Activists oppose turning Byron Carlyle Theater into housing. Miami Beach Commission will decide
It has been two years since Miami Beach put the city-owned Byron Carlyle Theater on the market, seeking bids to redevelop the cultural landmark after it had fallen into disrepair.
Ahead of a key vote this month, a group of concerned North Beach residents is urging the City Commission to reject a proposal to build rent-controlled apartments and a cultural center at the site. Under that plan, the city would give away the 28,000-square-foot theater at no cost.
The opposition, led by former Commissioner Nancy Liebman and residentactivist Manning Salazar, wants the city to retain ownership of the land and fund the theater’s redevelopment. They said they are optimistic that they will have the necessary votes on Feb. 24 to dump the current proposal and put forward an alternative for the North Beach landmark, which the city purchased in 2001 for $1.7 million.
“We feel very optimistic that we’re gonna get enough votes to turn down the bid and to move forward with a plan to build a cultural center at that location that has some sort of tie to the past, to the building that was there,” Salazar said.
Because the proposal involves the leasing of public property, it would only take two negative votes from commissioners to block the deal. For it to pass, affirmative votes from six of the seven commissioners are required.
City leaders have not revealed how they will vote, citing the uncertainty of ongoing negotiations between city staff and the development team, Menin Hospitality and KGTC. When city staff last presented the project to the commission in December, there were points of disagreement between the parties. A financial valuation of the proposed lease is also pending.
Two commissioners have signaled their concerns with the proposal.
Commissioner Mark Samuelian said he would be open to considering a “fully thought-out alternative plan to achieve the same goal of making it a cultural gem.”
“I would say I’m highly skeptical of this proposal at this time,” Samuelian said. “The thing that’s most important to me is that precious city land needs to be protected.”
Commissioner Michael Góngora said he would vote against the proposal in its current state.
“I want the city to negotiate the best deal possible,” he said. “The deal needs to get better for me to consider it.”
A 2018 city assessment found that it would cost at least $3 million to renovate the Byron Carlyle and bring it up to code. The theater, which opened in 1968, closed in 2019 after the city declared it to be uninhabitable. Salazar, who recently toured the space, said it might cost up to $8 million to redevelop the space, adding that he is not opposed to tearing down the theater if the city incorporates the original design or materials in the new facility.
“The building is pretty far gone,” he said.
To finance the redevelopment of the theater, Samuelian said the city could tap into the newly formed community redevelopment agency in North Beach or the multimilliondollar payment that the city might receive if it vacates a portion of the 21st Street right-of-way along the front of the Seagull Hotel.
“The city could take action and could work to do that in a different manner,” Samuelian said. “I don’t think we’ve gone down that path in a way that we need to.”
Liebman, the former executive director of the Miami Design Preservation League, said she hopes the city can preserve the theater, which she called an “iconic relic from the days of long ago.”
“Our fondest wish would be that the city would just take the Byron and rehabilitate it or rebuild it ... into a cultural center,” she said.
Salazar added: “The money is there, what we need to have is the will and the vision.”
In exchange for the 99year lease of the theater property and an adjoining city parking lot, which will cost the developers $1 per year, the developers propose to build and give the city the “shell” of a 10,500square-foot cultural center, develop 151 units of rentcontrolled workforce housing and keep the rents below market value for 30 years, according to the most recent term sheet.
The developers will also pay the city $1.5 million toward the build-out of the cultural center. The building will be no taller than
125 feet.
At the Dec. 9 commission meeting, city staff said they still don’t see eye to eye with the developers on issues such as a lack of parking, income mix at the workforce apartments and how long the apartments would remain rent-controlled.
Matis Cohen, a project developer with KGTC, said his team has “done more than the city asked for” when it solicited bids to redevelop the theater.
“We’ve offered to the city everything that we can,” he said. “If the city decides not to go in this direction, we only want to see that there is a real plan that the city has to actually do something.”