Miami's Metamorphosis

8/16/2019 Miami's Metamorphosis

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Vol ume 10•Iss ue 1•Jan/feb 2016

REDEVELOPMENT

Revival for

London’s Paddington

HOTTOPIC

New economicera

forArgentina

INVESTMENT

Tech sa vv y Estonia

attractsinvestors

RETAIL

Boost for Bahrain

retailmarket


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Miami’s metamorphosisWith25 percent of its people now employed inthe creative economy,Art Basel

Miami is testamentto Miami’sreinvention a sa centre ofartand technology.

t the South Florida Economic Summit, organi sed

by th e Greater Miami Chamber of Comme rce in

Amid-January, urban economist Richard Florida

told more than 300 busines s people that wha t he calls

the creative economy is the destiny of the region.

The creative economy includes science and technol-

ogy, business and finance, education, medicine, media,

entertainment, culture, and the arts. In Miami and the

rest of Sou th Florida he finds tha t up to 25 percent of the

working population is involved in the creative economy.

In San Francisco the number is 40 percent, so Miami has

a way to go.

The Tr o u b l e wiTh MiaMi Glamorous and fashionable in the 1920s and 1930s, Miami

went downhill in the 194 0s when hotels were turned into

military bases and the econom y turned to preparation for

war. By the 1950s the area was poor, shelter to retirees

from the North who stayed in rundown hotels and roominghouses. Then came dru gs and drug lords and crime as well

as racial upheavals in the 1960 s and 1970s.

The television series Miami Vice with an attractive pair

of black and white detectives who wore designer clo thes,

drove luxury cars, and raced around Biscayne Bay in

speedboats - entertaining beautiful women or chasing

criminals - had a lot to do with upgrading the image of

Miami. The show ran from 1984-90 and can still be found

on some local and cable channels.

Simultaneously, ageing hotels on Miami Beach were be -

ing revitalised, their Art Deco facades restored, and so mehardy developers were putting up major residential com-

plexes, for example, Grove Isle.


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But that wasn’t enough for economic success and, in-

deed, the worst point came in 1992 when Hurricane

Andrew devastated Miami and South Florida. With thehelp of federal funds, insurance money, and team spirit,

the community pulled together and

began the renaissance that led to the

reinvention of Miami as a centre of art

and technology.

Suzanne Delehanty was recruited to come to Miami in 1995

“with the charge of transforming what was then called the

Centre of the Fine Arts (CFA) into greater Miami’s flagshipart museum.” She found, “both the leaders of Miami-Dade

County government and key civic leaders were committed

to developing greater Miami’s potential as a global centre in

the 21st century. That meant the creation of a major art

museum.” Over 11 years, Delehanty says, “we carried outcommunity-wide planning and transformed the Centre for

the Fine Arts, a non-collecting depart-

ment of our county government, in the

Miami Art Museum (MAM), a freest and-

ing collecting museum with a strong

commitment to education,” making her

the Founding Director of MAM.

At the same time, Delehanty was

involved in the groundwork for building the museum’s new

home. “We collaborated with the science museum and c om-

munity members in the transformation of 30 acres of dere-lict waterfront land in downtown Miami into a Museum Park,”

she explained, “and secured USD 100 million in Miami-Dade

The art scene and thereal estate scene arereally one and the same.

One ThousandMuseum

CreaTing a Majo r

a rT MuseuM


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ABM B, Image co ur tesy

of ArtBasel

County bond funding” for the new museum to be designedby Herzog & de Meuron. Thanks to a gift from developer and

art collector Jorge M. Perez, the renamed Perez Art Museum

Miami (PAMM) opened in late 2013.

However, it took several more years for Art Basel to arrive.Thef irst ABMBwassc hedul edin December 2001. However, in

the year of 9/11 an unexpected result was that international

insurers who guarantee shipping of art works were unwill-

ing to do it. ABMB opene d in 20 02 and c losed its 14th edition

in December 2015.

