There’s an uninhabited island in Biscayne Bay where a dozen species of birds whoop loudly in the treetops, stingrays nudge the shore, manatees linger and dolphins are a common sight.

It’s called Bird Key. And it’s covered in garbage.

From the waterline deep into the mangroves, there are tires, deck chairs, wood planks, beer cans, plastic bottles, children’s toys, fishing line, shoes, crates, coolers, plastic drums and an endless array of urban debris that Biscayne Bay swallowed up and spat out.

Sitting 500 yards offshore, just south of the 79th Street Causeway, Bird Key is one of Biscayne Bay’s oldest and most ecologically important islands. It was surveyed by the British crown and fought over by early settlers. Investors acquired it, and preservationists covet it. Yet little has been written about the island. And litter has been accumulating there for decades.

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On a sweltering summer night in 1954, Frank Sinatra swaggers into a plush nightclub on Biscayne Boulevard. America is booming. Miami is its ritzy, neon-lit playground. And Sinatra has the world on a string.

He struts over to the bar, where his pals Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason, and Arthur Godfrey are drinking with tanned showgirls. He orders a Jack on the rocks, loosens his silk tie, and settles in to watch the stage show. Several drinks later, he’s onstage too, snapping his fingers and belting out his latest hits with the house band. It’s Miami in the Fabulous 50s and impromptu performances by Ol’ Blue Eyes are part of what gives the town its glamour.

Where those legendary performances took place, however, has been misreported and wrongly promoted in the decades since Sinatra and his cuff-linked crew left the scene.

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Everyone said I would need a gun.

I already had the canoe. I bought it off a guy named Del in Hollywood for $150. His ad on Craigslist said he wanted $300. But when I went to his house, he dropped the price.

“Is it stable?” I asked.

Del shrugged, then offered to throw in a life vest.

I strapped the canoe to the roof of my car and named it Calypso, after the ship of explorer Jacques Cousteau, my childhood idol. But I couldn’t explore the world’s oceans like Jacques. I don’t have that kind of time or money.

Instead, I took a week off work to circumnavigate Miami-Dade County via its canals. It would take four days. I would sleep on the canal banks, under bridges, in parks, in vacant lots—wherever I could find.

I was warned about what I’d run into: corpses, alligators, toxic sludge, criminals, crazies and chupacabras.

But it sounded great. I wanted a bad journey and a good story. I wanted to come home sunburned, starving, exhausted and with some kind of infection.

I bought a waterproof backpack, a flashlight, mosquito repellent and a few other supplies.

The only thing missing, everyone agreed, was a gun.

To read the full story in the Miami Herald, click here (pdf).

To hear the radio broadcast, click the NPR logo below.

Bailey was a fighting dog. A pit bull. But when he crawled out from under a parked car in Little Haiti last year, he didn’t look very tough. He looked like he’d had enough.

Bailey was about two years old. He kept his head low to the ground when he walked. He had big, brown bloodshot eyes, three missing claws, a half dozen bite marks, and an ugly collection of red scars. I could count his ribs.

I only knew one thing about pit bulls: they were dangerous. But Bailey seemed desperate. So I put out food and water and sat on my porch steps to watch him eat. He scarfed the meal up into his powerful jaws, then came over, licked me up to my elbows, and fell asleep with his big head on my feet.

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South Florida has a dream. A dream that one day every tri-county resident will be able to ride a commuter train along the coast from downtown Miami up to West Palm Beach, hopping on and off in neighborhoods along the way. A dream that Amtrak will travel that same route, stopping in major cities from Miami to Jacksonville before continuing on to northern states. A dream that freight trains, loaded with containers from new, super-size ships, will rumble out of the Port of Miami for the first time in years.

One of those dreams will soon come true. The other two will need time and lots of money.

The key to a new rail reality lies with the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC). Roughly paralleling U.S. 1 (Biscayne Boulevard) from downtown Miami to Palm Beach County, the FEC passes through the centers of 28 South Florida cities before heading north along the coast to Jacksonville.

Built by oil and hotel magnate Henry Flagler in the late 19th Century, the FEC played a major role in Florida’s development, bringing goods and people to the once inaccessible southern end of the peninsula. But competition from automobiles, affordable air travel, and problems posed by a workers’ strike brought passenger service to an abrupt end in 1968. Ever since then, the railroad has carried nothing but freight

The southernmost five-mile stretch, from 71st Street to the Port of Miami, was rarely used after that, and fell into complete disuse after 2005, when Hurricane Wilma damaged the drawbridge that carried trains to the port.

Now, thanks to nearly $50 million in federal, state, and private funds, that ribbon of steel is making a comeback. Work has begun to repair the bridge, upgrade the rails, and construct an on-dock rail terminal to restore freight service to and from the port. The upgrades are being made in anticipation of the widening of the Panama Canal, which will allow super-sized ships from Asia to unload East Coast-bound containers in Miami. A $77 million state grant will help fund the dredging of the Port of Miami to accommodate those larger ships.

Questions remain as to how effective those improvements will be in attracting mega-ships to Miami. Yet of greater interest, perhaps, is the fact that the freight revival comes in advance of Florida Department of Transportation plans to place both tri-county commuter and inter-city Amtrak trains on the FEC track, too.

