Victor Diaz: Point of View |
Victor Diaz is a longtime, high-profile Miami Beach community activist who
earned his reputation a decade ago when he spearheaded a two-year effort to prevent the Florida Department of Transportation from demolishing the series of historic bridges known as the Venetian Causeway. Since then, he has served in
numerous of capacities on a number of boards, from the Hispanic Affairs Board to the Historic Preservation Board. Today, he sits as a member of the
powerful Miami Beach Planning Board.
When he is not out fighting for a newly discovered cause in his much beloved home town, the boyishly handsome Diaz is a tough and successful civil litigator with the prestigious Miami law firm
Podhurst, Orseck, Josefsberg.
Born in Camanguey, Cuba, Diaz emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 18 months. He attended Miami Coral Park public high school in Miami, then attended Duke University, where he pursued a double major in accounting and management sciences. Upon his graduation in 1978, he attended Yale Law School, earning a law degree in 1982.
Immediately upon graduation from law school, he took a full-time position at his present firm, where he had worked as a summer employee during law school.
At the same time, he took up the first two interests that stirred his civic passions --Miami City Ballet and Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc., a provider of legal services to the poor.
Diaz spoke with
us recently and the topic of conversation was, as always, the future of
Miami Beach...
Your current interest in the question of Ocean Drive is directly related to your responsibilities on the Planning Board at the moment? It's directly related to the fact that I live in Miami Beach and I care about the historic district, but it's also part of our responsibility at the Planning Board because we keep seeing issues relating to our jurisdiction over the use of conditional use permits that are issued to entertainment establishments on Ocean Drive. And we see consistent issues come back before the Board in terms of problems and complaints.
What
kinds of complaints are you seeing? Equal enforcement complaints - in the course of seeing three or four of
those, I've been outspoken about what I think needs to be done in order
to clarify the vision for Ocean Drive.
Let's
start with a general question - how would you presently assess Miami
Beach as a community, and why? I
think Miami Beach is one of the greatest cities around to live in. Why?
Number one, it's an extremely progressive and tolerant city, with a
progressive, well-educated voting public. It's extremely diverse,
ethnically and socio-economically, and in many other ways. It has a
large Hispanic community, a large Jewish community, a large gay
community. And even within the Hispanic community, there is tremendous
diversity, people from all over Latin America. And there's the richest
of the rich and the poorest of the poor. There's also an age diversity.
We have a huge youth population but we also have a lot of older people.
You like
diversity? I love diversity. I also like a casual lifestyle. We also have wonderful
resources, from the beaches and the historic district, a wonderful
residential core, particularly with the potential in the North Beach
area. I also love the free-spirited nature of Miami Beach. It's one of
the few areas in Florida that is a truly urban area, where you can
actually live and not won a car. You walk to work or recreate or shop
without needing a vehicle.
What's
your present assessment of Miami Beach as a tourist resort? I think that it suffers from a schizophrenic personality. Miami Beach
would do better if it would just develop a clear vision of what it wants
to be as a tourism destination. There are those who view the Beach in
the traditional conventioneer-type of destination, those who view it as
a cutting-edge, trendy area to vacation in, those who view it as a
historic tourism destination, and those who view it as the hip hop
capital of the United States.
We have all
these competing visions and they all make different demands and suggest
different directions for the city. I think that the city is suffering -
beyond this normal economic downturn - the statistics indicate the city
is suffering a decrease in tourist tax revenue, and I think that
decrease in a function of this schizophrenia we have about what kind of
tourist destination we want to be.
And
there's no doubt about the decline, because you can track it by the
city's collection of resort taxes on hotel rooms, food and beverage,
right? Right. And if you look at the trend, long before the September 11
attacks, resort taxes were on the way down significantly enough to see
that it's not just a result of September 11.
Do you
share the concern that this is going to be a pivotal tourist season and
that there's reason to have concerns about whether it's going to be an
acceptable season? Absolutely. Tourism remains the number one industry of Miami Beach and
it is absolutely essential to have a vital tourist industry. So, if
tourism fails on the Beach, a lot of people will suffer, and most of
them are Beach residents.
How much
do you think tourism is down this year from last year? I don't have the statistics off the top of my head, so I wouldn't even
venture a guess. I'm a lawyer by trade and I'm very precise where I
attach my name to a fact. But I know tourism is down, we are hurting.
The statistics are clear.
What do
you think has caused the problem? One of the things we suffer from in Miami Beach is greed.
