MIAMI BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - Miami Beach’s iconic Art Deco buildings may be at risk of demolition due to proposed Florida legislation.
Lawmakers behind these bills say this is about safety, but the people who have spent decades working to preserve history fear the Art Deco buildings will be replaced by huge high rises.
Miami Beach is known for its colorful Art Deco designs. The iconic buildings that went up from the 1920s through the 1950s are a large part of the city’s identity, and now they may all be at risk.
“We don’t understand why they are trying to take Miami Beach’s historic landmarks and send them to the bulldozers,” said Daniel Ciraldo, Executive Director of the Miami Design Preservation League.
The Miami Design Preservation League is one of the organizations that has fought to protect the city’s historic landmarks for decades, but they fear Senate Bill 1346 and House Bill 1317 would gut the existing preservation laws.
“These two bills would basically gut the historic preservation laws that we have in Miami Beach and would make it extremely easy to knock down our historic landmarks that we spent the last 50 years working to protect,” said Ciraldo.
The proposed legislation would allow property owners to demolish buildings — historic or not — in coastal high-hazard areas that fail to meet current FEMA flood standards for new construction.
Only buildings on the National Register of Historic Places are fully protected, but there are only seven of these in Miami Beach.
Florida Senator Bryan Avila of Hialeah is one of the bills’ sponsors. “This bill is narrowly crafted to ensure that unsafe structures can be replaced with new, resilient structures,” said Avila.
He spoke before the Rules Committee in Tallahassee on April 19.
“[The bill] also pertains to buildings deemed unsafe by the local building agency and buildings ordered to be demolished by the local building official. If a building is one of these situations, it should be able to be built in a resilient manner,” said Avila.
The bills passed the committee with a 19-0 vote, including a “yes” vote from Senator Shevrin Jones who represents Miami Beach.
Former Miami Beach Mayor Mattie Herrera Bower is concerned that the bills will open a dangerous door for developers who will buy neglected buildings, knock them down,and build high rises in their place.
“You crack the door and everyone comes in,” said Bower, “and this is what is happening now.”
“Our concern is that developers will come in and they will buy buildings that have been neglected, knock them down and build high rises in their place,” said Ciraldo, “and that would really impact already our traffic, our crumbling infrastructure.”
The issue is causing concern across the state, in many other coastal communities rich in architectural history, including Old Town Key West.
A petition against the proposed legislation post on Change.org two weeks ago has over 2,000 signatures so far.
“History is wonderful and architecture is a form of art,” said Bower, “and we should keep art alive and well.”
“So we want to say, keep your hands off our history,” said Ciraldo.
The proposed laws do not apply to single-family homes.
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