The Port of Miami design calls for rail cars stacked with off-loaded cargo containers to use the existing single track that runs across Biscayne Boulevard, past the Freedom Tower, then turns northward, roughly paralleling NE 2nd Avenue.

At NE 71st Street the line branches westward and continues on to the FEC’s Hialeah Railyard, northeast of Miami International Airport. That is where cargo bound for South Florida distribution would be loaded onto trucks for delivery.

But much of the cargo, if not most, would be heading farther north, passing through Jacksonville and on up the East Coast. That will mean a lot of trains using the same single track envisioned to carry passengers from Miami to West Palm Beach, and beyond. Can commuters and containers coexist?

In 2009 Sue Gibbons of Gannett Fleming, the consulting firm working on the passenger rail study for FDOT, explained at a public meeting that “within the 100-foot-wide FEC corridor, there’s room for up to five tracks, so a combination of local, express, and even inter-city Amtrak trains is possible.”

Current plans, however, call for just one additional track.

“We are analyzing, hopefully, just double-tracking,” says Amie Goddeau, a Mobility Development Manager at FDOT. “We have to do an awful lot of train simulation modeling with the FEC to make sure both freight and passenger service can be accommodated and determine what type of infrastructure is needed.”

Existing routes for the FEC & Tri-Rail/Amtrak rail lines. (S. Florida East Coast Corridor Study)

Although portions of the FEC corridor are already double-tracked, vast stretches currently contain just a single line for freight. FDOT’s plan would run two tracks from downtown Miami to West Palm Beach.

The goal of introducing a local commuter service on those tracks is estimated to cost about $3 billion. “So what we need to do now,” Goddeau explains, “is break it down into cost-effective, buildable segments. We’re looking at a few, but if you live in South Florida, the one that makes the most sense is the one between Miami and Fort Lauderdale.”

In other words, a new tri-county commuter line will be pieced together slowly, as funding emerges.

As for Amtrak, which currently travels to Miami along the CSX Railway tracks (several miles west of South Florida’s city centers), she says, “If we’re successful putting in commuter rail, then Amtrak would like to run down the FEC, too. As we look to [future] usage of the tracks, we would put in a slot for them.” Additional tracks would likely be unnecessary, she says, since Amtrak would only run one or two trains a day in each direction.

Financing those dreams could be tough.

FDOT applied for federal grants twice in the past three years to fund Amtrak’s move to the FEC. They were denied both times owing to concerns about the project’s readiness. They will try again as soon as the Federal Railroad Administration announces a new round of grant opportunities, this time bolstered by a recently approved state pledge of $118 million. It is not known, however, when the Federal Railroad Administration will make new grants available.

A tri-county commuter service on the FEC will face funding challenges, too. Local budget deficits, state cutbacks, and an anti-spending sentiment in Washington could limit government contributions. The ideological debate over the wisdom of rail subsidies will likely factor in also: Supporters believe passenger rail curbs traffic congestion, creates jobs, lowers emissions, and reduces fuel dependence. Therefore it deserves government subsidies. Critics fear a tax-funded boondoggle which is better left to the private sector.

There are stretches of twin tracks, like this near El Portal, but mainly it’s single track.

The solution may lie with Tri-Rail — South Florida’s existing tri-county commuter service, which operates several miles west of the FEC, on tracks formerly owned by CSX Railway.

The Palm Beach Post reported in August that “legislation is likely to be proposed for the [state legislative] session beginning in January that would allow private firms to bid on running Tri-Rail.” The FEC, which is interested in bidding, claims it can operate Tri-Rail for $10 million less than the state. The company would use that leftover subsidy money to jumpstart passenger service on its own coastal line. An east-west connection between the two systems could give South Florida its first expansive commuter rail service.

Other companies, such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains, the Palm Beach Post goes on to say, are rumored to be interested in bidding too, so an FEC-dominated rail network in South Florida is not guaranteed. But, says FDOT’s Goddeau, “FEC is an operator which would surely love to, if they privatize Tri-Rail, get that money and run trains on Tri-Rail and then also their own trains on the FEC.” Privatization, she notes, “seems to be the way we’re trending as a state.”

Impatient for the arrival of passenger trains, one Miami official has put forward his own local, interim plan. Two months ago Miami-Dade County Commissioner Xavier Suarez proposed running a hybrid train/trolley system on the FEC from Midtown to downtown Miami. Suarez’s “trolley trains” would have rubber wheels to allow them to transition from rails to city streets (presumably at Biscayne Boulevard). The future of that proposal depends in large part on cooperation from the City of Miami. Whether the FEC would welcome Suarez’s trolleys on their newly revived freight line — and future passenger corridor — remains to be seen.

This much is certain: Several years’ worth of planning and fund-seeking still lay ahead. Back in 2009, rail study consultant Sue Gibbons cautioned, “In the very best of circumstances, it’s going to be six years or more before we actually have service running anywhere on this corridor — and probably many more years than that before the whole plan is implemented.”

That timeline, which FDOT confirms is still accurate, leaves Biscayne Corridor residents with four more years to dream.

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.

When Rene Martinez opens the front door of his house, he sees nothing but cars. From the back door, it’s the same view. In fact, no matter which window or door he looks out of, the scenery is the same. That’s because his home sits in the middle of a 200-car parking lot.

