When Art Is No Longer Welcome in Wynwood

Manny Gonzalez, executive director of the Wynwood Business Improvement District (BID), insists that Wynwood is the most popular destination in the City of Miami, attracting millions of tourists and locals every year. The main draw of these visitors, Gonzalez tells the Biscayne Times, is the art that decorates the walls.

“We [Wynwood] grew up at the same time as Facebook, as Instagram,” remarked Gonzalez.

Indeed, around the same time social media platforms sprang into existence, Wynwood was transitioning from a defunct manufacturing center into a warehouse realm for artists to create and display their work. It was during the early 2000s that street art was encouraged in Wynwood, and as photographs of murals were shared on the internet, its popularity as an edgy art haven grew.

Today, many of the warehouses that once housed galleries and artist studios are being replaced by mixed-use apartment buildings, condominiums, offices and high-end retail spaces. Walls with decorative murals still remain, however, and multitudes of visitors continue to wander the streets, snapping images with their smartphones or cameras.

“This neighborhood is what you would call original. It is not owned by one person, not owned by one corporate entity. It is literally a congress of property owners,” Gonzalez said. “We want to have this outdoor museum component in Miami where people can come and see self-expression, see art.”

But that same artwork has attracted something else: ad agencies, guerilla marketers and street artists who are crafting advertisement murals for liquor, television programs, snack products and more.

Fearing the illegal advertisements will ruin Wynwood’s brand, leaders of the Wynwood BID want to inform property owners, outside ad agencies, artists and national corporate entities that such unpermitted murals are illegal.

“We are trying to educate property owners that murals are not for advertising. We made calls to New York. Many corporate entities aren’t aware that it is illegal,” Gonzalez said.

He explained that illegal corporate advertising has been snuck into Wynwood murals for years, but it was generally infrequent and usually occurred during mega events like Art Basel. In the past couple of years the tempo of illegal ads in the area has increased. Oftentimes, the illegal murals are placed in magazines as advertisements, or used in viral internet ads.

“This is just a clear violation of what our forefathers here in Wynwood wanted when they created this district,” Gonzalez said.

Moving Fast to Avoid Fines

According to John Heffernan, deputy director of communications for the City of Miami, there are no figures on how many illegal advertisements have appeared within the Wynwood BID or elsewhere in the city.

Kelly Penton, spokeswoman for the Wynwood BID, sent the Biscayne Times copies of violations for 17 illegal murals between September 2019 and April 2021.

Complicating an accurate count on illegal murals is that they’re usually painted over in less than a month, usually after a property owner receives a violation or a corporate entity gets a call or email from the Wynwood BID.

Gonzalez recounted a recent incident in which Guess jeans painted an illegal mural in Wynwood. He sent the company an official letter relaying that the mural was illegal and inquiring how the ad was painted on the wall in the first place. Gonzalez said he received no response but, “in a week it’s gone.”

Another mystery is who is arranging the illegal billboard deals. Gonzalez suspects it is a local third-party broker or brokers.

“We do not know who it is. These deals are done with the property owner and the artist, directly. We are trying to identify them,” he said.

Under city ordinance, a building with an illegal mural can be fined $1,000 a day if it isn’t removed in 24 hours. However, the city doesn’t start issuing fines unless the illegal ad is still present after a scheduled Code Enforcement Board hearing. Former city commissioner Mark Sarnoff said this was city policy when he was in office between 2006-2015. There was even a term for it.

“They called it a ‘de facto 30-day permit,’ because it would be 30 days before the city could get in front of a board and authorize the fines,” said Sarnoff, now a lobbyist with Shutts & Bowen, whose clients include Orange Barrell Media, an outdoor advertisement company.

In the case of Wynwood, no fines have ever been levied for illegal billboards. That’s because the unpermitted ads are removed prior to the board hearing date. The Wynwood BID is lobbying the city to start charging fines a day after a citation is issued, as written in the code, Gonzalez said. That way, illegal ads will be taken down even faster, or not placed on walls at all. He claims the city was receptive.

“We just need to finalize what [the city] calls a ‘notice of violation,’” Gonzalez said.

But the City of Miami’s administration indicated that it won’t alter how it issues fines for illegal murals any time soon.

“The city’s enforcement strategy is not changing, and property owners/operators remain entitled to due process: fines can only be issued following a Code Enforcement Board hearing and if a cited party fails to comply with the Board’s order,” according to an official statement issued by Miami’s communications department.

Following the Revenue Stream

Outdoor advertising has been pushing the boundaries in Miami since 1985, when billboard companies successfully campaigned to install billboards at certain select spots along I-95. After that, billboards and outdoor murals gradually proliferated as the city loosened regulations, sometimes in contradiction of national, state and county laws. By the 2000s, Miami was issuing permits for as many as 45 billboards near I-95 and 35 for mural advertisements plastered on buildings.

Sarnoff said the city opted to legalize murals in an attempt to regulate them. Driving the demand was the amount of money property owners were receiving to display advertisements, especially during the Great Recession.

“Generally speaking, the kind of money paid for legal murals kept building owners out of bankruptcy,” he said.

An advertisement on a building by Interstate 395 between downtown Miami and South Beach can run as high as $50,000 a month, Sarnoff said, but he wasn’t certain how much a building owner could earn for an advertisement in Wynwood.