That event included 267 galleries from 32 countries

representing five continents. More than 77,000 peo - ple

went through the galleries including Hollywood stars and

eminences of the art world - artists, cura- tors, and

collectors. Some of them are already booking their rooms

for the 2016 edition as always in early December.Perhaps William Talbert III, President & CEO, Great Miami

Convention and Visitors Bureau, put it best: “Before Basel,

the words ‘billionaire,’ ‘Miami,’ and ‘Miami Beach’ were not

[commonly] used in a sentence.” Talbert who heads the

a r T ba s e l CoM es To MiaMi

Delehanty witnessed the beginnings of what became Art

Basel Miami Beach (ABMB) in 1996. She found it “exhila-

rating to be part of the whirlwind visits” of representatives

of Art Basel in Switzerland who “sensed the ‘political will’

desiring Miami to become the hub for the Americas in the

21stcentury.”

Art Basel was interested in expanding beyond one fair in

June. They encountered Miami’s diversity - “then and now

its greatest strength” – and “found a vibrant community of

artist s and art collectors as well as mus eums and other cul -

tural institutions, which had developed over the decades.”


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No other event in SouthFlorida compares whenit comes to drawing highnet worth individuals.

area’s efforts to bring in visitors notes that hotel oc-cupancy is highest during ABMB, second only to New Year’s

Eve. Miami’s Art Week, starring ABMB, Art Miami and a host

of satellite fairs in Miami Bea ch

and the mainland, has become a glob-

al destination, according to Patrick

O’Connell, Senior VP Business Devel-

opment, at EWM Realty International.

“No other event in South Florida com-

pares when it comes to drawing high-

net worth individuals.”

br ing ing in TeC hnol ogy

Seemingly separate from the art world is the technology

ecosystem developing in Miami and greater South Florida.

One of the major drivers is eMerge Americas, a conference,

exposition, and fair at the Miami Beach Convention Cen-

tre like ABMB. It’s the brainchild of Manny Medina, a devel-oper turned technology executive who sold his company

Terremark to Verizon telecommunications in 2011 for USD 1.4

billion. Medina used some of the mon-

ey to start eMerge in 2014. It has grown

exponentially with its third edition

set for April. Thanks to the boost of

eMerge, funding from the Knight Fou n-

dation, accelerator organisations like

Endeavor, and local universities, Miami

is becoming a centre of high technology

development. Some new sta rt-u ps are linked to the arts. Butoverall, high tech is part of the creative economy, and that

is something made increasingly possible by the surge that

ABMB provided.

T he a r T b a s e l h a l o e f f e C T

Faith Hope Consolo lives in New York City and is recog-

nised worldwide as the “queen of retail” who heads the

Retail Group at Douglas Elliman. Sh e ’ s been to a number

of ABMBs because “everyone convenes from all corners

of the world.” At ABMB she finds a “cultural scene similar

to the Cannes Film Festival combined with Fashion Week

New York, Europe and beyond.”

As a retail expert, she knew ABMB would draw “new

restaurants, shops” and “even the ambience took a mod-

ern and contemporary spin.” In the end, Consolo believes

“the art scene and the real estate scene are really one

and the same. Major collectors come from the owners/

developers side and have made art part of selling their

buildings, decorating their homes, providing wings to

museums.”

Buyer s of luxur y condominiums in shiny towers are often

surrounded by art, “branding elements for the projects,”

according to a long-time Miami resident and real estate

expert. “Multimillion-dollar sculptures by art world stars

Fernando Botero (Colombia), Jeff Koons (USA), and Jaume

Plensa (Spain) are now part of the Miami landscape, sited

by developers w here the public can see them.”

In a recent editorial, the Miami Herald quot - ed Harve

Mogul, CEO of United Way in Miami-Dade: “Art Basel has

spawned hundred of succes s- ful anci l lary businesses

and fuelled the growth of Wynwood, the Design District,

and Midtown, not just Miami Beach. And, equal lyimportant, it has helped elevate our community’s self-

est eem and aspiration for an even better tomorrow.”

Miami's Metamorphosis

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