Politics Sink Virginia Key Watercraft Operator

Esther Alonso-Luft believed she would resolve her dispute over rent payments, but then she spoke out against commissioners’ plan to dump unhoused people on Virginia Key Beach.

Now a month after police and code enforcement officers shut down Virginia Key Outdoor Center (VKOC) for code violations, Alonso-Luft and some of her staffers are moving boxes, kayaks, paddleboards and canoes out of the city-owned beachfront park along the Rickenbacker Causeway.

“I am done here,” Alonso-Luft told the Biscayne Times. “I still need to deal with the rent issue. I don’t think [Miami city officials] are going to agree to anything. I owe them annual rent, but it is not the amount they are claiming.”

At a Sept. 13 meeting, city commissioners directed City Manager Art Noriega to go ahead and terminate VKOC’s month-to-month lease allowing Alonso-Luft to use Virginia Key as a base for her non-motorized watercraft rental company. The deal required the center to make monthly rent payments of about $1,200, as well as contribute 10-12% of the company’s sales depending on whether they generated less or more than $500,000 a year.

From the dais, Commissioners Joe Carollo and Alex Diaz de la Portilla viciously attacked Alonso-Luft for allegedly stiffing the city an estimated $140,000 in payments over the last two-and-half years, as well as for operating VKOC without a business tax receipt (formerly known as an occupational license) or a certificate of use since she opened in 2015.

Diaz de la Portilla declared it was time to end Alonso-Luft’s “sweetheart deal,” and claimed that she wanted the city to ignore her failure to perform “under the guise of providing a great service.”

“Apparently, you have a monopoly on good service,” Diaz de la Portilla snarled at Alonso-Luft. “I don’t think you do. We are not here to protect any particular vendor, much less a vendor that has shown a number of actions over a number of years that are not responsible.”

“She thought she could put political pressure here and frankly, that she thinks she will resolve this the same way she got the contract: through politics and political godfathers,” Carollo chimed in. “I cannot go along with someone who owes the residents of Miami at least $140,000.”

Alonso-Luft’s fight to keep her operation afloat while splashing into the churning fray of city hall politics is a cautionary lesson for anyone whose business depends on remaining in the good graces of Miami government officials. She wiped out any chance of resolving her alleged transgressions against the city by voicing her opposition to a now scuttled plan to build a homeless camp on Virginia Key.

Carollo was the controversial proposal’s main sponsor.

“When Carollo started talking, it confirmed what happened was retaliatory,” Alonso-Luft said in a phone interview days after the Sept. 13 vote. “I think what pissed him off is that I went on Spanish-language media. It is total BS.”

On Borrowed Time

In early August, Alonso-Luft joined a broad coalition that included homeless advocates, environmentalists, Miami’s Black community and the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park Trust, in denouncing the Carollo-backed plan to build 50 tiny homes on the island where the city was considering relocating people living on the city’s streets. City commissioners voted 3-2 July 28 to approve the proposal, which was also sponsored by Christine King, the commission’s chairwoman.

Following widespread backlash, Carollo and Mayor Francis Suarez said the city would back off the tiny homes plan for six months to give the city and Miami-Dade County more time to work on securing additional housing and resources for the housing insecure.

The same day the commission voted to terminate Alonso-Luft’s lease, Carollo insisted the Virginia Key homeless camp is “dead.”

Miami, he said, is now looking at new sites because of conversations with the county and the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust. The latter has been seeking the city’s cooperation since March to use $12 million of federal COVID-19 relief funds it received to purchase multifamily buildings for housing.

“The homeless camp proposal was a bad idea for a lot of reasons,” Alonso-Luft said. “It is one of the worst ways to treat homeless people. I tried to meet with [Carollo] to tell him that I said the plan was awful, not that [he] was awful.”

At the Sept. 13 meeting, Noriega and other high-ranking city bureaucrats pushed back against accusations that shutting down VKOC was tied to the homeless camp.

“They are, in reality, unrelated,” Noriega said. “There is a lot of misinformation. We did have a meeting last week in an attempt to get some clarity on what money is owed and what money is not owed. We didn’t really reach a significant conclusion.”