Everybody wants to cash in and they want to cash in now. There are very
few people who are truly invested for the long term. You see that in the
escalating rents, and in the property owners in North Beach who have
their properties in a dilapidated condition but refuse to lower their
prices to a level where it could create an incentive for redevelopment.
So, greed is a big problem.
What do
you think is the most critical single issue facing the city right now
and why? (...long pause...) I think - it sounds general - but I
think it's the vision thing. I think we've had an embarrassment of
riches. Lightning struck. There was a time where you didn't have to be
too smart for the city to prosper. It was just dumb luck, and some
vision on the part of the preservationists. But magic happened. South
Beach became red hot and led to the revitalization of the City of Miami
Beach. It led to the greatest infusion of development dollars that any
community has seen in a short period of time in recent history.
Now, the buzz
is a little off. It's not the next "hot" destination. And
that's natural. So, the challenge is to find a sustainable vision for
the community, both in terms of the people who live here year-round as
well as the tourism economy. And I don't see anyone articulating a
clearly well set forth vision of what community we want to be that is
sustainable.
Do you
buy into the premise that because of the real estate boom and all the
expensive new condominiums that that sort of seasonal residential
community will replace the old high-end tourism revenue? Is that
possible? I don't think so. I think what we're going to have is a horrible crash
of the luxury real estate market, because I think they're overbuilding
it. I don't know where all those people are going to come from to
populate million dollar condos that are popping up all over the Beach
and I think we're going to have projects fail. The ones that came on
line early are going to be fine, but the ones coming on toward the end
of the cycle are going to be in trouble.
What do
you think the real impact of the condo development has been? I think we're experiencing a little bit of the
Atlantic City syndrome, not as bad as Atlantic City, but you have
million dollar condos being built five blocks away from $150,
dilapidated, substandard units. One of the little-known facts about
Miami Beach is that it was built up as a seasonal recreational resort.
Therefore, there are approximately 36,000 substandard living units in
the city that were not designed for year-round living, they were
designed for two or three month seasonal living. They're either studio
apartments or inadequate one bedrooms, meaning they have inadequate
kitchens or closets or very small bathrooms. They weren't designed for
people to live in year-round, they were designed for people who come
down with a couple of pairs of shorts and some T-shirts. And it's that
substandard housing stock that has created and dictated the cycles of
boom and bust in Miami Beach. When you have that many units, what
happens historically is that when it stopped being a seasonal town, it
became a way to warehouse the elderly in the 1980's. It became God's
waiting room. And with the situation now, the same apartments are filled
with young people. Either way, you can't have a sustainable population
for the long term for a community.
What is
the practical effect on Miami Beach for the future? The city can't attract the population base and economic base that it
wants because when a young person gets married and wants to stay in
Miami Beach and have a child, the reality is that once you leave that
inventory of substandard housing, you jump into very expensive homes
that are not starter homes, and million dollar condos. So these people
have to leave the Beach to get their starter homes, so you see a
migration now off the Beach to Miami neighborhoods like Belle Meade and
Morningside.
So you
have a different view of how Miami Beach should be developed? People say, "Are you pro-development or anti-development?" I'm
all for development, but what I would like to see is the development
directed toward revitalizing that substandard housing stock so you don't
have million dollar condos going up next to Section 8 housing. That's
not a good model for a community. You want housing in all price ranges.
And when the boat floats, you want everybody to float with it, not for
some to sink while others rise.
How is it
that we got into that situation over the years? Because of a lack of vision on the part of elected officials, who felt
that the way to promote reinvestment in Miami Beach was to come up with
the most permissible zoning laws available, which made the land very
valuable, because if you can build a 68-story building on a
10,000-square-foot lot because the floor-area-ratios permitted by the
city are so generous, then there's a great incentive, but at the same
time, we never addressed the existing housing stock because it wasn't
sexy.
Did the
city have the opportunity to buy the South Pointe Alaska property, next
to Portofino Tower, from Thomas Kramer—and should the city have done
so as a way of preserving open spaces? Yes, the city had the opportunity to buy the land, twice, at a price of
about $7 million. But they said it was overpriced. And now you realize
it would have been the best bargain in the world. It was a great deal
for a very important piece of land. But the reason the city didn't do it
was because of Thomas Kramer. Everybody hated him at the time, and the
city said there's no way we're going to put $7 million in Thomas
Kramer's pocket.
