The 44 Percent: Surfside condo collapse, Bill Cosby and Inter Miami in Overtown?
It’s a moments no one could’ve predicted.
The 12-story Champlain Towers South, once outfit with marble floors and picturesque ocean views, now a mere pile of rubble. Families, once whole, now fractured, still holding out hope for some sign of life. The town of Surfside, once known for great beaches and sunshine, now reeling as search efforts enter into day 8.
As of Friday afternoon, the death toll has risen to 20 while more than 120 still remain unaccounted for. A pair of young sisters, 10-year-old Lucia and 4-year-old Emma Guara, were among the latest deaths found among the wreckage, two lives extinguished before they ever had a chance to flourish.
It’s times likes these that we tend to contemplate our own mortality. Why them? Why not us? Why? The questions go on and on.
Among them: How can I help? If there’s some semblance of a silver lining, therein it lies: the way in which the Surfside, Miami-Dade, South Florida community has rallied together. Restaurants offering free food for first responders. Airlines flying in families of victims. Residents taking time to comfort their neighbors. The camaraderie truly has been a sight to behold and a testament to what this place can be.
The reality of the situation is grim. But in times of tragedy, positive thinking and unity is important. You have my back. I certainly have yours. And as long as we stay together, there’s nothing we can’t do.
INSIDE THE 305
In Overtown, David Beckham tries to keep ‘alternative’ site alive for soccer stadium:
With negotiations to build Inter Miami’s stadium within city limits ongoing, David Beckham and his partners still need to ensure their back-up site in Overtown remains an option.
The ownership group recently asked Miami-Dade County’s mayor for an extension on a land deal that won county commission approval in 2017. Under that agreement, the venture needed to have a building permit in place by June 18, a missed deadline that led to the extension request.
“As you may know, we are currently amid negotiations with the City of Miami...to develop a soccer stadium on City property,” lawyer Pablo Alvarez wrote county Mayor Daniella Levine Cava on Friday, June 18. “Should those discussions fail to reach acceptable terms, the Property remains the preferred alternative site for a soccer stadium project that would bring major league soccer to Miami-Dade County.”
Inter Miami’s potential Overtown site sits on a nine-acre property just north of the Miami River with Northwest Eighth Street acting as a northern boundary and Sixth Street to the south. The Beckham group purchased two-thirds of the privately owned land in 2016 and finalized the deal for the remaining three acres with the County in 2019. As talks continue on the stadium group’s first choice, a 75-acre complex on Miami’s Melreese golf course, Alvarez recommended possibly turning the Overtown site into playing fields.
Not everyone in Overtown are fans of the the idea, though. James Adams, bishop at the St. John Institutional Missionary Baptist Church in Overtown, was one of the biggest opponents of the county’s 2017 deal. Instead, he believes better mixed-housing and big-box store should be built on the site.
“This is an opportunity,” Adams recently told the Herald. “It’s a prime piece of real estate.”
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They grew up in Liberty City. Now they want to redevelop Gwen Cherry/Poinciana Park:
Two longstanding members of the Liberty City community have come together hoping to transform the nearby Gwen Cherry/ Poinciana Park area.
Melvin Bratton, Hurricanes football star turned agent and developer, along with Audrey James, founder of the Luther James Cox Community Development Corporation, want to create Royal Poinciana Project. A mixed-used housing complex, the project’s features would include a trade school, supermarket and a multicultural food hall showcasing cuisines found throughout Miami-Dade.
“Me and Mr. Bratton know what the community needs and that’s what we’re aiming toward,” said James, whose Luther James Cox Community Development Corporation nonprofit assists veterans and their families with food, clothing and other needs.
Revitalizing the Gwen Cherry/ Poinciana Park would be the true definition of a “full circle moment” considering Bratton’s ties to the neighborhood. A Liberty City native, Bratton played organized football for the first time at Gwen Cherry Park. He later hosted a football camp there after making it to the NFL.
“That’s where I started my career,” Bratton said, “and I want to finish it with developing [the Royal Poinciana] and being able to take the kids off the street.”
Bratton and James will present their plan before the county commission in the coming months. No renderings have been created just yet, they say, as the duo wants to work with the county to ensure collaboration from day one.
The concept is welcome news to Realtor Neal Oates Jr.
“Anytime positive development comes into a neighborhood, I think it just helps the community,” said Oates, the owner of South Florida-based World Renowned Real Estate. “A project like this, where it’s mixed use, is beneficial for housing and also for employment and job creation.”
OUTSIDE THE 305
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to receive tenure at UNC:
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the famed New York Times journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for her work on the 1619 Project, was granted tenure at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
UNC trustees voted 9-4 to approve Hannah-Jones’ tenured professorship at a special meeting Wednesday. The move follows weeks of contention that began after her appointment sparked criticism among conservatives. Hannah-Jones had already accepted a position at UNC as a Knight Chair; past Knight Chairs have been given tenure, the New York Times reported.
Many believe Hannah-Jones’ involvement in the 1619 Project, which explored the legacy of slavery, led to the UNC board’s initial failure to vote on Hannah-Jones’ tenure — though her position began July 1. These claims were bolstered after the revelation of an email from a prominent donor called her work “highly contentious and highly controversial.” That donor, later revealed to be Walter E. Hussman Jr., the Arkansas publisher and the journalism school’s namesake, did tell the Times in June that “despite his misgivings, he didn’t want to influence the board’s decision.”
HIGH CULTURE
Bill Cosby’s conviction overturned, Phylicia Rashad criticized over insensitive comments:
“It breaks new ground entirely”
That’s how Wesley Oliver, a Pennsylvania law professor, described Bill Cosby’s overturned conviction to The Associated Press on Wednesday. Why? Because he, a SITTING LAW PROFESSOR, had never heard of anyone getting off due to an informal promise not to prosecute.
“It sets precedent not just for Pennsylvania but probably other states,” added Oliver, an instructor at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh.
The promise in question came courtesy of Bruce Castor, the then-top prosecutor of Montgomery County, who, in 2005, persuaded Cosby to testify in a civil case brought by Andrea Constand in exchange for what essentially amounted to immunity. Castor’s decision, which he included in his 2005 press release, was meant to bar Cosby from prosecution “for all time,” the prosecutor testified in 2015, according to the Associated Press. The justices seemingly agreed with Castor and ruled that although his successor was the one who charged Cosby, the agreement still stood.
Shortly after the overturned conviction was announced, Phylicia Rashad, who starred as Cosby’s wife Clair Huxtable in “The Cosby Show” (who, just a reminder, was an attorney) voiced her excitement via Twitter.
“FINALLY!!!!” Rashad tweeted. “A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected!”
Rashad’s response didn’t go over well, especially considering her newly minted role as dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts.
“That sets a particular tone for young women ... about what kind of reception they’d receive if they brought allegations of sexual assault at the university,” Howard alumnus and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb told NPR.
Soraya McDonald, a culture critic at The Undefeated and fellow Howard graduate, shared a similar response via Twitter.
“Is this how you’re going to react when a Howard CoFA student tells you they were assaulted by another student if that student happens to be someone you like and admire?” McDonald wrote. “Because what you’re telling Howard women is that you don’t care if they’re raped.”
Rashad quickly backpedaled, later tweeting “I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward. My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth.”
Where does “The 44 Percent” name come from? Click here to find out how Miami history influenced the newsletter’s title.
This story was originally published July 2, 2021 at 3:15 PM.
