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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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