Legislature reopens door to bulldozing historic buildings in Miami Beach, elsewhere (2025)

For the third time in two years, the Florida Legislature appears poised to pass a pair of “devastating” bills that would allow developers to freely demolish historic buildings in Miami Beach, Miami and in historic districts across the state, including the iconic Art Deco hotels and apartment buildings on Ocean Drive and the rest of South Beach.

This time, it’s a proposed expansion of the controversial Live Local Act, which promotes development of high-rise housing for middle-class people making nearly six figures. Beach officials say the expansion allows virtually every structure in its historic districts — with the exception of single-family homes — to be “bulldozed into history” without a public hearing or meaningful city review, as City Commissioner Alex Fernandez put it.

Unlike the previous two times, it’s likely the legislation will pass, effectively crippling longstanding protections for hundreds of historically and architecturally significant Art Deco and Miami Modern buildings in Miami Beach that have been a fulcrum of the local tourism industry.

To call attention to the potential consequences of the bills, sponsored by Miami-Dade County Republicans Alexis Calatayud in the Senate and Vicki Lopez in the House, the city called a news conference in front of the Art Deco Cardozo Hotel on Ocean Drive, which is owned by Gloria and Emilio Estefan. In attendance in what one commissioner called “a show of unity” along with Fernandez were Beach Mayor Steven Meiner and Commissioners Laura Dominguez, Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and David Suarez, and George Neary, interim director of the Miami Design Preservation League.

Shortly afterwards, the House passed its version of the bill by 109-3 vote, after Lopez agreed to strip from it protections for historic districts she had initially appended to it. Voting in favor was the Beach’s representative, Fabian Basabe. The Senate passed its version 36-0 on April 16. GOP Sen. Ileana Garcia, whose district includes South Beach, voted in favor. Democractic Sen. Shevrin Jones, whose district covers the north half of Miami Beach, was absent for the vote because he was recovering from emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix.

The legislation now heads to the Senate floor for a final vote. It’s expected to pass.

After the House vote, an angry Fernandez said the legislation will be “the doom of South Beach.”

The legislation is overwhelmingly weighted in favor of developers, who receive significant property tax breaks atop the ability to override local zoning controls, including historic designations that are meant to protect historically and architecturally significant buildings and districts.

Supporters contend the act is meant to encourage development of affordable housing, but critics insist that’s misleading. To qualify, developers must set aside 40 percent of apartments in a project as “workforce” housing — a level that in Miami-Dade County means households making up to $96,000 a year.

Because the Live Local law already in place allows developers to build to the maximum height allowed by a local jurisdiction within a mile of a property, the expansion would potentially result in the replacement of predominantly two- and three-story buildings in Miami Beach’s famed Art Deco District with towers of up to 500 feet, or about 50 stories.

That’s because the proposed expansion, as drafted by Calatayud and Lopez, would extend Live Local’s reach into virtually all areas of cities with allowed commercial uses such as hotels or restaurants, while also “preempting,” or blocking, local authorities’ ability to stop demolitions of those buildings.

‘Biggest threat to Miami Beach culture’

For Miami Beach, that means virtually the entire city from South Pointe to North Beach outside of single-family neighborhoods would be exposed to demolition without review by zoning or historic preservation officials, including 2,600 buildings deemed historic either individually or as part of a historic district.

“We are facing the biggest threat to Miami Beach culture and history in a generation,” Fernandez said. “It threatens the very future or our city. South Beach will become Manhattan Beach.”

City officials believe the bills are being pushed by developers looking to redevelop South Beach and other neighborhoods where preservation laws have limited the height and scale of what they can build.

They say the expansion could have a devastating effect on the Beach’s tourism industry, which is generated large part by the cohesive historic scale and style of its South Beach and oceanfront historic districts, and on its stock of affordable housing as well.

Protected historic districts around South Beach’s Flamingo Park and North Beach, for instance, contain thousands of older affordable apartments in a city still gentrifying rapidly more than 40 years after creation of its first, the famed Art Deco district, launched the revival of what had been a dying Miami Beach. The Art Deco district contains what preservationists believe to be the biggest or second-largest mostly intact collection of buildings in that style in the world.

