Miami's Often Forgotten High-Rise History

[Pablo63090]

Metrorail, 1983 & 1984

The first three photos feature Metrorail crossing the Miami River for the first time back on November 3, 1983. You can notice that the Wachovia had been recently topped off.

[Toucano]

Nice Finds Pablo...

[Lakelander]

Great educational thread. You learn something new everyday.

[dave8721]

The old New Yorker Hotel at 1611 Collins Ave (now site of the bland 8 story condo between the Decoplage and the Loews). Built in 1930's.

[Pablo63090]

Nice find. It looks like the picture is from the late 70's, early 80's.

[Toucano]

Originally called Atlantic Boulvard, Collins Avenue was the first paved road suitable for automobiles on Miami Beach

[Pablo63090]

How things have changed. The last picture shows the big three: The Fountainbleau, The Eden Roc, and The Doral (now the Wyndham). Now they're dwarfed by an ever-growing row of condos.

[dave8721]

This aricle talks about a 1000-foot proposal from 1966. Any one around back then to remember this one? Or know of any renderings?

http://www.miamitodaynews.com/news/0...iewpoint.shtml

Don't let still-unrealized aims become our claims to fame

By Michael Lewis
Miami long has sported grand ambitions, big dreams and exaggerated claims. Carl Fisher in the 1920s touted a spit of mosquito-ridden swampland as a great place to live. What a salesman. Today, it's called Miami Beach.
But reality doesn't always eclipse the hype. Sometimes the only reality is the hype. Miami's hardest task always has been to tell one from the other.
For example, turn back the clock 40 years, when grand plans bore resemblance to today's.
Like any local 1966 guidebook, Guide Miami sings praises. Of 17 pages that describe Miami's attributes, seven target the biggest. Can you name it?
Not sports, which rated a page before we had major-league teams. Not fishing, which also rated a page. Not outdoors, at two pages. Not culture, which got less than a page before we began building and building to house our performing and visual arts.
Certainly not business. It didn't even rate a footnote.
No, our major attribute in 1966 was Interama, which was detailed in seven pages of articles and pictures.
The name may not be familiar because Interama - the Inter-American Cultural and Trade Center, which was to attract 15 million visitors a year by 1968 - never existed.
Nor did its listed attractions: the 1,000-foot Tower of Freedom with its restaurants and observation platforms designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki or the four permanent areas - International, Cultural, Industrial and Leisure-Sports-Festival.
The Marine Amphitheater with its floating stage and seating for 12,000 wasn't built, nor were the symphony hall, the opera, the ballet and music theater, the dramatic arts theater, the art gallery or the museum.
The international bazaar with its artisans at work and the ceremonial plaza and the computerized, automated audio-visual library never came to pass. Corporate executives who were to meet at Interama to explore Latin American markets never showed up.
The meeting ground for the nations of the Western Hemisphere was no more real than today's vision of a headquarters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas on Watson Island is so far, though the renderings were equally impressive.
Interama was one of those failed grand dreams despite the guide's introductory note: "The large concentration of construction activity in the northeast section of the Greater Miami area is the building of the world's largest and first permanent international exposition - the Inter-American Cultural and Trade Center, better known as Interama."
Thought the book noted that this massive hub was to open July 4, 1968, the "large concentration of construction activity" was poetic license for a project that literally never got off the ground.
Plans were grandiose, but the site that was to be Interama now is used in part by the north campus of Florida International University. The other part became, quite literally, a dump.
When the air came out of Interama, the City of North Miami received title to 350 of its acres in 1970 and two years later signed a lease with Munisport Inc. to create a recreational facility. Munisport got permission to raise low-lying areas with clean fill and construction debris but soon was burying the land under municipal refuse instead and then got a permit to turn the site into a sanitary landfill. Instead, the land was filled with drums of toxic waste and infectious hospital waste.
So much for the "world's largest and first permanent international exposition" - gone to waste.
Interama-Munisport is now the future home of Biscayne Landing, a $1 billion mixed-use public-private project being developed with the City of North Miami by the Swerdlow Group and Boca Developers, who say they are making the site "South Florida's premier residential community."
That transition encapsulates Miami, past and probably future. One site went from the world's largest international exposition to a municipal recreation area to a sanitary landfill without once becoming any of those things. Now it is about to become the region's "premier residential community."
That is Miami. We often promote the development that is not yet and may never be. We dream big dreams, and sometimes they come to pass. If we didn't dream them, they never would. Altogether, it's better to think grand thoughts than never to try to scale the heights.
Unfortunately, in the process, grand can become grandiose and then the figment of a large imagination.
Sometimes, but not invariably.
Concert halls that were to rise in Interama are rising today straddling Biscayne Boulevard just north of downtown.
International meeting halls are still on the drawing boards, this time on Watson Island as we wait for the yet-to-exist Free Trade Area of the Americas to anoint Miami its headquarters.
The art gallery and the museum are now targeted for Bicentennial Park - to be anointed Museum Park once the museums accumulate the hundreds of millions needed to build.
And the nonexistent 1,000-foot Tower of Freedom is almost matched by any of a half-dozen residential high rises on the drawing boards - and none any further off the ground.
Not all the Interama dream was pie in the sky. The concert halls are rising. All the rest might well.
We have become the business hub for Latin America without the formal setting of the Intern-American Cultural and Trade Center. Physical infrastructure wasn't the catalyst. Geography and the Cuban influx that rated less than one paragraph in the 1966 guidebook did the trick.
Today, as we dream big dreams of a home for Cirque du Soleil that would draw millions and a home for the Free Trade Area of the Americas that would cement our role as capital of the Americas and museums in the park that would be a cultural Mecca and a South Dade hub of theme parks and attractions that would make that region a tourist delight and on and on, we walk in the footsteps of those who knew Interama would be the making of Miami.
We dream big dreams, and we're better off doing so. We aim high, and it's far superior to having no aims at all.
But before we write a 2006 guidebook that sings the praises of our great projects, let's be sure first that they at least get off the ground.

