The Great South Beach Rebrand

Will the bright neon lights of South Beach still attract tourists if you can't drink and dance until dawn? Absolutely, says Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber.

The nightlife scene is not what lured Michel Hausmann to Miami. He used to have a theater in Caracas, until he ran afoul of the Chávez regime 11 years ago. So he left Venezuela, pursued a master’s degree in New York City, wrote a critically acclaimed musical and looked for a place to start a theater company.

“I knew there is no need for a theater company in New York City, but there is something very special about Miami,” Hausmann said.

But he didn’t establish his theater company, Miami New Drama, in the actual City of Miami. He made a deal with the City of Miami Beach to take over the management of the Colony Theater at 1040 Lincoln Rd. in 2016. Since that time, Hausmann bragged, Miami New Drama’s original productions have attracted 45,000 people a year to its stage.

When asked if he ever considered moving to the City of Miami, Hausmann quickly answered in the negative.

“I love Miami Beach with a passion. I think it has a lot of things going for it,” he said, including the city’s government. “There is no other local municipality that compares to the support that Miami Beach gives to cultural organizations.”

Miami Beach is home to several, such as The Wolfsonian-FIU, The Bass and the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, as well as Miami City Ballet, New World Symphony and O Cinema. It has a newly renovated convention center surrounded by $7 million in public art and, since 2002, it has served as the main location for Art Basel. Nearly all of Miami Beach’s cultural institutions and events are located south of Dade Boulevard, an area known internationally as South Beach.

Yet South Beach isn’t primarily known for is visual or performing arts. Instead, South Beach has a reputation for being a no-holds-barred place to party until the sun rises ... until 5 a.m. To be precise.

Gelber wants to change that. More to the point, he wants to phase out Miami Beach’s mixed-use entertainment (MXE) district and promote his city as a place filled with art and culture. Baby steps have already been taken to that end with commissioners passing legislation in January to shut music off at 2 a.m. once the pandemic is over and the midnight county curfew is lifted.

“I don’t think the entertainment district is working for our city. It’s now known as a place to go to drink all night, for irreverence,” Gelber said. “The juice is not worth the squeeze.”

He's been talking like this for a while, without getting much support from commissioners, but that changed after tens of thousands of unmasked college students, stir-crazy pandemic shut-ins and a smattering of troublemakers from across the United States descended upon South Beach for spring break in March.

Chaos, Crime & News Cameras

After more than 1,000 arrests, a young woman turning up raped and dead, dozens of guns confiscated, video of people dancing on cars that made national news, a massive blackout caused by a speeding car smashing into a transformer, and shutdowns of eastbound traffic on the MacArthur, Venetian and Julia Tuttle causeways – demands from Miami Beach residents to stop the party have escalated. 

Consequently, the city’s recently declared spring break state of emergency imposed an 8 p.m. shut down until April 12 of all businesses in South Beach’s “high impact zone” between Ocean Drive, 5th Street, Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street.

Mitch Novick, owner of the Sherbrooke Hotel at 901 Collins Ave., has advocated for restrictions on nightlife for years. Now he’s closed his hotel indefinitely and advised his regular guests that South Beach is too dangerous to visit.

“It is a perpetual party and the only way to change that is to shut the party down. … The public safety is a dismal as it can get,” he said.

Not all businesses are in agreement.

Alex Tachmes is an attorney who represents several bars and hotels in South Beach, including the Clevelander Hotel at 1020 Ocean Dr. The iconic property's new owners poured tens of millions of dollars into upgrading it for the ability to serve food and alcohol outdoors until 5 a.m. Tachmes says any move by officials to curtail nightlife will hurt the local economy already battered by the pandemic, and may turn away investment. For example, sometime this month, nightlife entrepreneur David Grutman and singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams will be opening the 266-room, $200 million Goodtime Hotel on Washington Avenue and 6th Street that promises to “invoke the nostalgia of Miami Vice,” according to recent articles in Ocean Drive and Hamptons magazines.

“I think you will find thousands of people unemployed and a massive decrease in resort tax revenue,” Tachmes said.

Even more dramatic, David Wallack, owner of Mango’s Tropical Café at 900 Ocean Dr., predicts that restricting nightlife with noise ordinances or earlier closing times will revert the area back into the retirement community it once was back in the 1970s and 1980s.

But Gelber insists Miami Beach doesn’t need unrestricted nightlife to thrive.

“We are not a place where there is nothing else. We have beautiful and iconic architecture and perfect weather. Why do we need to get by on this kind of tourism?” Gelber asked.

Saul Gross, president of Washington Avenue-based Streamline Properties and a former Miami Beach commissioner, agrees converting South Beach into a cultural destination is very doable.

“There are a lot of different ways to start marketing [South Beach] through a more culturally oriented, or artist-oriented traveler or tourist,” Gross said.

An Already-in-Place Cultural Landscape

There are at least four cultural nonprofits located within the Art Deco Cultural District proper.

