapped a building moratorium on the Bal Harbour Shops that lasted a couple of years. When Stan unveiled plans to expand the center in the late 1970s the council (this time with different members) again balked. "He wanted more than the city would allow," said Maley, who has been the village manager for 14 years. "What he got is considerably scaled down from his original proposals." Last year, Whitman approached the council about moving the busy shopping center entrance to Bal Bay Dr., a residential street. Residents protested and the council sided with them. As of now, the entrance will stay where it is, on Collins Avenue. "My only problems have been political ones with the town," Stan said. "But I haven't any problems right now. Everything's smooth." The heir to the Whitman real estate dynasty is 39-year-old Randy Whitman, Stan's son. He has been the leasing agent for the Bal Harbour Shops for 10 years. Before that he sold commercial real estate on Brickell Avenue. He lives in Coconut Grove. "I've always chafed at working for other people," he said. "I prefer to do my work where I'm on my own. " "He'll take it over, there is nobody else," Stan said. Other Whitman offspring fly helicopters, own businesses and other real estate. • But it will probably be awhile before Randy takes over. Stan still puts in a full day at the office and can often be seen marching through his mall, chatting with his store owners and checking up on business. "I stick around because I'm lazy," he said. "My son leases it, somebody else runs it and I get to have fun. And we make money, too." Old Man Whitman would be proud.