Spotlight 187-260303

Good morning. What we’re covering in today’s Spotlight:

  • A Gruesome Anniversary in the Grove
  • A Padel Sports Club on Grand Avenue
  • The Fate of the Playhouse, Updated

One of the Grove’s most lurid crimes happened 40 years ago this week on South Bayshore Drive when builder Stanley Cohen was shot to death in his bed. The home has stood as a monument to murder ever since.      

By Mike Clary

For most of its 110-year existence, the house atop Silver Bluff owed its renown to its lofty prominence, perched on an ancient outcropping of limestone high above Coconut Grove’s South Bayshore Drive, looking out toward Biscayne Bay. 

Designed by German-born architect George Pfeiffer, the two-story structure was more prized for its location and intricate coral rock and hard wood construction than its opulence. 

Then, on March 7, 1986 – forty years ago this week – the four-bedroom house took on a new identity after its well-known occupant, Stanley Cohen, a wealthy builder, was found dead, naked in his bed, with four bullet holes in the back of his head.  


Construction has begun on the Ace Padel sports club planned for a stretch of property along Grand Avenue near Douglas Road where the Charles Barber Shop once stood. 

By Jenny Jacoby

A father-and-son company that has made a name for itself in the emerging sport of padel has broken ground on a new sports facility planned for Grand Avenue in the West Grove – the company’s first padel club in the United States.

Set to open later this year, the Ace Padel facility now under construction on the site of the former Charles Barber Shop, will include five padel courts, a 32-foot-tall canopy, a clubhouse with locker rooms, and other “wellness” amenities.

The project at 3793 Grand Ave. – a partnership between a Swedish father-son duo and Aventura Asset Management – is expected to cost just over $1.2 million, according to a building permit issued by the City of Miami.  


A state legislator has abandoned his effort, for now, to force Miami-Dade County to give up control of the Coconut Grove Playhouse project.

By Don Finefrock

Florida State Rep. Fabian Basabe (R-106) has given up on his quest to wrest control of the Coconut Grove Playhouse away from Miami-Dade County this year and hand it over to a tiny two-island community of 6,000 residents in northern Biscayne Bay.

Basabe, who contends the county has mismanaged the historic renovation project, introduced legislation in the Florida House on Jan. 9 to transfer control of the state-owned property to Bay Harbor Islands. 

The move was embraced by critics of the county’s plan to reopen the playhouse as a smaller theater with shops, restaurants, and parking, but the bill (House Bill 1559) never advanced during the current legislative session in Tallahassee. 


Recent News

The historic house on Charles Avenue in Coconut Grove has fallen into disrepair once again, after an earlier effort to restore the structure stalled.

The Sunday night shooting on the corner of Douglas Road and Florida Avenue was the first violent crime in Coconut Grove since August, police said.

The local organizers behind the petition drive announced this week that they had collected more than enough signatures to place a series of proposed political reforms before voters on the…

Bigger stages, deeper roots: Montreux Jazz Festival Miami returns for a third year at The Hangar at Regatta Grove, expanding its lineup and celebrating jazz’s past, present and future through…

The Coconut Grove Woman’s Club, founded in February 1891 by six community-minded women, is currently experiencing a membership revival.

For one day each year, residents of a two-block stretch in Center Grove have turned Gifford Lane into a deliberately low-key art show and street party rooted in neighborhood culture,…

The proposal would expand an existing program that allows developers to sell and transfer development rights from affordable housing developments to market-rate and luxury projects – even if no affordable…

As the ultrawealthy flow into Coconut Grove, the village is attracting global attention — and confronting familiar tensions over affordability, character and who, and what, still belongs.

An affordable housing project on Mundy Street in the West Grove will deliver eight new apartments on two separate lots while preserving a 1926 coral rock home on one of…

New to town? You should know that the annual art stroll down Gifford Lane is definitely a participatory event. No snobbery here. Baby buggies bump billionaires.  Flip-flops flirt with Ferragamos. …

The art festivals aren’t over after all. South Miami Art Fest keeps the paint flowing just a few Metro stops south with canvases lining the streets and the Lowe Art…

To the Editor: I’ve supported the Stronger Miami campaign publicly for more than eight months, and One Grove Alliance — along with other civic and neighborhood groups — has been…

Art has always been the Grove’s favorite love language. With Valentine’s Day and the art festivals aligning, even Cupid is besotted. You’ll find him emptying his quiver into galleries, onto…

Super Bowls can fade fast. Around the Grove, attention is already shifting to next weekend’s quiet pull of romance, shared time, music, and moments that don’t rush down the field….

Hate to break the news, but no, you can’t do it all. You’ll have to make difficult choices — a seat in a darkened theater or a walk through a…


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