The Downtown Development Authority has come under fire in recent months from downtown residents who don’t want to pay an additional tax to support the agency.
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published by WLRN Public Media on October 17. The Spotlight is re-publishing this story under a partnership agreement with WLRN.
On an energetic morning this past May, a long line of opinionated members of the public made their way to the lectern to speak inside the chambers of Miami City Hall.
None were quite so colorful as Tim Irwin.
Dressed in a white powdered wig, he strode up to the microphone in a blue colonial frock coat, and complained about a serious matter.
“We seek not charity, but justice. The right to decide our own fate, free from the taxing grip of the Downtown Development Authority. Let it be known we demand our independence. We shall not be their cash machine,” Irwin said at a city commission meeting on May 22, reading from a pre-written script.
He referred to the city’s Downtown Development Authority (DDA), an agency funded by taxpayer dollars within a specific area of downtown Miami and Brickell. Residents and businesses within the DDA’s boundaries pay an additional tax that goes toward services and business development specifically for downtown.
But Irwin doesn’t live downtown. He doesn’t live in Miami at all. He’s an actor and performer-for-hire based in Broward County who normally makes a living with juggling, fire eating and acrobatics under the name “Tim the Juggler.”
He was, in fact, hired by James Torres, a local activist waging a public fight against on the DDA.
Torres has spent the better part of the past year championing the fight against the DDA, claiming online and in public forums that the agency is misspending taxpayer dollars. Most recently, Torres sent a letter to Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia requesting the state investigate the DDA for “irresponsible spending.”
Torres is the president of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance, a voluntary cohort of some condo building residents in downtown Miami.
It was Torres who paid Irwin to come to City Hall in Jeffersonian costume and speak out against the DDA as if he were a downtown resident.
“James reached out to me, he asked me about it. He compensated me,” Irwin told WLRN in a phone call, adding that he agreed with Torres’ messaging. “I think everybody can get behind less taxes.”
The played-up drama is all part of a campaign on Torres’ part to, in his own words, “divorce” downtowners from the DDA and potentially place the tax burden for downtown services on the city of Miami as a whole. This all comes as Torres mulls over a possible campaign for an elected seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission.
New arrival becomes regular fixture
Torres isn’t a Miami native — he’s lived in his current downtown condo since 2016, and he told WLRN he came to Miami from Chicago 12 years ago to take a job for the Miami Herald’s sales department.
Since at least 2021, Torres has engaged in Miami’s local politics as the president of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance. In an Instagram post from early on in his tenure as the Alliance’s president, Torres celebrated the DDA’s efforts to bring new businesses to the area.
“‘Eight companies will be creating nearly 700 new full-time, high paying jobs in #Downtownmiami over a 3-year period” Thanks to the Miami DDA’s Follow the Sun Campaign,” Torres wrote in a post on March 15, 2021.
His appetite for politics grew in 2023, when he ran for a City of Miami commission seat to represent District 2, which comprises downtown, Brickell and much of the city’s waterfront area, including Coconut Grove.
Torres was unsuccessful, losing to current District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo. Since then, Torres has been a regular fixture at the public comment portions of city commission meetings, laying blame or praise on commissioners for a variety of issues and initiatives.
In one heated exchange last January, Torres was escorted out of City Hall by security after shouting expletives at City Commissioner Joe Carollo, calling him a “f—ing liar.”
He’s also taken part in arguments in parts of the city outside downtown — joining residents in the Morningside neighborhood who protested a park renovation initiative by Torres’ one-time political opponent, Damian Pardo.
Protesters wore t-shirts with the message “STOP PARDO’S CONCRETE MONSTERPATH” printed on them, which were purchased by Torres.
Torres said he gets involved in causes around the city because people know he can pull the levers of local government.
“People come to me and say, ‘Hey, you’re strong, you get things done, you’ve accomplished things,’” he told WLRN in an interview. “I care about my community. We need a better city.”
He’s not wrong about being able to get things done — or at least getting the city government to react.
The DDA called a special meeting on Aug. 28, featuring appearances from Miami City Commissioners Pardo and Ralph Rosado during the city’s budget process. During that meeting, officials spoke in almost direct response to Torres’ ongoing public campaign against the agency.
“ I’m sure many of you will be shocked to learn that there are politically motivated attacks in the city of Miami,” Pardo remarked sarcastically at the meeting. “ About a year ago … a series of attacks began around the DDA and the DDA increasing their taxes.”