[Pablo63090]

Great find. Does anybody have a rendering of this?

[rider_of_rohan]

Originally Posted by Pablo63090

Great find. Does anybody have a rendering of this?

I actually remember this (although not first hand as I was born in 1966). I dont recall where I saw it though. I think it was an attemp to start something off as a World's Fair bid by Miami. As with other worlds fairs thing stay after the fair goes and this was it. I do recall their being pictures too but not that clearly, I think they were like the city of the future thing. They had a map too. I think I wrote a posting in the thread about biscayne landing a while back saying that this was planned there years ago.

Here is some info about it though
http://www.lostparks.com/never.html
Interama
In 1951 the State of Florida created the Inter-American Center Authority to build a cultural and trade center. A trade center building was built, but the cultural part...
A permanent international exhibition park was planned -- inspiration taken half from past Worlds Fairs and half from the new Disneyland in California. It would be a theme park, but unlike other theme park projects, it was hoped that the governments of the various countries would contribute to the building of their representative pavilions much as they do for a Worlds Fair, except that this would be a permanent commitment.

The United States was looked to to provide the bulk of the financing, and bills to that effect were put before Congress by Rep. Claude Pepper, always happy to try and bring home the Pork to his district.

Land in North Miami was acquired and shortly after a huge sign touting the park's development was erected.

Congress, meanwhile, declined to fund the project. One after the other, Latin and South American Governments, with poverty to deal with in their own lands, declined to participate. (By the same token, Walt Disney World's EPCOT, which relies on sponsorships when building its national pavilions, showcases no South American nations.)

Private funding was sought, but little found. Interama continued to drift as a project for years, always hopeful, always just around the corner, never built.

Complications in the contracts involving the site itself, as well as a fight with the Department of Environmental Regulation over part of the site's use as a landfill, kept the land tied up right into the 1980's as the City of North Miami, stuck with paying off bonds on the unproductive land, lobbied the State of Florida to purchase the property.

In 1985 the State and City finally made a deal as the Legislature voted to buy the 300 acre tract, most of which would go to expand Florida International University's Bay Vista Campus.

There was a listing of it at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, maybe they would have some renderings of it.

[Pablo63090]

The then CenTrust Tower on fire, on August 18, 1984:



By then, the Wachovia's exterior was completed, but it wasn't until 1985 when the whole complex was completed. People had been working in the tower since late 1983.