“I’m in love,” says Martinez. “I’m in my spot. What goes on around me, I don’t care. I’m happy.”

Straddling the border between Little Haiti and Buena Vista, Martinez’s house was once part of a subdivision that included nearly 100 homes and stretched from N. Miami Avenue to NE 2nd Avenue, and from NE 50th Terrace to NE 53rd Street. The neighborhood was middle-class Anglo for most of the last century, then shifted demographics in the 1970s and 1980s, when thousands of refugees from Haiti and Cuba arrived. And while the neighborhood is still distinctly Caribbean, Martinez’s block looks more like an asphalt sandbar, with his house sitting alone in the parking lot like a two-story metaphor for the passage of time.

Over the course of the past 30 years, his former neighbors sold their homes to the nearby Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged (recently renamed Miami Jewish Health Systems). In the 1950s, MJHS was just a collection of wooden bungalows on the former estate of prominent Miami merchant E.B. Douglas. But the organization outgrew its 17-acre campus toward the end of the last century as Miami’s large post-war Jewish community began to age and seek medical care. “The Home,” as it’s still known, expanded south and westward into Martinez’s neighborhood.

“They were hungry,” Martinez says of his vanished neighbors. “It was a poor neighborhood. They jumped on the first deal they got.” But his father, who bought the property in the early 1970s, refused to sell. His affection for his house and a belief that he could hold out for a better deal motivated him to hang on until the end. When he died last year at the age of 81, he left the house to his son, now 45 years old, who shares his father’s sentiments for the home.

The tall mango trees in the backyard grew from seeds his father carried in his pocket from Cuba. The roosters and chickens that patrol the area are the offspring of fowl that Martinez Sr. raised himself. And the home’s second story, an addition to the original 70-year-old structure, is the handiwork of the father-son team.

Martinez still refers to his long-gone neighbors by their full names when speaking about them. He tells tales of murders, hauntings, affairs, and of schoolboy pranks that he and his friends regularly played on the residents. To give up his childhood home, he says, “They’d have to pay me one million dollars. Maybe $1.5 million.”

Valued at just $258,000 by the Dade County Property Appraiser, his asking price seems extravagant, especially since the prospect of finding a buyer willing to live amid a crush of cars and trucks seems unlikely. However, Martinez explains that he has four sisters — all of whom share a stake in the property — and a million dollars split five ways doesn’t amount to a fortune.

He also points out that the access road leading to his house is maintained solely for his benefit and divides MJHS’s parking area into two separate, unconnected lots. If he leaves, MJHS can close it off and gain a new rear access to the facility, or add roughly 70 new parking spaces — that’s in addition to some 30 spaces his house occupies.

Will they pay the princely sum?

MJHS’s chief development and marketing officer, Blaise Mercadante, says that his organization needs more parking and would love to buy Martinez’s property. But, he explains, “We are a not-for-profit and we operate on donations. We need to be good stewards of the donations we receive, which includes paying reasonable rates for all we purchase.”

The plan, he says, is simply to wait out Martinez: “We don’t want to be bullies. There are no plans to ask the government for eminent domain.”

Eminent domain, while typically used by governments to seize land for public projects such as highways, railroads, and airports, can sometimes be enacted on behalf of private entities. If a company can convince a majority of the state legislature that removing a homeowner is in the public interest, a plea might be successful. In this case, since MJHS is a large medical facility, it could conceivably argue that Martinez’s presence hinders access, parking, expansion, and complicates important zoning processes.

How much compensation would Martinez receive under such a scenario? Jeff Cynamon, an eminent domain and private property rights attorney in Miami Beach, says, “In an eminent domain case, the property is valued at its highest and best use, and the highest and best use may be as assembled as part of the hospital’s property.”

Determining that future value involves a measure of speculation based on price per square foot, the value of added parking spaces (and any revenue collected from them), new facilities, jobs created by expansion, and a variety of other factors. It’s possible, therefore, that the state could determine that the value of Martinez’s property is considerably higher than its current market value.

Martinez, meanwhile, is digging in. He recently planted a row of young lychee trees in the narrow strip of soil beside his house, the fruit from which he plans to enjoy ten years from now. A building contractor by trade, he has plans for the house, too: “I’m going to do renovations soon, paint the house, get it in good shape and let everyone know I’m here to stay.”

Martinez is no anomaly. The Internet abounds with stories of people who refuse to sell their homes and end up living in parking lots, shopping malls, under highway overpasses, or sandwiched in between skyscrapers. In China, homes like Martinez’s are called “nail houses” because their owners are like stubborn nails stuck in a piece of wood.

Literature and film, meanwhile, regularly sympathize with such tenacity, as in the 2009 Disney/Pixar movie Up or the classic 1942 book The Little House, which is still in print today.

But while those stories often involve a David vs. Goliath storyline, Martinez faces a less sinister foe. Real estate records show that MJHS paid fair-market prices for many of the most recently purchased homes in the area. As one of the nation’s preeminent geriatric care facilities, the organization is often bequeathed small fortunes by happy patients and their grateful relatives. Those gifts, along with government grants, have fueled its growth and made the acquisition of private homes possible.