Torres laid out his issues with the agency at the meeting and in statements to the media: that the DDA board is made up mostly of people who don’t live downtown, that downtowners don’t get a choice if they want to pay the DDA surtax, that the DDA gives taxpayer funded grants to large corporations to come to Miami, among other complaints.
He led an unsuccessful effort to put an item on the November 2025 ballot that would ask downtown residents if they wanted to cease paying the DDA tax. City commissioners chose not to put that item on the ballot, so the alliance president has changed tack and instead pushed to restructure the DDA board and scrutinize its budget.
“The unelected board answers to nobody but itself. That’s why tonight’s budget isn’t just a set of numbers. It’s representing a broken system that has tapped its residents for decades,” Torres said on Aug. 28.
Torres told WLRN he believes the entire city should pay for the DDA services, even if those services are exclusive to downtown.
“It should be a shared responsibility because downtown is for everybody,” Torres said.
The DDA
Melvin Downing pressure washes the streets of downtown Miami as an employee of the DDA — the same streets he once lived on.
“I was homeless, I was on drugs and I’ve been clean since 2011. By the grace of God and DDA, they gave me a chance to work. So I’ve been working ever since, making sure that the sidewalks are clean,” Downing told WLRN on a recent morning outside the Olympia Theater.
Downing is a member of the DDA’s “Downtown Enhancement Team,” a group that travels around Miami’s urban core picking up trash, cleaning sidewalks and keeping the area neat. Many of the team’s members are formerly homeless people that the agency helped get on their feet.
“It’s a reintegration program where those that were formerly homeless now have jobs,” Christina Crespi, chief executive officer of the DDA, told WLRN in an interview. “We started with a team of 20, now we’re up to 60. We’re hoping to grow that team to 100 some day, and we’re really proud.”
The Downtown Enhancement Team is one part of the larger suite of services provided by the DDA within its “catchment area.”
The agency has an annual budget of close to $19 million, funded by an additional millage rate paid by residents and business owners within the DDA’s area. The millage rate is determined by the Miami City Commission each year in September during city budget discussions.
That $19 million budget funds programs such as a permitting clinic meant to assist prospective downtown business owners navigate local permitting requirements; community events and activations; capital improvements in downtown like the Flagler Street pedestrian project; and grants to entice businesses to open up shop in Miami’s urban core.
That last initiative is a subject of criticism from Torres and other critics of the DDA.
“The biggest issue that downtown residents and Brickell have is what we call the ‘corporate welfare checks’ that are being given away,” Torres said. “These are taxpayer monies that we can use for the area. Why is an international billionaire company receiving our taxpayer money?”
Of particular contention are grants the DDA has offered to corporations like Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Futbol Club (FC) Barcelona.
The DDA gave UFC a $100,000 sponsorship when the fighting event came to downtown Miami in April. That sponsorship paid for in-person UFC activations in downtown areas for people not at the main event at the Kaseya Center, and charitable donations to local institutions like the Police Athletic League.
To FC Barcelona, the DDA has offered a $450,000 incentive grant over the course of three years to entice the sports company to move its offices from New York to downtown Miami. DDA leadership said the grant has not been disbursed yet and will only be given once FC Barcelona meets certain criteria lined out in a pre-negotiated agreement, including maintaining an office downtown and opening up retail and museum space for the public.
Though this money hasn’t officially been paid, critics of the DDA believe the agency should be more focused on assisting smaller local businesses than subsidizing large companies. That’s a piece of feedback that Commissioner Rosado, the DDA’s chairman, said he’s hoping to implement.
“I’m more supportive of smaller mom-and-pop grants than maybe some of the grants that have been given to larger entities, and so I’ve asked for a change in the budget that reflects that,” Rosado told WLRN in an interview.
Rosado takes into account the criticism that the DDA’s bylaws have no requirement that the agency’s board must include downtown residents. Rosado said he intends to change the bylaws so that the board must include one resident from each of the DDA’s three areas of focus — Brickell, the central business district near the Kaseya Center, and the arts and entertainment district near the Frost Science Museum.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins is a resident and board member, but that is only by happenstance. The county is allowed to appoint a member to the board, and Higgins happens to live downtown.
Higgins will be leaving the Miami-Dade County Commission this year as she is running for City of Miami mayor. Under Florida law, an elected official must resign from their current seat if they run for another office, regardless of whether they win or lose.
Torres said he hopes that the county holds an election to replace Higgins when she leaves office and creates a vacancy — one that could be ripe for Torres himself to fill.
“It could be. Right now, I’m very non-committal to that because I’m so focused on my community of downtown,” he said.
Torres said that he “probably would” run for office again if the political climate in Miami remains the same.