Downtown Miami's Skyline, February 1987:

[The Mad Hatter!!]

lincoln road-1960's

miami beach aerial 1960's

[magic-city]

[IMG][/IMG]

Take a look at this sculpture located at Bicentennial Park. I took a bike ride around downtown a couple of weeks ago, and rode into Bicentennial Park. To my amazement, the sculpture is still there. It has not been maintained for several years and does have plenty of graffiti on it, but the view from there is spectacular. This sculpture frames the skyline and the bay.

Look at the old Coppertone neon sign that used to be next to the Freedom Tower.

I hope that they restore and bring back to life this sculpture which is now almost 30 years old.

[Pablo63090]

It's a shame the way it looks now. It is made out of stainless steel?

[magic-city]

Yep, stainless steel. It needs to be cleaned and polished. I hope they keep it as part of Museum Park's masterplan.

[ChuckScraperMiami#1]

Originally Posted by The Mad Hatter!!

lincoln road-1960's

miami beach aerial 1960's

MAD Uptown Hatter ,
Please more old pics like these if you have any more,
These are great , I just like to add some of my old postcard pictures someday, when I learn how to get them in here, lol.

Thanks again MAD !!!

[Pablo63090]

Cultural Center Shots From 1984:




The balloons shown in the pictures were put up to celebrate the opening of the Center For The Fine Arts (Now MAM). It's funny that the finished complex sat vacant for almost three years until the Library and Museums opened up in 1985. There were a bunch of problems with the fire detection systems and that delayed the opening from late '82 to '83. Then, for almost two years, the city waited to move and for the Metro-Dade Center to be completed. I remember back in 1982 when Philip Johnson came to Miami to inspect the complex and the Flagler Street vicinity. Then the first ceremony was held at the plaza, a AIA dinner honoring him. This was the first time in about 20+ years that people got together after dusk in Downtown for anything besides the Orange Bowl Parade. A couple of weeks later, a record crowd attended a Pavarotti concet at the Knight Center, which was the inaugural event for the complex.

[rider_of_rohan]

That is a kick ass library (or was, dunno now), and I loved the whole setup. Was a museum there as well. Loved the view from the courtyard with the tall buildings on each side.

[Pablo63090]

It's still the library. It's still prety adequate for today. The long rectangular building across the Clark Center is the Historical Museum of Southern Florida and the Square One across the library and the Museum Tower is the Miami Art Museum. The two latter buildings are pretty small for a city of Miami's size. Originally the Art Museum borrowed all its pieces from other museums and did not even start collecting until ten years ago.

[Pablo63090]