But, he added, he and his staff “have been very consistent” in closing down businesses that do not have a certificate of use.

Alonso-Luft has been operating on borrowed time since May, according to Jacqueline Lorenzo, assistant director of the Miami’s Department of Real Estate, Asset and Marina Management. That’s when she informed Alonso-Luft that the city was going to advertise a request for proposals for non-motorized watercraft rentals, and VKOC’s month-to-month lease would be terminated, Lorenzo told commissioners.  

A Shocking Sum

Between May and August, Lorenzo and her staff conducted a closer inspection of the center and discovered the city had not received monthly base rent payments from VKOC since May of 2021, and that the kayak operator had failed to pay the city’s percentage from sales for more than two years.

“[The $140,000] is conservative estimate,” Lorenzo said. “We have been working to try and resolve these issues since May. We were already considering termination when we discovered the issues with the business tax receipt and the certificate of use. That was pretty much the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

On Aug. 11, a day before the center was forced to close, Alonso-Luft told the Biscayne Times that she met with Lorenzo, Parks and Recreation Department director Barbie Rodriguez, and members of Commissioner Ken Russell’s staff to find a way to resolve the city’s claim that she had not paid the $1,200 monthly rent for more than a year.

She provided emails and text messages with other Miami government officials to prove that she attempted to make monthly payments several times. Her communications included a July 2021 exchange with Mark Burns, the city’s now former lease manager, in which he acknowledged VKOC did not owe more than $6,000 in monthly rent at that time. Alonso-Luft also presented her documentation to city commissioners.

Alonso-Luft claims that during the Aug. 11 meeting, Lorenzo and Rodriguez did not tell her about the alleged $140,000 debt, and that the following day was the first time she found out about the six-figure sum.

“For them to go on Twitter on Friday night to make a claim for $140,000 in owed rent shows bad faith,” Alonso-Luft said. “It shows that it is a retaliatory act.”

She’s dealt with what she says is the city’s poor record keeping, including mailing rent checks to the parks department that were never deposited.

“I don’t have a problem paying what I owe,” she said. “But I do have a problem paying what I don’t owe, being bullied and with a city administration that doesn’t have things in order.”

At the Sept. 13 hearing, Alonso-Luft did accept responsibility for not having a business tax receipt and certificate of use, which she began to apply for seven years ago but did not complete.

“I take fault in this because I should have been more aggressive in pursuing this,” Alonso-Luft told commissioners. “I thought it was taken care of. That is my mistake, and I don’t pass that off to anyone else.”

Other Targets

The targeting of the center is not an isolated event in Miami. In a $27.9 million lawsuit filed against the city in Miami federal court last year, Mad Room Hospitality accuses Miami officials of engineering a code enforcement harassment campaign against Ball & Chain and Taquerias el Mexicano, a bar and restaurant, respectively, in Little Havana.

Semi-autonomous city agencies are not immune from the wrath of Miami’s political leaders, either.

At the Sept. 13 meeting, city commissioners set their scopes on the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park Trust, which also publicly opposed the homeless camp. Miami’s elected officials voted unanimously to take over the Trust’s board, which oversees the beach park, including the historic area that was the only local beach Blacks could use during segregation.

Citing a draft audit report, Carollo and Diaz de la Portilla alleged the Trust’s board mismanaged and misappropriated $300,000 the city gives Virginia Key annually. A second reading to change the board’s makeup is scheduled for later this month.

Alonso-Luft says Miami officials are looking to get rid of everyone standing in their way of allowing commercial development on Virginia Key.

“We have to protect the island,” she said. “Virginia Key is an irreplaceable place where you feel connected to nature. It allows you to disconnect from the daily grind.”

And while her business has already been kicked off Virginia Key, Alonso-Luft is still in the city’s crosshairs. She must respond to a city audit that will determine exactly how much she owes and if she made appropriate payments to the city, as well as whether any rent payments she made were deposited.

“Now they want an audit going back to the beginning of time,” Alonso-Luft said. “Yet, they lost financial reports showing when they accepted rent payments. They want to bankrupt me.”