Spotlight 185-260224

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

The 135th Anniversary of the Woman’s Club
This Weekend’s Gifford Lane Art Stroll
A Proposed Shift in Housing Density

The Woman’s Club’s Big Birthday: 135 and Counting

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

By Jenny Jacoby

When Illine Davila unlocks the doors of the Coconut Grove Woman’s Club on the day of an event, she pauses to greet an empty room.

“Good morning, ladies,” she says as she enters the 1921 clubhouse — a nod of recognition to the women who walked these floors more than a century ago.

Davila, the club’s current president, said she often finds herself thinking of the women who came before her.

“I believe some of them are here still,” Davila told the Spotlight

The Gifford Lane Stroll: Art, Friends, and Giving

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, local artists and charitable giving.

By Shawn Macomber

“Do more than belong,” the writer William Arthur Ward once wrote. “Participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice.”

For nearly three decades, residents along a two-block stretch of Gifford Lane in Center Grove have put those words into practice through the Gifford Lane Art Stroll, a one-day arts show and street party rooted in participation, mutual aid and neighborhood-scale culture.

Each year, the street closes to traffic and opens to the public for a community-run event that brings together dozens of local artists of all stripes, along with live music, food vendors and charitable fundraising — a deliberately small, accessible alternative to larger, more commercial art festivals.

City to Vote on Shifting Housing Density From Affordable Projects

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 units are added at those locations.

By David Villano

The Miami City Commission will vote Thursday on a proposal to expand a program that allows developers to transfer unused development density from affordable and mixed-income housing projects in certain low-income areas to market-rate or luxury projects elsewhere in the city.

Under existing law, developers of qualifying affordable housing projects who build fewer units than zoning allows may sell their unused development rights. Those rights can then be applied to other projects, enabling developers at those sites to increase unit count — regardless of whether the added housing units meet any affordability requirements.

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…