Whatever the future holds, Martinez is content living in the house where he grew up. “I really don’t care about money,” he says. “Money to me means problems. It’s a way to live a little better. You can get things you need, but it’s not everything.”

Still, he’d move on if he could trade up — perhaps to a beach house in Central or South America. Otherwise, he says, “I’d rather die here than go somewhere else. In fact, maybe that’s what I’ll do.”

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.

“In Miami, sex is always just around the corner.” Those are the words of my Cuban friend José. Not too long ago I found sex in Hialeah, literally, on a corner.

Rosa was an older woman, probably in her fifties. She sold cold bottles of water at a busy intersection in a part of Miami that never makes it into travel brochures. She was a beauty once. You could see that in the way she carried herself, like a woman who was used to being looked at. But Rosa had lived a hard life. That was obvious, too. The sun had done its work on her skin. Her long hair was going gray. Her body had rebelled a long time ago.

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The streets are lined with stout glass towers, perfect palm trees planted in perfect rows, private boat slips, golf courses, jogging paths, faux-Mediterranean townhomes, and all the usual emblems of an upscale, South Florida suburban community. This is Aventura, an unmistakably American version of paradise where stray foliage doesn’t stand a chance, zoning codes seem like scripture, and residential enclaves boast more security than a South American drug ranch. As one of Miami-Dade County’s youngest and most successful municipalities, Aventura has been featured in international magazines, hosted presidential candidates, courted celebrities, and is regularly touted as the City of Excellence.

Such cachet did not grow spontaneously. Aventura’s image of luxury and prestige has been skillfully crafted and professionally marketed since before the city even had a charter of its own. However, some say the Aventura brand has been so heavily promoted and protected over the years — by developer-backed marketers and image-conscious government administrators — that troublesome civic issues are often whitewashed, critics sidelined, and small-business owners left without a voice.

“What is this place called Aventura? Who is Aventura? What are the businesses here? How many people do they employ? What’s the trending on commercial real estate? What’s the vacancy rate? How’s the city doing? How many condos are under water?” These are just some of the questions that real-estate franchise recruiter and self-proclaimed social entrepreneur Emil Hubschman wants answered. At age 75, the voluble Philadelphia transplant should be taking life easy, strolling the local golf courses or cruising the world. Instead he’s fighting to breathe new life into an organization he founded 14 years ago, the Aventura/Sunny Isles Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Emil Hubschman is just getting warmed up: “The developer phase is over. The bubble machine has stopped. Now it’s time to get serious about local business.”

Derailed by the sudden death of its CEO from cancer in 2002, and several subsequent years of neglect by interim managers, the chamber, once 450 members strong, has dwindled in size. Now Hubschman wants to get it back on course. And like any good chamber of commerce, he wants it to be the voice of small businesses in his area.

Aventura begins around NE 176th Street in the south and ends at the Broward County line. The FEC railroad tracks mark the western boundary. To the east, the Intracoastal Waterway sparkles along the full length of the city. One recent afternoon Hubschman drove around the far less sparkly commercial western half of the city (abutting Biscayne Boulevard) pointing out to a BT reporter one troubled shopping plaza after another. “Look at this place!” he exclaims. “You could shoot a cannon through here! A real estate agent had a big office over there. Gone. A restaurant used to be right there. Gone. An eyewear place moved out over there. This plaza here is the Promenade, which seems to be dying a horrible death…. Here’s another little strip center where nobody shops…. And over here is a whole network of empty stores…. This is the kind of thing I want to get a handle on.”

Then Hubschman adds soberly: “But the real challenge in Aventura is the mall.”

He’s speaking, of course, of the thriving Aventura Mall, which sits like a giant pantheon off Biscayne Boulevard, drawing an estimated 24 million shoppers annually. Built in 1983 by pioneering Aventura developer Don Soffer and his associates, the mall is the fifth largest in America, generating revenue greater than the GDP of many African nations — roughly $8 billion per year — and providing the City of Aventura with millions in property taxes each year. (For the fiscal year that ended in September 2009, the mall paid some $6.7 million to the city, more than 40 percent of all property taxes collected. That covered roughly 18 percent of the city’s operating expenses.)

The mall is so popular with tourists that foreign visitors comprise 20 percent of the traffic. In fact, 7 million more visitors arrived at the Aventura Mall than at Miami International Airport in 2009.

Aventura Mall generates revenue greater than the GDP of many African nations, but is it really part of Aventura?

“But the mall,” Hubschman stresses, “is not Aventura. There are no local businesses in the mall. It’s a regional destination and is always packed. But if you go to any given strip center, it looks like death warmed over. We need to help local shopping plazas become worthwhile destinations, too. These businesses are part of the community, not to be ignored and treated like some unwanted stepchild.”

Hubschman’s fight for the little guy is hard not to love, and his passion is endearing. Tall, lean, and exasperated, he cuts a distinct profile, like a harried college professor, or perhaps Ted Turner. When he speaks about small business, his thoughts seem to outpace his tongue, compelling him to stop now and then, reconsider, and begin anew.

But with a touch of the firebrand about him, he has for many years, he admits, been viewed as something of a lightning rod in the community, operating in the shadow of Aventura’s bigger, more influential business organization, the Aventura Marketing Council (AMC).