As written, the bills would also allow demolitions without review in other local historic districts, including the city of Miami’s Miami Modern, or MiMo, district on Biscayne Boulevard.

In a statement released by Miami Beach, Emilio Estefan urged legislators to amend the bills to protect the city’s architectural and historic treasures.

“Miami Beach’s Art Deco architecture tells the story of who we are,” Estefan said. “Our Art Deco buildings, like the Cardozo, define Miami Beach and set us apart from every other city in the world. It’s a treasure we must cherish and protect for future generations.”

The House approval came on the same day, April 29, that marks the 100th anniversary of the debut of the Art Deco style of design and architecture at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. The style, in several variations, rapidly spread across the world, becoming the dominant look of Miami Beach in the 1930s in a simplified, streamlined approach.

The companion bills have been progressing steadily through committee reviews, but it’s unclear why they have not raised alarms in jurisdictions across Florida, like St. Augustine or Key West, that have famous historic districts and, like the Beach, depend heavily on tourists drawn to historic architecture and places.

The current bills, if approved, would represent a triple whammy against historic districts and a boon to developers.

In 2023, a so-called resiliency law that purports to promote redevelopment better suited to meet rising seas and storm surge because of climate change would have had a similar bulldozer effect across Florida, but was significantly scaled back after a statewide uproar. That newer version, passed last year, still leaves significant stretches of Miami Beach’s Atlantic shoreline, including some of its most prominent hotels of the 1940s and 1950s, vulnerable to demolition without city interference.

Earlier this month, developers 13th Floor Investments won city preservation board approval for a new luxury condo and hotel on Collins Avenue and 36th Street that will replace a pair of historic hotels, the first to be scheduled for demolition under the resiliency law. The board was powerless to block or review the demolition application under the resiliency law.

Public pushback on ‘Live Local’

Live Local, first approved in 2023 and amended last year to make it easier for developers to use, allows developers to build taller and more densely than local zoning laws allow if they set aside 40 percent of apartments as “workforce” housing, defined as homes with rents affordable to people making up to 120 percent of local median income. That’s a level critics say doesn’t address a massive need for affordable housing in the county.

Developers also can win substantial breaks on property taxes for their buildings. In addition, if developers successfully sue cities that block Live Local projects, taxpayers must pay their attorneys’ fees.

Numerous massive Live Local proposals have been floated in jurisdictions across Miami-Dade, drawing in many cases furious public pushback, but not a single one has broken ground. Some real estate experts say that’s because towers are expensive to build, especially with rising construction costs and tightening construction lending, and don’t financially pencil out even with what are effectively public subsidies in the form of tax breaks.

One prominent proposal, for a tower by the owners of the historic Clevelander Hotel on Ocean Drive, became the subject of a heated tussle between the developers and the city, which said it would refuse to approve it, citing zoning powers to limit construction in a special historic zoning district. The Legislature last year then approved an amendment to overcome those objections, with the aim of forcing local authorites to automatically approve the projects.

Still, the would-be Clevelander developers have yet to submit a formal application to the city. Neither has any other property owner.

It’s unclear what is driving the bills by Lopez and Calatayud, though city officials say some developers have been floating proposals in the expanded areas that would benefit from the preemption of the city’s ability to block demolitions of protected landmarks.

Previously, Live Local applied only in commercial corridors like Alton Road, Collins and Washington avenues and Ocean Drive, but the city retained the ability to review and deny demolition permits for buildings designated as historic individually or listed as significant or contributing properties in historic districts.

Lopez, at the request of Beach city officials, initially agreed to amend her bill to protect historic districts established before 2000, which includes the Art Deco and adjacent historic districts. But those amendments were stripped off her bill early Tuesday morning in a committee hearing.

This story has been updated to include the reason why State Sen. Shevrin Jones was absent for the vote in the Senate.

This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 4:49 PM.