What will spring break on South Beach look like? City wants concerts, events all month
In an effort to “rebrand” Miami Beach’s reputation as a spring break destination, the city administration is proposing to produce a month-long festival along six blocks of Lummus Park in South Beach.
City Manager Jimmy Morales hopes the new programming, which he said has drawn the interest of concert-hosting platform Live Nation, will help to “potentially de-escalate or redirect unruly behavior” of the big crowds expected to descend on Miami Beach in March and limit the burden on police.
The City Commission will vote Wednesday on whether to approve a $1.5 million no-bid contract with ACT Productions to develop the festival, which would stretch across Lummus Park from Fifth to 11th streets.
ACT Productions put together the city’s large-scale centennial celebration in 2015. More recently, the company served as the producer of the infamous Miami Beach Pop Festival. The three-day music festival was canceled in October.
Five out of seven members of the commission must vote affirmatively to waive a bidding process.
In a memo to the commission, Morales did not offer many details about the proposal but said the festival would be fenced off and include ticketed and free events. The festival would target a broad demographic, and include varied activities such as beach clean-ups, health and wellness programs and food concessions.
But with less than two months until college students and party-lovers make their way to South Beach by the thousands, Morales himself acknowledged the “extremely short window” of time for the city to make a decision about the programming and execute it.
The commission directed the city to find a production company in June. Only one firm, ACT Productions, said it was up to the challenge of producing such a large-scale and specialized event.
“While the city did expect to receive multiple proposals from various firms, only ACT Productions responded” to the request, Morales wrote in his memo.
ACT Productions would be responsible for recruiting partners or entertainment acts, like Live Nation or the New World Symphony, to fill out the festival.
Live Nation has not submitted a written proposal to the city but the platform is “looking to activate 2-3 large productions during this time frame,” Morales wrote in his memo.
The proposal is an effort by the city to bounce back from a challenging spring break in 2019 which saw brawls on the beach and complaints from visitors about overly active police.
“My problem is that at times it certainly seemed a bit out of control,” said Commissioner Mark Samuelian. “I am first and foremost concerned about the safety of our residents and our visitors.”
He said the success of the military-themed Air and Sea Show, which has been held on Miami Beach during Memorial Day Weekend since 2017, served as an example to follow. The city saw a relatively calm Memorial Day Weekend in 2019.
“I think it is a fair analogy,” he said. “Air and Sea has been successful in offering positive programming giving people things to do.”
But any programming the city schedules should not aim to exclude young or minority groups, said Commissioner David Richardson. A diversity of programming should be scheduled, he said.
“When we talk about programming, I think we have to be really careful about how we talk about it,” he said. “I don’t want to have programming that is designed to exclude any one group.”
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
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