MIAMI MARKET READJUSTS AS SURGE IN BUYING ENDS

By DEE WEDEMEYER
Published: March 7, 1982

The luxury condominium market in the greater Miami area is wobbling in the aftermath of a speculative buying spree. Only two years ago, people were lining up to reserve apartments in high-rise waterfront buildings whose construction had not even started. At one development, Brickell Key, 275 persons each left $5,000 deposits on a building that had not yet announced prices.
In many cases, the speculative ''buyer'' hoped to sell his purchase contract at a profit when the building was ready, or even before. Some listed their unit for resale immediately and found themselves with a profit without even taking title.
It worked for a while, but high interest rates persisted, the dollar strengthened and the pool of Latin-American buyers proved shallower than some developers had expected.
Now, many of the speculators find they have no buyers and are unable, or unwilling, to go to closing. In some cases, the buyer is walking away from deposits of $50,000. Others are bringing lawsuits to free themselves of contractual obligation.
''I think there are more attorneys trying to get people out of closings than into closings,'' said Irwin Adler of Adler-Ross Associates, the developer of L'Hermitage, a town-house project in the Coconut Grove area.
According to Lewis Goodkin, a marketing research expert, there are about 12,000 luxury, waterview condominiums on the market or under construction in Dade County. He says it could take three to five years to absorb that number. He defines luxury condominiums as those priced over $100,000.
Mr. Goodkin believes that 43 to 46 percent of the luxury apartments were bought by speculators and that the buyers today are 50 to 85 percent speculators and investors.
He points out that the current recession differs from the one in 1973 and 1974. Then, unfinished construction projects and vacant buildings created a gaunt skyline of steel as an unwelcome reminder of overproduction.
The overproduced units also were more in the middle-price range, not the luxury market, and they were in the hands of lenders who offered substantial reductions and financing to purchasers. The waterfront luxury condominiums are considered to be in strong hands financially.
Some builders, nevertheless, are slowing their construction schedules or doing only preliminary land development until the market changes, selling off sites that they were planning to develop, or even selling off blocks of completed apartments at auction.
A subsidiary of Cadillac-Fairview, in partnership with Southeastern Florida Properties Inc., a local group, postponed three developments, including La Excellence, where the foundations were already started. The Canadian company also allowed one parcel of land it owned in the same partnership to be foreclosed.
The same developers also put 150 units in several south Florida projects up for auction last week. In three buildings, apartments sold for about 50 percent of list price.
''If the builders had not made substantial profits on the units they sold, it would have been an absolute disaster,'' said Mr. Goodkin, speaking for the developers.
To others long experienced with the cyclical nature of Florida residential sales, the current market is seen as just another cycle. To them, this is the ideal time to start building.
''Take it from one who has seen peaks and valleys,'' said Lawrence J. Aberman, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Williams Island, which will deliver its first units in January 1984. ''The time to start a development of this nature is when we are in a valley, not when we are heading toward a peak.''
After the recession of 1973-74, the Florida market gradually began to absorb a huge, unsold inventory of new housing. New construction for both the second-home and primary-home market started to gain momentum as early as 1978.
Then on July 16, 1979, as many local people recall it, the sales force for Brickell Key came to work to find people standing in line to buy apartments.
Brickell Key was not much more than a barren site on Claughton Island connected to a prime Miami area by a bridge. There were no model apartments, just floor plans. People had to be given numbers to buy apartments.
In two days, the contracts on all 301 units were written at prices that averaged about $130 a square foot - from $60,000 to $650,000. In addition, there were the 275 persons who left $5,000 no-interest deposits for a second building that did not even have a construction starting date.
The developers, Cheezem Development Corporation and Swire Properties, are closing the first building. Charles K. Cheezem says he does not expect buyers to forfeit their deposits, but many have asked for delays. He will accommodate them where he can, he said, but the interest on construction financing on the completed building costs $24,000 a day. So far, 40 units have been closed. By their own count, 69 buyers sold their contracts, including someone who purchased a unit for $108,000 and sold the contract for $172,500.
The second building is under construction, but in a manner that may be as startling to some as the line of buyers was that day in July 1979. Construction has been slowed so that its completion will coincide with sales. The idea, Mr. Cheezem explained, was to delay the last six months of construction when the bulk of the construction financing is in place.
Before the sales program for the second building can begin in full force, the apartments offered for resale have to be sold, Mr. Cheezem said. At latest count, 24 were listed in the local multiple service. A scrapbook of advertising that the company keeps shows an ad for a buyer offering a new Cadillac with an apartment.
''I hate to say it, but basically those people are our competition,'' he said. The sales offices are a curious scene. Some are carpeted with stainless steel displays extolling the merits of Roman baths and gourmet sinks. There are bilingual sales personnel, but not many buyers to talk to. Other sales offices are a circus of activities - apartments being closed, decorated, listed for rent, titles transferred - all in a variety of languages. There is talk of mortgage applications from royal highnesses and tales of gold being smuggled out of France.
In some areas of Miami, particularly along Brickell Avenue, it will be a long time before the construction dust settles and all the apartment units are sold and closed. At one corner is The Palace, the 41-story development of Harry B. Helmsley of New York. Next door, the Villa Regina is going up 27 stories. Next to that is the Imperial, 30 stories. Just down the way is the Atlantis, 21 stories, and La Santa Maria, an Olympia & York 200-unit project now in the foundation stage and expected to advance slowly.