“It would be as low as $5,000 a month,” he guessed. “The 395 is where everyone (outdoor advertisers) wants to be. It’s mecca. Wynwood is not mecca.”

Alex Vahan, artist and creative director of Cushy Gigs Creative, said the rates demanded from property owners for an advertisement mural range greatly, but can be around $5,000 and $6,500 a month. The rates are negotiated directly by agents or artists, said Vahan, who has done hundreds of sponsored murals since the mid-2000s.

The amount that artist can get from sponsored mural ranges greatly, too, and can be anywhere from $200 to $200,000 a job. Clients asking for advertisement murals, or a corporate mural, understand that the mural will only be temporary.

“The damage is already done. They already got the video content. They already had eyeballs all over it,” Vahan said.

Unlike illegal ads, legal advertisements provide the City of Miami some money as well. In the case of building murals, the city charges as much as $125,000 per permit, not including application fees.

Dwindling Opportunities

Revenue was the main motivator for the city to expand outdoor advertising yet again, though this time on a pedestrian level. In April 2020, Miami inked a deal with IKE Smart City, a subsidiary of Orange Barrel Media, to install information kiosks on city sidewalks. Besides acting as giant smart phones for visitors interested in locating nearby businesses and attractions, the kiosks will display digital ads. As part of the 10-to-20-year contract, IKE will give the city 40 % of its ad revenue. The city in turn will divert 75% of its share to its general fund, while giving the remaining 25% to whatever local districts where they happen to be installed. Since around 13 of those kiosks will be planted within the Wynwood BID, it will receive 25% of the city’s share from those devices.

Alan Ket, co-founder of the Museum of Graffiti in Wynwood, suspects that the Wynwood BID’s desire to clamp down on illegal advertisements is an attempt to cut down on the competition.

“The big deal is who decides what is right or what is wrong,” said Ket, who noted that one of the digital billboards will be planted in front of the Museum of Graffiti at 299 NW 25th St. “Is it only about big money? I think that it is, and who controls the money? And who wants the money?”

Besides running the Museum of Graffiti, Ket helps arrange sponsorships for artists to create murals, including the “American History” mural at 25th Street and NW 3rd Avenue, which depicted events in African American history. Ket said he doesn’t generally approve of advertisements, while at the same time reasoning that such unauthorized ads at least provide income for the artists who create them.

“Do we like ads? Typically, we probably don’t like ads. It is more consumer junk,” he said. “What we do like is when artists are able to work with companies to be able to make a living.”

And opportunities for artists to make any sort of living or express themselves in Wynwood is dwindling, thanks to the rush of development that’s now replacing walls with buildings with retail glass storefronts, Ket observed.

“I don’t necessarily love that beautiful graffiti murals disappear and are replaced by the Death Star,” Ket said while pointing at the newly constructed Wynwood 25, a mixed-use building with a dark grey façade that’s adjacent to the American History mural and across the street from the Museum of Graffiti. “I think it’s a great building. It has a beautiful great pool. But it does look like the Death Star and before it was there, there were like 50 murals there.”

An Issue of Control

Vahan confirmed that many local artists depend on the revenue they receive from sponsored murals.

“The money is great if you are smart enough to play the game, and it is a living, man,” Vahan said. “We are locals, born and raised here. … This is how we eat. This is how we pay our mortgage.”

Not only that, he the revenue earned from putting up an advertising mural can give a street artist the financial freedom to devote time to original work, though such murals are frequently painted or spray painted on walls elsewhere in South Florida.

“The (Wynwood) neighborhood allows us to make money and do our real sh*t and our real work,” Vahan shared.

Gonzalez insisted there are still plenty of opportunities for artists to ply their craft in Wynwood. Moreover, they shouldn’t be roped into breaking the law: “We have seen the disconnect from some of the local artists who are not even aware that this is illegal.”

Those artists, he said, are free to create murals that act as signs for adjacent businesses. And there’s nothing stopping an artist creating a display that can be used in an advertising photo shoot, and then taken immediately down. Or they can put it on the inside of a property.

Vahan said some sponsors are savvy enough to allow artists to paint an original mural without having to insert an advertisement. Instead, they’ll video tape or photograph the process and use it for a viral video ad or a magazine ad. Usually, though, the client wants something more blatant.

“They’ll say, ‘You got to have the logo … There’s 40,000 people a day going by this block,’” said Vahan. “The trick is to come up with a concept that is creative enough to satisfy the artist, and visually beautiful enough to satisfy the public, and avoid citations.”

Tony Arellano, a commercial real estate broker and managing partner of Dwntwn Realty Advisors, doesn’t believe that illegal murals are that big a deal in Wynwood, and calls the amount of money offered to property owners as “not big potatoes.”

“It is more of the cowboy guerilla advertising, people putting up posters, that is more prevalent,” he said.

Dylan Finger, a consultant for developer Moishe Mana and a former member of the Wynwood BID, recalled that gang tagging was more common than illegal murals in Wynwood. Finger said he was skeptical that making it easier to fine property owners is the right thing to do.

“I think it is more about education,” he told the Biscayne Times. “Some property owners will probably get fined money for something they didn’t even know was against the law.”

Ket, on the other hand, thinks the Wynwood BID is making a mountain over a mole hill, and is really trying to exert some control over street and graffiti art – something that has been allowed to flourish unregulated in Wynwood since the early 2000s.

“The whole notion of controlling the streets, controlling what people see,” he said, “is a very wild notion.”