Spotlight 184-260220

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

What Super Wealth Brings to the Grove
Affordable Housing That Fits the Neighborhood
A Chaotic Start to a Public Design Process
Funeral Services for Thelma Gibson

Billionaires at the Gate: Is Extreme Wealth Reshaping the Grove?

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.

By David Villano & Izzy Kapnick

Halfway down Anchorage Way — a historic, tree-lined cul-de-sac linking Main Highway to the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay — the street simply stops as a security gate blocks the road.

On a recent bike ride on a weekday afternoon, a Spotlight reporter was halted before reaching the gate: a guard emerged from a nearby building and asked, politely but firmly, for the visitor to state his business.

Welcome to a new Coconut Grove.

A Small Housing Project that Fits the Neighborhood

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 those lots.

By Don Finefrock

Dragonfly Investments staged a ground-breaking this week for an affordable housing project on Mundy Street in the West Grove that promises to deliver eight new rental apartments for low- and moderate-income families in a neighborhood experiencing rapid gentrification.

Each three-bedroom apartment will be priced for families earning 80% or less of area median income (80% of AMI is $89,200 for a family of three in Miami-Dade County).

Dragonfly Investments is partnering with the City of Miami to build the $4.4 million Mundy Street project, which is within easy walking distance of an Aldi grocery store, a major bus line and the Metrorail station on Douglas Road.

A Chaotic Start to a Public Design Process

A robust crowd of people turned out this week to participate in the public design process for Kirk Munroe Park and Fuller Street, but the choice of location and the lack of a formal presentation had attendees wondering what if any progress was made.

By Jenny Jacoby

Under the dim lights of Sandbar Sports Grill with college basketball playing on large-screen TVs and chatter bouncing off the walls, a crowd of about 75 or so locals stood shoulder to shoulder this week awaiting a presentation on the proposed improvements to two popular public spaces in Center Grove: Fuller Street and Kirk Munroe Park.

But a formal discussion never came.

Funeral Services for Thelma Gibson

A celebration of life service for Thelma Gibson, a Coconut Grove icon who died last week, is planned for Thursday and Friday, Feb. 26 and 27, at Christ Episcopal Church, 3481 Hibiscus St. in Coconut Grove. A public viewing will be held on Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. followed by a funeral service on Friday starting at 10 a.m. Read our tribute to the woman friends and family are calling a trailblazer.

Read Here…

Where We’ll Be – A Grovite’s Calendar

Art Festival Withdrawal? Not So Fast.

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 Museum just a short walk away. Meanwhile, Gifford Lane is already prepping for its own homegrown takeover, where porches double as galleries and neighbors compare notes over Cucumber Punch. The spectacle hasn’t faded — it’s just more intimate.

Beyond the tents, the weekend keeps unfolding. Seraphic Fire lifts American folk into something luminous at Church of the Little Flower, Dance Meets Fashion blends costume and choreography at the Koubek Center, and dinner theater at Atchana’s turns tableside into center stage. In this neighborhood, art prefers a front porch.