Created in 1988 by an elite group of businessmen and big-name developers — among them Turnberry Associates, the Trump Group, Mystic Pointe, Coscan, and Humana Hospital — the AMC’s original purpose was simple: promote the then-unincorporated corner of northeast Dade County as an upscale, business-friendly, resort-style community.

Forlorn strip malls, many with vacant buildings, line the city’s western edge, along Biscayne Boulevard.

Rather than market their individual projects, developers realized it would be more effective to promote the area as a destination, to sell a lifestyle instead of a product. Brochures, a magazine, a local TV talk show, sponsorships, networking events, and other efforts helped them spread the word about their blossoming area. There were other reasons for forming the nonprofit, too, like lobbying the county for better services.

After area residents voted to incorporate and form the City of Aventura in 1995, the AMC’s role shifted. As part of a self-governing municipality with name recognition, prestige, and a healthy tax base, large-scale marketing campaigns slowly became less central to the group’s mission. Consequently, the AMC today refers to itself on its website as “a grass-roots business organization similar to a chamber of commerce.”

Hubschman counters that, in reality, it is nothing like a chamber: “A chamber’s main purpose is to advocate for local businesses and residents. We go to the city with issues and try to get them solved. The AMC doesn’t do that.”

Former Aventura Mayor Jeff Perlow agrees. In an interview with the BT at his Aventura law office, he holds up a sheet of paper showing a list of ten things that all good chambers do. “The AMC,” he says “does only a fraction of what a chamber does.”

Perlow drew up his list because he may provide office space and play a future role in the “new” chamber Hubschman is now working to create — if it can deliver on his ten-point list. Speaking of his 1996 campaign for a commission seat — against a candidate involved with, and supported by, the AMC — Perlow asks, “What exactly did the AMC do? They threw nice luncheons, they had nice breakfasts, they brought in good speakers, and they did very well. But they were pretty much developer-driven…. Clearly the AMC, prior to incorporation, did a very good job marketing Aventura as a destination. But if you take away the developers and get down to the level of family-owned businesses, most can’t afford to join the AMC.”

With annual fees ranging from $475 to $16,000, most membership tiers in the AMC are reserved for those in the upper strata of the business world. A survey of the organization’s database shows 429 members. Excluding professionals like doctors and lawyers, roughly 30 percent of those could be characterized as small, independently owned businesses. The rest are mostly franchises, municipal governments, schools, developers, financial companies, or other corporate entities.

“That’s the thing about gated communities. People don’t vote. There’s virtually no sense of community in Aventura.”

What do those members get for their money? A seat on the AMC’s board for the highest-paying members, two monthly networking meetings, and coverage in the weekly Aventura News.

Twenty years ago, according to the Miami Herald, the AMC “helped local community newspaper chain Miller Publishing/Community Newspapers found the Aventura News to publicize Marketing Council businesses.” Eight full pages, including the front cover, are paid for by the AMC and feature articles about the group and its members, mainly AMC meetings, ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and what appear to be news stories reporting on a specific member’s business activities.

The AMC makes detailed promises of Aventura News “coverage” according to membership level. For example, at the Executive Level (yearly fee: $2750), “the company is given a half-page feature story (value $750) and seven quarter-page stories (value $2100). Total advertising value $2850.”

In 2001 the paper finally began identifying AMC-generated coverage, adding a small AMC logo to “purchased” pages. That logo, however, does not consistently appear near AMC stories, and some feel that the paper is misleading.

Former Mayor Jeff Perlow: “The AMC threw nice luncheons, they brought in good speakers, but they were pretty much developer-driven.”

Michael Miller, co-owner of Miller Publishing, did not respond to requests for comment. Back in 2001, however, he characterized the weekly as a “newsletter for an organization,” telling the Herald: “Our primary mission with the Aventura Newsis to promote the Aventura Marketing Council. If the newspaper were owned by the Aventura Marketing Council, or if we changed the paper’s name, there would never be a question. Usually the people who have a problem with it are newspaper people.”

Newspapers that sell their editorial space may irk journalists and raise questions of integrity, but critics say the AMC’s control of the News simply illustrates the way the organization has come to dominate the public dialogue in Aventura, and reveals the incestuous relationship between the AMC, big business, and government officials.

For example, city Commissioner Bob Diamond writes a column for the News. Dan Palmer, the paper’s editor, sits on the AMC’s board. Aventura city manager Eric Soroka also sits on the AMC’s board, as does city Commissioner Michael Stern, whose company operates the group’s website.

Attorney and lobbyist Cliff Schulman, a regular face in the News, is chairman of the AMC’s board of directors. He also works for the law firm that acts as Aventura’s city attorney. In other words, he represents the business interests of the AMC’s members while his firm simultaneously advises the city on legal matters.

Conflict of interest? Schulman says no, and defends his position by providing the BT with an e-mail from the executive director of the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, which states, “I see no conflict of interest preventing Mr. Schulman, a shareholder with [law firm] Weiss Serota, from continuing to serve as chairman of the Aventura Marketing Council.” Schulman also points to legal documentation from the Florida Commission on Ethics backing up that position.

