Miami’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board expressed concern again this week about the lack of protection in place to safeguard the 99-year-old Coconut Grove Playhouse during the county’s demolition and reconstruction project.
Miami’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board continues to grapple with how to get Miami-Dade County to respond to its concerns over the dilapidated state of the Coconut Grove Playhouse and the potential for “demolition by neglect.”
After learning this week that the 99-year-old playhouse has been left open to the elements – its windows removed and the openings uncovered during the first phase of the county’s demolition and restoration project – the board directed its preservation officer to demand that the county weather-proof the structure.
“That is a profoundly concerning either oversight on their part, or insouciance on their part, I’m not sure, or negligence,” HEPB Vice Chair Luis Prieto y Munoz said Tuesday at the board’s monthly meeting.
“The bulk of hurricane season happens between now and (September)” when the board meets again, he noted. “I feel like we would be remiss not to take some action, to compel the county to button the building up, to just button the building up immediately.”
HEPB members previously expressed concern about the building’s open windows, to no effect. The county was not represented at Tuesday’s meeting, and did not respond this week to a request for comment from the Spotlight.
“What recourse do we have, what preemptive recourse could we consider?” Prieto y Munoz asked. Preservation Officer Kenneth Kalmis said he didn’t know.
The board then directed Kalmis to “demand” that the county weather-proof the playhouse and likewise ask the city’s code enforcement staff to determine whether the lack of window coverings constitutes a code violation.
Concern over the state of the historic landmark spiked in May after a portion of the third floor collapsed during interior demolition work, prompting City of Miami officials to halt the project until the structure was properly braced.
In the wake of that incident, local activists and preservationists have urged the HEPB to assert its jurisdiction over the project.
“I would really like to see the HEP Board be more assertive… to say, this is our building (and) we are charged with a duty to protect it,” Andy Parrish, a former chair of the HEPB, told sitting board members on Tuesday.
After listening to the concerns of Parrish and others, the board passed a resolution asking the state of Florida, which owns the playhouse, to formally review the county’s demolition and restoration plan.
Opponents of the county’s plan have filed a lawsuit to force the county to submit to a state review before proceeding with the project. The lawsuit is pending. State Rep. Fabian Basabe (R-106) of Miami Beach also has asked state officials to intervene.
On Tuesday, the HEPB asked Kalmis to review the county’s plans as well, to evaluate whether the completed project will negatively impact the historic character of Charles Avenue and the West Grove residential neighborhood immediately behind the playhouse – another concern voiced by residents.
It’s very misleading and dishonest to refer to this as a “demolition and reconstruction project.”
Reconstruction of a nationally designated historic property is defined by the Secretary of the Interior as “the act or process of depicting, by means of new construction, the form, features, and detailing of a non-surviving site, landscape, building, structure, or object for the purpose of replicating its appearance at a specific period of time and in its historic location.”
The Reconstruction Standards are in direct conflict with the County’s unwritten policy of Demolition-by-Neglect for the sole purpose of developing a commercial retail project with private partners. The County has already proven that they are incapable of properly restoring the facade and spaces directly behind it, which have already collapsed.
For years our County officials have used our own tax dollars to pay themselves to intentionally, proactivity and relentlessly deceive us, the voters who are funding this project. The only reason there is an auditorium in the project at all, is because of a covenant attached to the deed which states that one must be located on the property. The covenant does not dictate size or quality.
The auditorium designed for the commercial retail project is smaller than the auditoriums at our local elementary schools — the antithesis of our internationally renowned League of Resident Theatre where the most recognized actors on the planet starred in Off-Broadway productions, now officially being removed from the National Register of Historic Places.
I look forward to the Spotlight’s high-quality investigative journalism that will reveal who the County’s private development partners are and why they have such a distain for high-quality Off-Broadway theatre.
Sincerely,
Melissa Meyer Assoc. AIA LEED AP BD+C Adjunct Professor