Was it an
honest message being sent about Thomas Kramer, or was there some kind of
ulterior motive about wanting to get it developed? I think it was a little bit of both, but I think Thomas Kramer made
himself public enemy number one with his tactics.
Despite
the politics, you would have been in favor of buying the land an opening
it as an open space or park? Yes, and I'd be in favor of the city buying more available land and
creating more open spaces and parks. Instead, what we're doing in Miami
Beach is giving land away to private developers in these so-called joint
public-private partnerships, which in reality end up being all for the
developer and nothing at all for the public. So, the bottom line is that
we're ceding land, our scarcest resource on Miami Beach, out of public
control, instead of bringing it into public control.
So what
is the solution to the problem? I think we need a really gutsy politician who appears on the
scene on Miami Beach and says "No, I'm simply going to say no.
No, we don't want more development, and Yes, we are
willing to go to court to fight the fight." I'd like to see us put
as much time and resources as we do into negotiating contracts with
private developers into fighting for the best, most progressive, most
restrictive land use regulations we can come up with. And I don't mean
to turn off investment, but to redirect it. We have to say, "sorry,
we're not going to let you build a 50-story tower, but if you want to
take these 10,000 substandard apartments and renovate them into livable
units suitable for families, the city will be your partner. We will bend
over backwards to help you do it.
Is there
anyone from the city pitching that to developers now? I don't think so. I don't think there's anyone presenting a clear,
comprehensive vision of what the city needs to do to jump-start itself.
Why do
you focus so much of your energy and interest on Ocean Drive now? What
is it about Ocean Drive that makes it an issue? I'm interested in everything. Maybe my opinions about Ocean Drive
are what you hear about, but I'm interested in many topics having to do
with the city.
What is
it about Ocean Drive at the moment that makes you so vocal? It's the crown jewel of the historic district. It's on every postcard.
It's the signature of our city, whether we like it or not.
Then what
is the issue on Ocean Drive as you see it? I don't think it's thriving, and the numbers show it's not thriving.
Resort tax revenues collected on Ocean Drive are on the way down and
have been for quite some time, even before September 11.
To what
do you attribute that? All I hear from all the Beach residents I talk to is, "I'd never go
down to Ocean Drive and I'd never take anybody down there." It's
the pits. Well, I don't give up that easily. It may be that we want to
decide that Ocean Drive is not a street for local residents, that it's
for tourists who wear black sandals with white socks. Or it can be the
wildest, craziest, 24-hour a day party place, to walk through the
streets drunk to rock 'n' roll music. Maybe that's what we want to say,
that Ocean Drive is the "entertainment" street, the
anything-goes street in Miami Beach. And if that's what the majority
wants to see, then we should develop a series of regulations to promote
that. But if your vision of Ocean Drive is that it should be a beautiful
street like in the south of France, where you can stroll around and
where you have entertainment, but with moderation. We need to decide
what Ocean Drive is going to be.
Do you
think Ocean Drive should be shut down from car traffic as a pedestrian
mall like Lincoln Road? There are issues with that, but I would seriously look at it.
Do you
think the Ocean Drive issue is finally coming to a head now? Oh, it's coming to a head, but unfortunately I think I've created a
monster. I think it's going in the opposite direction. I think the
direction it's heading in is not the one I'd like to see, which is
bringing back that south of France ambience that we had early on in the
development of the district. To be casual, relaxed, Bohemian, artsy,
chic, trendy. But I think it's headed in the direction of becoming a
mainstream, mass-market entertainment district, like a Bourbon Street in
New Orleans. The problem with that approach is that you'll see throngs
of people, but they won't be throngs of people with money.
What are
your other major concerns about the condition of Ocean Drive? I don't see that Ocean Drive has the finest restaurants in Miami Beach,
I don't see people citing Ocean Drive for the best service in Miami
Beach. I even hear from my friends, when they come here as tourists,
that Ocean Drive has some of the worst service they've ever seen.
How do
you clean that up? What specific changes would be required to get back
to the "south of France" ambience? I think that a serious look has to be taken at the outdoor entertainment
establishments. I think that section that was created needs to be
regulated. There's nothing wrong with entertainment, but the hours and
types of entertainment have to be controlled. Number two, there needs to
be very strict enforcement of the regulations that require property
owners to clean up the streets around their establishments. It's on the
books, it's just not enforced.
How does
a municipality, either the government or the private sector, actually
control that sort of thing? Through land use regulations. You can regulate the hours of operation
and the conditions of operation. And the city can provide additional
infrastructural resources, like additional sanitation crews, additional
police protection, better lighting. The goose that lays the golden egg
has to be nurtured.