More curious, perhaps, is city manager Eric Soroka’s seat on the AMC’s board. The potential conflict with that arrangement is explained by Jack Pinkowski, director of Nova Southeastern University’s Institute of Government and Public Policy. “One of the [goals] of Aventura’s commission-manager form of government,” Pinkowski says, “is to isolate administrators from political influence…. This is an area where the manager could find a conflict of interest between proactive advocacies of the interests of the business community versus the mandates as determined by the elected representatives of the people — i.e., the city commission…. Still, many cities have close relationships with groups that represent private entities…. It is appropriate for cities to have representatives on such bodies. But it is not normally the chief administrative officer….” (Soroka did not respond to requests for comment.)

Aventura City Hall, designed by Arquitectonica: An “institutional resistance to news coverage”?

Former city commissioner and one-time Aventura/Sunny Isles Beach Chamber of Commerce president Jay Beskin views the AMC’s status as that of a civic institution. “They forged a bond…with the city manager and several of the commissioners,” Beskin says, “and as a result have become significant partners of the City of Aventura. They have a significant amount of influence, I would say.”

Beskin adds that the chamber was created in 1996 in an effort to address the issue. However, he acknowledges that the effort was unsuccessful. “The chamber tried to work with the city and the chamber was thwarted,” he says. “And I think the chamber was thwarted because the AMC viewed it as this upstart organization that was attempting to encroach upon its bailiwick and its influence. And it succeeded.”

The AMC’s success at becoming an Aventura institution is largely attributed to the talents of its 21-year president, Elaine Adler. Formerly with the North Dade Chamber of Commerce, she is said to have risen from part-time secretary to chamber president, and increased that organization’s membership from a few dozen to a few hundred during her tenure. Recruited to the AMC based on that achievement, she led the group from obscurity to prosperity, and is praised by nearly all who speak of her — even AMC critics.

Among the city’s amenities is a jogging path circumnavigating the Turnberry Isle Country Club.

But those same critics ask whether Adler’s skills are really worth more than a quarter of a million dollars per year. A 2007 tax form lists the AMC’s total revenue as $488,256, while Adler’s compensation that year was $263,113. That’s more than Aventura’s city manager, mayor, and six commissioners earn collectively. By comparison, the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches had total revenues of $1.5 million in 2007, and its president made $112,361. The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s revenue that same year was nearly $3.9 million, while its president earned $171,300. Florida’s Latin Chamber had $3.7 million in revenue in 2008, and its executive director made just $58,010. (Adler did not respond to repeated messages requesting an interview.)

Of greater concern to some Aventura residents is the lack of serious, sustained local news coverage. The Aventura News, these residents say, avoids critical coverage of the city. Indeed, Adler herself describes the weekly as a “good-news newspaper.” As she put it to the Herald: “You read the Aventura News once and you see no rapes, no robberies, no murders, no rip-offs, no drug deals.”

Other locally distributed newspapers, including the Miami Herald, have limited resources for reporting on city affairs. There is, of course, Aventura Magazine, but it deals mostly with luxury living and doesn’t produce investigate pieces — not surprising given that it is co-owned by Aventura city Commissioner Michael Stern.

The Shoppes at Waterways, on 207th Street, is one of the few commercial malls dominated by independently owned businesses.

His company, Stern Bloom Media, for years has published the City of Aventura’s annual report, as well as a bi-annual guide to local businesses and events, which the city buys from him. To facilitate those transactions, his fellow commissioners have granted him a waiver from Miami-Dade County’s ethics code.

Aiming to break through that wall of happy news, one longtime journalist, who requested anonymity, launched a website in 2009 with the goal of providing “real news coverage” to Aventurans. He suspended operations a little over a year later, citing, among other things, “institutional resistance to news coverage…. The root of the issue is the all-controlling marketing council, which views all news coverage as a threat to its marketing message. It influences the thinking of merchants and public officials who’ve embraced that mindset and will tolerate only controlled happy talk.”

That “institutional resistance to news coverage” is reiterated by Aventura resident Nancy Lee, co-operator of the popular political blog Eye on Miami. “The city clerk is married to the city manager,” she says. “They have erected an iron curtain. If you write to any of the commissioners or the mayor, the clerk intercepts all the e-mails and only forwards some of them.”

Dense living in some 80 condo towers allows for the lowest property taxes in Miami-Dade County.

To back up that claim, Lee produces a series of e-mails she wrote to various administrators showing the chain of contact. The mayor and commissioners’ phone numbers, meanwhile, are not listed on the city’s website, nor is there a listing for a city spokesperson or media liaison. The BT’s follow-up e-mail to a public-records request asking for additional information was ignored by the clerk, as was an e-mail to the city manager. Phone calls to the clerk went straight to voice mail.

Another instance of apparent municipal self-consciousness involves prolific South Florida history-book author Seth Bramson. In 2009 he was commissioned to write a history of Aventura. Government administrators, deciding that they wanted to change much of the book’s content, put the project on hold for an indefinite period and the book, at this point, remains unpublished.

Iron curtains and bureaucratic elusiveness prompt another question: Does anyone care?

This past November, Aventura’s municipal elections were canceled because no one challenged the city’s incumbent mayor and three commissioners. All four were automatically reelected. In fact, only about half of Aventura’s estimated 30,000 residents are registered voters, and no more than about 16 percent of them regularly turn out to cast ballots in city elections.

