Now, the county’s truth about the Coconut Grove Playhouse deal | Opinion
The city of Miami Mayor’s “different view” of the county’s plans for the Coconut Grove Playhouse is filled with “convenient falsehoods.”
Convenient because they are attempts to incite residents’ fears about taxes. Falsehoods because they are misleading and untruthful rationales for the city mayor’s wrongful veto of our project. Not one of these distorted “views” is anywhere near grounds, legal or otherwise, for justifying his veto of our historic preservation application for the Playhouse. So let’s tell the truth to residents about the playhouse and set the record straight.
Truth # 1. The fact is that the taxpayers of Miami are not being asked to contribute any money for the playhouse project. In fact, every dollar that the Miami Parking Authority (MPA) invests in the Playhouse project, including the cost of the garage, will be paid back, with interest. Conversely, the county’s secured $23.6 million, largely of voter-approved bond funds, will be used, as promised, to create a great theater.
The “payback” for the county funds is the benefits that superb plays and educational programs will provide for our families and children. The county’s and FIU’s 99-year lease with the state for the playhouse explicitly calls out this financial partnership with MPA and we have notified the state that we and MPA are proceeding with our project as clearly outlined in our lease.
Truth # 2. The county’s project prioritizes a thoughtful and thorough restoration of the entire historic front building of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the only part of the structure that the city, itself, has designated as having any remaining historical integrity.
This is what everyone has seen and identified for almost 100 years as the Coconut Grove Playhouse. In fact, the County project restores the original uses of the 1927 front building — shops and cafes on the ground level and offices on the upper floors. And the county bond money is being used for exactly what we told the voters we would do in 2004: “reconstruction” of a state-of-the art theater to return great dramatic productions to the place where serious theater began for our community. What the Miami mayor would have us do is waste taxpayers’ money that we don’t have and should not spend, even if we did, to save the blank exterior shell of the existing auditorium. Just as bad, this would repeat the mistake of trying to retrofit a theater that will not work inside of this limiting box. I invite you to go to www.miamidadearts.org/playhouse and use your own judgment about the “historic” or “architectural” value of the back of this building.
Truth # 3. The county, not the city of Miami, has committed the new revenues from the parking garage — as required by our lease with the state — to help support the operations of the theater so that the taxpayers will not have to do so. That’s why the county is forgoing our lease payment from MPA for the property on which the garage will be built and it is why the county, unlike the City, is not requiring to be paid back for the investment of the county bond funds.
Using a conservative estimate, repayment of the county funds would have cost the project $1.2 million per year. We also could have charged MPA a considerable annual lease payment for the opportunity to build a parking garage on this prime site — a garage promised by the city to the Grove. We are not charging MPA a dime. Instead, together, we are ensuring that all of the resulting parking proceeds will support the theater without requiring any money from the taxpayers.
Our project celebrates the history of the Playhouse, restores great theater, respects the village ambiance of Coconut Grove, and is ready to go. Regardless of the continued roadblocks placed in our way, we remain determined to making sure that our playhouse project becomes a reality for all of our residents.
Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez has served as mayor of Miami-Dade County since 2011.