As Coconut Grove attracts more wealth and attention, one longtime resident wonders whether its greatest loss isn’t its history, its tree canopy, or its buildings — but the quiet disappearance of the people who gave the neighborhood its soul.
Charles Dundee, a writer, South Miami native, and Coral Gables High School graduate, spent much of his youth in Coconut Grove. For the past eight years, he has split his time between Coconut Grove and Nantucket, where he works as an innkeeper.
There is something I have been reluctant to admit.
I don’t feel unwelcome in Coconut Grove.
I feel invisible.
Those are two very different things.
Some of the kindest, most gracious people I have ever met live in the Grove. This is not an indictment of wealth. In fact, many of the people who have shown me the greatest generosity over the years have been financially successful. I have no resentment toward them.
What I miss is the Grove that attracted artists before investors, sailors before luxury yachts, dreamers before influencers, and people who came searching for beauty, meaning, and inspiration rather than prestige.
To their credit, many Grove residents continue to fight for that spirit. They have battled to preserve the Playhouse, the historic cottages of the West Grove, the magnificent tree canopy, and public access to the waterfront. Those battles tell me, once again, that the soul of Coconut Grove is still worth defending.
But another force is equally powerful. Developers understandably see Coconut Grove as one of the most desirable pieces of real estate in America. Their job is to build. Their investors expect returns. There is nothing unusual about that. The challenge comes when development begins to value profit more than place.
The question is whether a neighborhood can become so valuable that it slowly forgets what made it valuable in the first place.
This summer I have found myself asking the same question while spending time on Nantucket. Here, too, prosperity has transformed a place of remarkable character. Beautiful homes become grander. Property values climb. The economy flourishes. Yet many working people and middle-class families increasingly find themselves pushed farther from the communities they helped create.
Yet I cannot shake the feeling that something less tangible quietly slips away. I have come to think of it as the Grove’s invisible class.
Not the poor. Not the middle class.
But the artists. The teachers. The bartenders who know everyone’s story. The writers with notebooks. The old sailors who still believe a stiff breeze is better than a luxury car. The environmentalists who spend weekends protecting the tree canopy. The musicians who play because music is a calling rather than a business.
These are the people who gave Coconut Grove its unmistakable character.
They are becoming harder to see.
Sometimes I sit in a coffee shop, watching people pass by, wondering where I fit into this new Grove. Not because anyone has asked me to leave. Quite the opposite. People are friendly.
But there comes a moment when you quietly ask yourself:
“Is this still a place where I fit in? Where I can find my tribe, my niche?”
That is honestly how I feel much of the time.
The places where I still feel at home are few: Books & Books; the Coconut Grove Sailing Club.
There are still moments when the old Grove reappears.
Halloween is one of those moments. On the evening of October 31, for a few precious hours, the Grove seems to remember who it once was. The neighborhood block parties, the costumes, the musicians, the artists, the laughter, and the conversations on the sidewalks make it feel less like a fashionable destination and more like the earthy, historic village that drew me there in the first place.
But when the costumes are packed away and November arrives, that feeling becomes much harder to find.
More and more these days, instead of lingering in the Grove, I find myself heading west and south to the Everglades and Big Cypress. There, beneath the cypress trees and among the mangroves, I rediscover something that once existed in abundance in Coconut Grove — a quiet reminder that life is measured not by what we own, but by what inspires us, what brings us peace, and where we feel at home in the larger world.
I don’t hope Coconut Grove stops changing. No living community ever does.
I simply hope it never forgets the people and places that made it unique long before it became fashionable.
Perhaps the Grove’s invisible class isn’t made up of people who disappeared.
It’s made up of people who quietly woke up one day and realized they no longer knew where they belonged within it.
Charles Dundee’s piece, “The Grove’s Invisible Class,” was a much needed say. I’m a native, and while didn’t live in the Grove but certainly ‘grew up’ in it. My father was drawn to for the art and bohemian professionals and I tagged along. Have lived in it for the last 25 years; its worse years. And while it’s still the loveliest place in the County, I’m certainly disillusioned. People I meet have no idea who Erin or father Mike was. Never heard of the Hare Krishna’s in the Park (Peacock not Kennedy); the Candlelight Inn cum Village Inn cum etc… the Oak Feed store. It’s not just that these establishments are not here. Rather it’s the ambiance, texture, identity, mindset and lifestyle that resonates with those of us who are privileged and identify is lost.
What a beautiful tribute to all who made the Grove the Grove, as well as a mournful acknowledgment that development has blinded investors to the true source of the Grove’s natural beauty — the beautiful piece of earth we dwell in and the dwellers who love it.
Beautiful reflection Charles. Thank you.
“Developers understandably see Coconut Grove as one of the most desirable pieces of real estate in America.” Mr. Dundee sums up this powerful tidal-wave force before continuing, “The challenge comes when development begins to value profit more than place.”
I think the Spotlight posted the “Legacy Garden Opens in the West Grove” in this same issue to reinforce the danger presented by gentrification to the entire Grove. Gentrification is not a racial issue, although the West Grove (now “Little Bahamas”) used to be 90% African-American just three decades ago.
No, it’s just newcomers with relatively more dollars moving into established “desirable” neighborhoods without sufficiently valuing what attracted them. For many, it’s more of an investment than a home. I call it “houses by the pound”—like buying bananas.
Unfortunately, our zoning code, Miami 21, which has “Preserving Neighborhoods, Historical Resources and the natural environment” as its No. 1 conservation goal, has never been reviewed neighborhood by neighborhood as its authors intended. Compounding that, the 11th Judicial Circuit in a decision known as “Cube 3585 LLC vs City of Miami” found similar Intent language in the Grove’s Neighborhood Conservation District 3 to be “not a discernable professional standard.”
Those two mistakes have opened the floodgates to the pillaging of the entire Grove by those who value profit more than place.
Can those mistakes be corrected? Yes, but only if 3 of our 5 Commissioners and our Mayor decide it’s worth risking the unlimited developer donations that fuel all election and re-election campaigns.
Beautifully written article by Charles Dundee! Preserving a sense of place and historic landmarks creates a community worth living in.