“That’s the thing about gated communities,” says Emil Hubschman. “People don’t vote. There’s virtually no sense of community in Aventura. Most people who live here didn’t grow up here and don’t work here. Others are retired or semi-retired, or they’re snowbirds who spend only part of the year here. They come and go — from all over the country and the world. They’re not stakeholders in the community. They mostly just care that taxes are low.”

The new Arts and Cultural Center could help the city and its residents develop a sense of community. (Courtesy City of Aventura)

Taxes, in fact, were the main reason Aventura broke away from Miami-Dade County in the first place. Feeling as though they were putting a lot more money into the county pot than they were getting back in services, the well-to-do residents overwhelmingly voted to incorporate in 1995, giving themselves control of their own money and the ability to set their own property tax rate, known as millage. Today that rate is just 1.72, the lowest of any municipality in the county, meaning Aventurans are taxed $1.72 per $1000 of their homes’ assessed value. The City of Miami’s millage rate, by contrast, is 8.64.

That bargain rate is made possible by some 80 condo towers, which allow a dense population of above-average earners to cram themselves into just 2.7 square miles. Taxes from the Aventura Mall and a few other large commercial properties grow the coffers, too. And of course the newly installed and highly contentious red-light cameras now contribute handsomely to the city’s funds, bringing in $3,053,000 during the last two fiscal years alone.

Run like a blue-chip company, Aventura is a well-managed city with an abundance of high-quality services. In fact CNN ranked Aventura as a contender for “Best Places to Live” in 2007 and 2009. The BT’s very own Aventura correspondent, Shari Lynn Rothstein-Kramer, thinks the average person who lives in the city is exceedingly happy. “It’s a very nice place to live,” she says, “unless you want a lot of funkiness. There’s no funky here.”

Ex-commissioner Jay Beskin is fond of his city, too, describing it as “upscale, safe, pleasant, clean, beautiful, and a desirable place to live.” On the other hand, he laments its sameness. “Our moniker is City of Aventura, but we’re not a city because a city represents diversity, different people, sometimes some tension as to how things should proceed — the messy part of democracy. Differences are healthy. Instead we just seem to have this homogeneity. It’s unhealthy not to have civic organizations or messy politics or investigative reporting.”

It is within this complacent, vertical suburb that Emil Hubschman seeks to relaunch his chamber of commerce within the next 60 days, aiming to create a trusted gateway to the community (like a Better Business Bureau, only hyper local), with a welcome center, newsletter, updated website, and cell phone app. Homeowner and condo associations will get free memberships, he says, to help “close the loop” between locally owned businesses and residents.

Much of his philosophy for the chamber is based on the “shop local” movement. “When you buy from a chain store,” he says, “most of the money goes to the home office somewhere far away. It doesn’t stay in the community. That’s the main theme of chambers all over the world — shop local. You get personalized service at local stores. They know you, and you build a relationship. You help to build a sense of community.”

Word around town is that the Aventura mayor and city manager are open to working more closely with the chamber. “It’s a new day,” Hubschman beams.

As for the AMC, he says, “It’s not either or. Businesses can join both organizations. The AMC has done a wonderful job promoting Aventura. I give them a lot of credit. But the developer phase is over. The bubble machine has stopped. Now it’s time to get serious about local business. It’s time for a true chamber. That’s part of the maturation of a city.”

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.

Photo by Silvia Ros.

The City Inn hotel at 660 NW 81st Street in West Little River is the kind of place you wouldn’t recommend to your worst enemy. Tattooed pimps with gold teeth patrol the surrounding streets on spray-painted bicycles. Drug-ravaged women in stained miniskirts and worn-out pumps drift in and out of the lobby, stopping occasionally on the curb outside to light a cigarette, thrust out a hip, and nod to passing male motorists.

To most people, the ten-story City Inn is just one of many eyesores along I-95. Nestled against the west side of the expressway, it stands out more than most buildings along that particular stretch of asphalt, thanks to the large soft-drink banner and other ever-changing advertisements that completely cover the north and east sides of the hotel. Cellular companies lease roof space from the inn, and their large white antennae sit prominently atop the building, lending the hotel a hint of technological sophistication. Up close, though, there’s nothing sophisticated about it.

“That place is really, really bad,” says veteran Ofcr. Darrell Nichols of the Miami Police Department, when asked about the hotel. And with that grim assessment, I decide to do what any sensible writer would do: go and get a room.

To read more, click here.

On the quiet Oleta River in North Miami Beach, where tall mangrove forests grow along the ancient shorelines and block out the noise of the city beyond, a nine-person crew sits in a long, hand-painted boat, waiting for an order. Bent forward, arms poised at the ready, their fists clench long wooden paddles. A steersman, standing at the stern, grips the skiff’s rudder by the handle and issues his command: “Go!”

The crew lets loose, plunging their paddles into the murky water, using the strength of their upper bodies to push their 40-foot Chinese dragon boat upriver. The vessel glides along at an impressive speed, each paddler pummeling the water in sync until, 250 meters along, the steersman calls for an intermission. “Let it ride!” he yells.

The paddles come up, the paddlers catch their breath, and peace returns to the winding waterway — until they repeat the drill moments later.

