The two-story building had stood vacant for years. The property at 3675 Grand Avenue may now become part of a mixed-income housing development.
The Tikki Club building on Grand Avenue near Douglas Road was torn down this week, another sign of coming development on a long-neglected stretch of boulevard that connects the Little Bahamas neighborhood to Coconut Grove’s central business district.
The Tikki Club location at 3675 Grand Ave. is one of seven adjoining properties controlled by Grovites United to Survive (GUTS) and New Urban Development, the real estate development affiliate of the Urban League of Greater Miami, county property records show.
Oliver Gross, president of New Urban Development, said the developer plans to build a mixed-income housing development eight to 12 stories tall on the combined site, with 100 or more residential units. Construction could begin as soon as next year, he said.
The project, now in the pre-development stage, will include workforce and affordable housing and a commercial component, Gross said.
Gross also said New Urban Development may take advantage of a 2023 state law – the Live Local Act – which allows developers to build taller buildings with more density if the project include affordable housing.
“We’ve looked at that but haven’t made any decisions yet,” Gross said this week. “What we would not want to do is something that is inconsistent with the neighborhood.”
City of Miami zoning along much of Grand Avenue caps construction at 5 stories.
Gross said New Urban Development, which embraces affordable housing in its mission statement, sees the proposed project as a response to the gentrification that has displaced lower-income residents in the West Grove in recent years.
“When properties have been acquired and redeveloped, people could not afford to live there, so having an affordable component would speak to that,” he said.
Gross declined to specify the number of planned units or the percentage of housing that will qualify as “affordable,” saying those details are still being worked out.
A hint of what’s to come can been found online at Blue Hub Capital. Blue Hub is a nonprofit community development financing organization that lent $2.5 million to New Urban Development in 2021 and then wrote about the project on its website.
The Blue Hub website includes a preliminary design for the proposed project and a short history of how New Urban Development came to work with GUTS, a local investor group started by Grove activist Thelma Gibson.
“GUTS came to us for help,” Gross is quoted as telling Blue Hub. “We wanted to be really intentional about any development, ensuring the property would be owned and controlled by people from the neighborhood.”
“Keeping folks from the community in the community helps preserve the neighborhood character and culture,” he added.
Property records identify GUTS as the owner of six properties on the block that forms the northeast corner of Grand Avenue and Douglas Road.
Together with an adjacent parcel owned by New Urban Development, the seven lots total nearly 50,000 square feet, with approximately 35,000 square feet zoned for mixed-used development, property records show.
State business records list Henry Lee Givens as the president of GUTS. Givens did not respond to the Spotlight’s requests this week for an interview.
The original Tikki Club building, which was owned by three brothers – Frank, Jack and Charles Toback – was modified several times over the years and housed different businesses, including Club 77 during the 1950s.
Club 77 hosted regular performances of local Black artists who played clubs in nearby Overtown, according to local historian Iris Guzman Kolaya. “If there was a heyday, this would have been it,” Kolaya wrote in an email to the Spotlight.
(For a look at Grand Avenue in its heyday, check out this website: Visualizing Grand Avenue in the 1960s when it was the main street of Black Coconut Grove.)
In the 1960s, the club was operated by Jay Cone and the name was changed to the Tikki Club. The club, considered a trouble spot by local police in the late 1960s and 1970s, closed in 1983, according to Kolaya.
