Beaches and hotels reopening June 1 in Miami-Dade and after Memorial Day in Broward
South Florida’s coast will begin reopening to visitors next week as Broward lifts closure orders on its beaches and hotels Tuesday and Miami-Dade prepares to do the same on June 1 after a March shutdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Miami Beach went first Friday, when the City Commission approved a June 1 reopening date for the region’s most popular beach and voted to lift closure orders on hotels that form the backbone of the county’s tourism industry.
The city’s move cleared the way for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez to plan his own lifting of hotel and beach restrictions, which he had said needed to coincide with Miami Beach’s reopening plans.
Broward won’t wait that long. Its top administrator released an order late Friday that will lift closure orders Tuesday for hotels and beaches, along with commercial gyms. New rules will govern the facilities, and people can visit the beach and swim but can’t make themselves comfortable. From the order by Broward Administrator Bertha Henry: “No picnicking, sunbathing, sitting or lying on the beach.”
Miami-Dade is considering similar restrictions for its beaches, with a final plan expected next week, said Key Biscayne Mayor Mike Davey. “It looks right now that the beaches will reopen on June 1 [for] active participation — walking, running and swimming,” Davey said in a video message after a call with Gimenez and the mayors of other coastal cities. “Congregation and beach furniture may not be [allowed], but the beaches will be open.”
Friday’s decisions in Miami-Dade set up a string of challenges for local governments and the region’s signature industry, as municipal administrators prepare to manage social distancing when locals return to the beaches and hotels try to lure back tourists during a pandemic that sent air traffic into Miami plunging 90 percent.
“We have to exercise some measure of caution because there is a natural tension between crowds and physical distancing,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said. “How do you manage that in a pandemic? The answer is carefully. We know that Memorial Day is a traditional time for everybody to go to the beach, and if we saw hundreds of thousands of people on our beaches, it would be a disaster.”
Gimenez left some wiggle room in announcing the planned reopening of beaches and allowing hotels to book guests beyond essential workers and other travel categories permitted under the county’s current emergency orders. He called June 1 a “target date” for reopening.
But with county administrators, smaller coastal cities and the hotel industry waiting for Miami Beach’s reopening schedule, Friday’s developments set Miami-Dade on course to reopen one of the last major industries and attractions still shuttered during the coronavirus emergency.
“We’re going to be back in the tourism business,” said Bill Talbert, head of the county’s tourism bureau, the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. He said the bureau now will ramp up its “Miami Shines” tourism campaign, aimed largely at Florida residents who may be interested in driving close to home for a vacation. “There is pent-up demand for travel to Miami,” he said.
The planned reopening date is about two weeks after retail stores, museums and grooming services resumed operations in Miami Beach on Wednesday. The city will reopen restaurants next Wednesday.
About an hour after the city’s vote, the county issued a statement green-lighting the June 1 target date.
“The city managers will be meeting with County staff and medical experts over the weekend to create the rules that would be necessary for the safe and secure reopening of beaches and the expansion of hotel accommodations,” the statement from Gimenez’s office read. “The group will meet with Mayor Gimenez again on Tuesday to go over the proposed plan.”
Gelber, whose city boasts seven miles of public beaches, said Gimenez had been “waiting for us to give him the signal.”
The upshot is that residents and visitors will have to wait until after Memorial Day weekend to splash in the water and soak up the sun.
Beachgoers will likely be asked to maintain social distancing and refrain from forming large groups. But masks will not likely be required, City Manager Jimmy Morales said.
Morales said he was comfortable reopening beaches and hotels based on the improving coronavirus metrics in Miami-Dade, including the rate of daily positive test results and hospitalizations, and increased resources for contact tracing and viral testing.
Commissioner Ricky Arriola, who has criticized the administration for resisting a quicker reopening of the city, predicted last month that the city would wait until after Memorial Day to reopen its beaches.
“This was always about [Memorial Day Weekend],” he wrote on Facebook shortly after the vote. “It’s about politics, not science. Are we going to be safer on June 1st [versus] this weekend?”
Reopening the region’s top tourist attraction — the coast — got complicated as leaders from Broward and Miami-Dade said they wanted to avoid large beaches staying closed and sending pent-up demand elsewhere on the coast.
“It’s hard to get to our beach,” said Jorge Gonzalez, manager of Bal Harbour, a village with 3,000 residents. “But if we’re the only one open, people will figure out how to get there.”
While county mayors and managers have the authority to close beaches countywide — an emergency order given by Gimenez closed all beaches on March 19 — cities have the power to delay reopenings. That’s because cities can issue stricter orders than the county, including decrees to keep businesses and public spaces closed once Miami-Dade lifts its restrictions.
Last week, Gimenez hinted at Miami Beach’s role as a pace setter for allowing residents to return to the sand. “You can’t really open a couple of beaches,” Gimenez said during an online press conference. “It just exacerbates the problem of everyone flooding into a couple of beaches.”
“There is at least one city I know of that has said it won’t open before a certain date. And it has a lonnnnng stretch of beach,” he said. “If Broward and Miami-Dade open the beaches, and then a long stretch of beach in Miami-Dade isn’t open, then that means everybody is crowded into the beaches that are open. It just makes the problem worse.”
Once Miami-Dade announced its June 1 date on Friday, Broward said it was ready to lift beach closures May 26, creating a six-day gap between the counties.
Broward also will be ahead of Miami-Dade on the contentious issue of commercial gyms. They remain closed in Miami-Dade under an order by Gimenez, but Henry’s new order allows them to reopen in Broward. The Broward rules limit commercial gyms to 50 percent capacity and customers must wear masks unless they’re working out or cooling down from exercise.
Stung by national coverage of spring break crowds as the coronavirus crisis accelerated in early March, local authorities are preparing new rules and enforcement strategies for keeping beachgoers from clustering.
Managers at the Boucher Brothers beach concession stands on Miami Beach have plans to space chairs and umbrellas six feet apart to comply with social-distancing rules.
Attendants, branded as “Beach Ambassadors,” would tell beachgoers when they’re violating anti-COVID measures, including if gatherings exceed 10 people. If the situation escalates, they’re instructed to call the police, according to the family-owned company’s “Post COVID-19 Plan of Action” manual.
“We may create these large hula hoops to say, ‘This is your area,’ ” said Steve Boucher, one of the owners. “If you’re a big family with 16 people, we’ll give you two hula hoops.”
Robert Finvarb, who owns several small Marriott hotels on Miami Beach, said he’s discouraged by internal reports from properties in South Carolina and Florida that have already reopened their beaches. Demand has missed even scaled back targets there, and Finvarb said he’s preparing for lean weeks ahead.
“I’m going to staff methodically,” he said. “We’re bringing a lot of people back. But we’re not bringing everybody back.”
As hotels in Palm Beach County and across Alligator Alley in Collier County have already reopened, hoteliers in Miami-Dade feel like they have been at a competitive disadvantage. Hotels in the Florida Keys will also open June 1, a decision announced Sunday by Monroe County.
Philip Goldfarb, the president and CEO of the hospitality division of Fontainebleau Development, which operates Fontainebleau Miami Beach, predicts reopening to a fraction of the demand the industry would be enjoying during a typical June.
He expects the first week of business to be slow, but he is hopeful that by the first Friday in June, local families will book “staycations” at the Fontainebleau. When they walk in the door, their temperatures will be taken and they will be given COVID kits equipped with face masks, hygienic wipes and hand sanitizer.
About 2,000 Fontainbleau employees were laid off due to the coronavirus, and scores of them will slowly return to work as June 1 nears, Goldfarb said.
“I think it’s about time,” he said.
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 10:28 AM.
.JPG)