Every weekend the scene plays out the same way. The Puff Dragon Boat Racing Team (Puff, for short) races their dragon up and down the placid Oleta until — as they like to say — they’ve drained their tanks.

That an ancient Chinese sport should find a home on an urban river in North Miami Beach may seem strange to some, but to 27-year-old Biscayne Park resident Sam Trotter, it makes perfect sense: “South Florida, being outside on the water, meeting people and getting exercise — that to me is a no-brainer.”

Trotter and wife Kate Benson joined Puff just two months ago, but like many newbies, they’ve quickly become diehard dragon-boaters. And even though a competitive streak runs through the heart of the team, Benson insists the niche sport is as much a social affair as it is a sports bout: “There’s a lot of camaraderie. And it’s still kind of underground, so you feel like you’re part of a club. Besides, what other team sport can you do where you get to be out on the water? This is Miami. Don’t you want to be out on the water?”

Founded seven years ago by Michael Chen, Puff is one of about five dragon-boat racing teams in Miami-Dade County and currently boasts some 50 permanent members, ranging from buff, young outdoor enthusiasts to well-ripened weekend warriors (including a 73-year-old part-time paddler). Some members show up to the weekly training runs religiously. Others, only occasionally.

As a young man in Hong Kong, watching dragon-boat races from the window of his home, Chen was never too impressed with the sport. “Too damn slow,” he thought. It wasn’t until many years later, living in South Florida and looking for a way to get outdoors and reconnect with his cultural heritage, that he decided to take up dragon-boating. That’s when he realized just how satisfying — and fast — racing dragons can be. “You don’t realize how fast it is until you’re in the boat,” he says.

The Puff crew digs into the Oleta River.

Chen participates in local races twice a year. He competed in Tampa last month, raced in New York last August, and travels to Hong Kong every year for an annual dragon-boat festival there (seven Puff members will accompany him this summer). The sport has even shaped his world view. “Putting a bunch of people in a boat and having them work together toward the same goal,” he contends, “makes the world a better place. If you want world peace, everyone should go dragon-boating.”

Dragon-boating, in fact, may be the biggest sport you’ve never heard of. In 2006 Time magazine reported that “more than 75 dragon-boat festivals were held in 31 states and 70 cities across the country, with participation up 20 percent over 2004, to 54,000 people.” More recent surveys show considerable increases in those numbers, and the sport has been called one of the fastest-growing water sports in the world, with annual festivals being held in more than 50 countries.

Begun in China, dragon-boating arose more than 2000 years ago as a way to appease mystical river dragons who had sovereignty over water, rainfall, and floods. Tied in to that yearly custom is the legend of Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet who drowned himself in a river after the defeat of his homeland by a rival army. The dramatic bard’s suicide fell on the day of the annual dragon-boat festival and villagers are said to have raced out in their dragon boats to look for him, tossing rice dumplings into the river to distract fish from eating his body.

The exotic world of myth and legend has morphed into a competitive international sport complete with standardized rules and equipment. Typically, 20 paddlers seated in pairs power a boat, although upward of 50 are common. A steersman controls the rudder and a drummer sits at the bow, beating out a rhythm for the paddlers. Red, green, or blue scales adorn the sides, and a colorful dragon head and tail are fitted to either end of the boat for races.

A distinctly festive attitude, however, prevails. In China yearly dragon-boat festivals are vivacious affairs where alcohol flows, food is abundant, and paddlers are known to party late into the night. In Miami, too, the annual dragon-boat regatta, which pits paddling teams, corporate workforces, police, firefighters, and other local groups against each other, often feels like an oversize, Asian-themed block party.

The boats feature a dragon head at the bow and a tail at the stern. (Photo courtesy of Puff)

True to that spirit, Puff (named for a certain “Magic” dragon, but also an acronym for Paddles Up For Friendship/Fun) ended their recent Oleta River practice at the historic Blue Marlin Fish House, on the river near the team’s launch site. Seated around a table in the shade, five Puffers raised beers to toast their enlivening workout: “To dragon-boating!”

Balu Vandor, a lithe Hungarian who’s been hitting the paddles for five years, breaks down the formula for good dragon-boating in between swills of lager: “It’s 49 percent technique, 51 percent timing.” The sport’s collaborative nature, he says, means that some people’s personalities just don’t work in dragon-boating.

Conversely, photographer Kate Benson says that Puff has spawned more than a few long-term relationships — and even one marriage: “You didn’t know dragon-boating was so romantic, did you?”

“But first and foremost,” founder Michael Chen insists, “we’re competitive. We want to win.” He says Puff has two races coming up in the next six months, and some members will try out for Team USA, which will represent the U.S. in the World Dragon Boat Championships in Tampa next year.

Chen, however, is no party-pooper. “A lot of people in Miami say they like to party,” he says, “but we have more parties in one month than they have all year.” He believes Miami has the potential to be a world destination for dragon-boaters because of the weather and water. And the inclusive nature of his team ensures the advancement toward that goal: “We want new members, we embrace all people, we’re apolitical, and we respect that everybody is a unique being.”

“Let’s put it this way,” he says, fingering a silver paddle pendant hanging from his neck chain. “We all just love this sport.”

Read this article on the Biscayne Times website.