But in
the Miami Beach of today, isn't Lincoln Road, an internationally
acclaimed pedestrian mall for dining and shopping, more likely to lay
the golden egg than Ocean Drive? That question goes to the issue of what is the wisdom of certain land
use regulations? You're not allowed to have open air entertainment on
Lincoln Road, and there are much more severe restrictions. But I think
there's also some validity to the claim that Lincoln Road is different
from Ocean Drive and that it should be different.
Besides, it's
not a matter of Lincoln Road versus Ocean Drive. That's not the goose
that's laying the golden egg. The goose laying the golden egg in Miami
Beach is and will always be the unique mix of the people who live there,
and that's what people don't understand. If we lose the gay
community or the youth community or the modeling industry, if we lose
the Bohemian edge, if we lose the character of our neighborhoods, we
lose everything.
The reason is
that the thing that most people are most interested in is other people.
And the thing that brought the world to Miami Beach was the interesting
people that early visitors found when they came here in the late 1980's,
because the physical community back then consisted mostly of
dilapidated, run-down buildings. Now, those same interesting people are
leaving and we need to address why they're leaving.
What
about the historic influence of the gay community? I think the gay community is as influential as it ever was in the
evolution of the Beach, but I do think there has been a decline in gay
tourism. What I hear is that the edge is off and there's a been-there,
done-that kind of feeling about Miami Beach among gay tourists now.
Other than coming to look at beautiful boys, there aren't that many
things here that cater directly to gay tourism on Miami Beach. And now
we're going from a seasonal gay population to a population of year-round
gay residents.
Well,
you've certainly touched upon the big three influences - the gay
community, the modeling industry and the Bohemian ambience. And the
consensus seems to be that all three are on the decline and that therein
lies the basis for the identity problem the Beach is having. Do you
agree? I think the identity problem is causing the decline, and not the other
way around. If you want to attract those kinds of people over the long
term, you've got to design the kind of community they want to live in.
And if you want to attract conventioneers from Duluth, Minnesota, then
you design the kind of city that they want to come to. But I don't think
we're planning for the kind of city that these people that made Miami
Beach - we're not giving them the kind of community they want. The
traffic is awful, there's no place to go and nothing to do, and we're
pricing them out of the market. There are just a lot of things we're
doing wrong. We're surrounding them with high-rises. If you want to live
surrounded by high-rises, there's a million places you can live.
If we're doing
all these things wrong, why are we doing them? A lack of political vision is number one. Number two is the inordinate
influence that money has on Miami Beach politics to this very day. It's
the eight thousand pound gorilla.
Do you
ever see a situation where that really has been reigned in? I think that some people are trying now, like Commissioner Matti Bower.
And Don Peebles, the developer of the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza, recently
stood before the city commission and called a spade a spade. He told it
like it is. I just think there's a disconnect on the Beach. I think the
citizens of Miami Beach would vote the right way every single time.
I am burned out
on Beach politics. I've given 10 years of my life and a lot of energy to
Beach politics. But I think that if I go nuts because I can't take it
any more and the pendulum continues to swing the other way, then I think
that the best thing that could happen is that someone like me is going
to get pissed off and start putting Voter Initiated Referendums
on the ballot, one at a time. And they're going to pass.
What's
the first one you would do? Development. I'd slap a couple of regulations in about growth management
and public financing of development projects.
Are you
hopeful? I want to be, but there is a big decrease in grass roots politics on
Miami Beach. People either became cynical and gave up, or they're
partying their brains out on South Beach and having a good time. I don't
really know.
How do
you actually initiate a Voter Referendum? You decide what you want to change about city government, you draft your
resolution, and you send it to the city attorney's office for review and
approval of the legality of the referendum. And you collect the number
of signatures you need to put it on the ballot, which is not really that
many. It's not that hard to do. And it's literally grass roots
democracy.
But you
have no direct political ambitions for yourself? At one time I came close to thinking about running for office. I'd love
to run for office. I would love to conduct a campaign that stated
exactly what I believe, because I'd like to find out whether I'm insane
and represent the views of no one, or whether I represent the views of a
large number of people on Miami Beach. But in any case, I would love to
put it to a test, but quite frankly, I'm tired and I've seen good people
ruined, so I'd rather support and continue to support other candidates
and do whatever I can to help in my own way.
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