The largest institution within the ADCD is The Wolfsonian-FIU museum at 1001 Washington Ave. The historical research center displays rare propaganda and design artifacts, and will soon add 50,000 square feet of additional gallery and programming space. Less than a block away, at 1130 Washington Ave., is O Cinema, an independent movie house that relocated from Wynwood. At 1205 Washington Ave. is the World Erotica Art Museum, founded by the late art collector Naomi Wilzig, which displays rare erotic artifacts throughout history. And located on Lummus Park at 1001 Ocean Dr., right across the street from the besieged Cabaret District, is the Miami Design Preservation League-run Art Deco Welcome Center, where tours of South Beach’s historic structures are regularly organized.

There used to be an even greater artistic presence in South Beach, particularly on Lincoln Road, though many of those groups migrated away from the pedestrian mall as rents climbed. (Retail rents now range from $100 to $200 per square foot.) Area Stage Company left in the late 1990s and now operates in South Miami. The Miami Light Project held dance and other performances at the Colony Theater, the Lincoln Theater (now an H&M retail store) and other South Beach venues for 12 years until the group moved into a Goldman Properties-owned warehouse space in Wynwood in 2011.

Oolite Arts, formerly known as ArtCenter/South Florida, still provides studios for artists at 924 Lincoln Rd. However, its presence is much smaller than it was in the 1980s and most of the 1990s, when it owned three buildings on the thoroughfare. In October 2014, the ArtCenter sold its prominent 800 Lincoln Rd. building to TriStar Capital and RFR Holdings for $88 million. The proceeds will be used to build a new 35,000-square-foot facility at 75 NW 72nd St. in Miami’s Little River-Little Haiti neighborhood. Once that project is complete, Oolite Arts may sell off 924 Lincoln Rd. as well.

Dennis Scholl, president and CEO of Oolite Arts, said the nonprofit’s planned move to Little River is merely following the migration of other visual artists to that part of Miami. Nevertheless, Scholl, who lives in Miami Beach, said the area has plenty of cultural organizations to be able to assert itself as a cultural and arts destination.

“I think the mayor has a great idea. … We have one of the greatest ballets in the world. We have the greatest teaching symphony. We have great museums. We have one of the only indie cinemas on Miami Beach. We have one of the great theater programs,” Scholl listed. “If the city is making the decision that we are going to refocus our energy on culture, the pieces of the puzzle are there for that to happen.”

Conflict & Pushback in the Wings

Beth Boone, executive director of the Miami Light Project, believes that Miami Beach is already considered a “vibrant cultural destination” and further opined that the City of Miami Beach has a “tremendous opportunity” to attract additional “community based mid-sized cultural organizations” in North Beach, an area north of 63rd Street where retail rents remain relatively affordable. It’s here that the city is exploring ways to turn the Byron Carlyle movie theater at 71st Street and Byron Avenue into a cultural center.

Hausmann said he is ready to do his part to enhance Miami Beach’s reputation as a cultural destination. He is currently negotiating with the city for the right to turn the retail space on the bottom floor of the Collins Park Garage at 23rd Street and Liberty Avenue into a 200-seat theater, along with a gallery, a coffee shop and a small book store.

“I think that would be another centerpiece of Miami Beach as an arts capital,” he said.

Four years ago, 65% of voters defeated a measure to pull back liquor licenses from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m. after the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association claimed that 5,500 jobs would be lost if Ocean Drive bars close three hours earlier.

That defeat hasn’t stopped Gelber from pressing forward. In the summer of 2020, he pushed for the MXE district to go by another official name, the Art Deco Cultural District (ADCD). In September of that year, Gelber also proposed creating a liquor board to oversee the operation of nightlife establishments, eliminate all noise exemptions and require bars and clubs wishing to operate after midnight to apply for a conditional-use permit. Apart from the moniker change, and the 2 a.m. pullback on noise, none of those proposals have been backed by the majority of his colleagues on the city commission. At least not yet.

In March commissioners approved spending $7.5 million to hire 15 more police to patrol the ADCD and install closed-circuit television cameras in that same district. The city commission also passed legislation to revoke sidewalk café permits that allow restaurants to set up tables on the public right-of-way if they play loud music.

Novick believes these actions won’t work unless the city moves to shut down bars earlier at a “reasonable hour,” perhaps as early as midnight, and removes outdoor cafés from public property entirely. And not just in the entertainment district, but throughout the City of Miami Beach.

“There is no public benefit to having these businesses exploiting the public realm with noise and [outdoor seating]. It should be brought inside and quiet. And if that means some [hotels, bars and restaurants] fail, then so be it. The area has become blighted,” Novick said.

Tachmes warns that if the city tried to close bars earlier Miami Beach will be swamped with litigation from entrepreneurs who invested millions of dollars based on being able to stay open until 5 a.m.

“People are not going to stay quiet,” he predicted.

The attorney also questioned if South Beach will continue to be a global tourist destination if nightlife were phased out.

“Most tourists come to Miami Beach because they want to be in proximity to where the nightlife and music is. People are not coming here expecting art,” Tachmes said.

Commissioner Mark Samuelian said all “options are on the table,” including closing bars earlier within the entertainment district, or even throughout the City of Miami Beach.

“What I believe is that we need bold, dramatic change,” he said.

The stage is set. Curtain up.