Another major area of construction is Turnberry Isle. It has two completed apartment condominium buildings, two golf courses, tennis facilities, a 120-room hotel, a spa and a yacht club. A shopping center is in construction, a third condominium building is opening and a fourth is in construction.
George Berlin, the project director, said he expected to lose between $6 million and $9 million in sales, or between 10 and 15 percent of the buyers, in Turnberry Isle's third condominium building. One, a man who deposited $50,000, already has walked away. Mr. Berlin said he let one man out of his contract because of a death in his family. He has given many buyers time to raise funds.
''If they breathe, we will finance them,'' he said. He said he was telling speculators that they were in the same position as someone who had speculated in gold or stocks. ''He bought on margin,'' Mr. Berlin said. ''He bought on 20 percent margin.'' After raising prices 10 to 15 percent three times, he has come closer to the original prices and is requiring 30 percent deposits. Even with cancellations on the third building, the units sold will be enough to pay off the construction loan, Mr. Berlin said.
Turnberry also sold off two building sites to other developers: one to a partnership of Larry A. Silverstein of New York with Shopco, a shopping center developer, and the second to Elliot and Gerald Monter, developers of the Hamlet, a single-family home development in Jericho, L.I.
Just across Country Club Drive from these two sites EquiNational, a Scarsdale, N.Y., group, in partnership with Finagest, a Swiss group, have bought a site from Arlen for Plaza del Mar, a development with zoning for 1,625 units. There is no construction financing, but there is a sales office for the first 566 apartments and town houses. A Florida subsidiary of Costain Ltd., a Canadian company, has purchased a 176-acre site just north of Turnberry with zoning for 3,677 units.
James MacKenzie, the president of Costain Florida, said the company would develop the land while they waited. ''We will go up to a certain point, and if the market doesn't improve, we will stop.''
Costain Florida will build The Waterways with six-story buildings of 83 units each. The apartments will sell at an average $100 a square foot, starting at $100,000, so they believe they have found a segment of the market that has not been overbuilt.
Many developers are changing their strategies with the economy and the competition. The Towers of Quayside, another large and successful development, began a marketing program in the Far East and will soon open a sales pavilion in New York.
Ronald K. Lavan, the executive director, said that the days when he handed out tickets to buy apartments might be gone but that he was still selling two to four units a week. He thinks some builders had unrealistic expectations.
''When you sell one building in one day,'' he said, ''you think, 'Oh, boy, this is going to be a cakewalk,' but the fact is, no one has ever closed more than 150 to 250 units a year in a development.''
The marketing program for the Terraces at Turnberry, the Silverstein-Shopco development, includes a videotape in five langages that sells Florida and the United States first and only in the last minutes extols the virtue of the apartments.
Because the investment aspect of the purchase is stressed, the Securities and Exchange Commission forbids showing the tape to American citizens. While sun-tanned models fish and play golf and tennis, a narrator points out that the threat of Socialism and Communism in the United States ''is virtually nonexistent.''
The first of three towers in the Terraces that will eventually contain 850 units is up two stories now, and 130 of the 285 units in the first tower have sold, Mr. Silverstein said. Buyers put down 10 percent when signing the contract, 5 percent when construction commenced, 5 percent in 90 days and 5 percent when construction reaches the floor on which their unit is situated.
Average sales are about $300,000, he says, but that is still at an average of $160 a square foot, about half what it would be in some luxury Manhattan condominiums. He thinks it will take two years to sell out the building, and he is not worried about cancellations.
''Our feeling is, if someone has the capacity of putting down 25 percent, they have the capability of closing,'' he said. Efforts to cancel contracts are becoming legend. According to Gerald Schlosser of Helmsley-Spear of Florida, the buyers of 24 units in the Palace have brought suit to rescind ther contracts. Of 254 units, 111 are closed and five have been foreclosed. Between 25 and 30 units are listed for resale. Mr. Schlosser says the company has not decided what to do with the apartments that will be foreclosed.
''People are getting default letters,'' he said, ''and many are saying, 'We really want to close. We don't want to lose our deposits.' I just don't know who the hard core are who won't close and will be defaulted.''
Alicia Cervera, chairman of Condominium Marketing Consultants, which sold the Palace and the Atlantis a few doors down, said that 69 of the 254 buyers resold their apartments before the building was finished. From a list that shows how much they deposited, how much they sold for and their return on investment, she showed that the average return was 71 percent, that the apartments appreciated in price 14 percent before they were even completed. ''The usual thing is to make 100 percent,'' she said.
Mrs. Cervera said she had received calls from several of her clients looking for four or five persons who did not want to honor their contracts and were willing to take a 10 to 15 percent loss. So far, she had not been able to put such a package together.
A Peruvian who identified himself only as Marco said he had bought six apartments, five in the Palace and one in the Atlantis. He backed out of the deal in the Atlantis, he said, then changed his mind, but it was too late. Someone had taken that unit. On four of the Palace apartments, he put $50,000 deposits and sold contracts for an additional $50,000, making 100 percent on his investment. On the fifth, he made $30,000.
''The brokers in Miami have a clientele,'' he said. ''All Mrs. Cervera has to do is call, and they come like bees. Today they may not come because there is no honey.''