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MIAMI CONDO NEWS — All About Condo Living in the Magic City — Edited by Heinz Dinter, PhD

Nightlife’s returning

April 30, 2006 • Spurred by the opening of the Miami Performing Arts Center (MPAC) and the surrounding condo boom, nightclubs and restaurants are springing up in the gritty areas around it.

If you plan to see Verdi’s Aida or Woody Allen’s New Orleans Jazz Band at the MPAC after its October opening, you can begin planning your after-party.

You could go four blocks west on Northwest 14th Street to Karu & Y, a $15-million restaurant and club, enter beneath a “Blue Icicle” chandelier by Dale Chihuly and dine on octopus carpaccio, seared cuttlefish and beurre noisette ice cream. Karu is to open in October.

Or you could go three blocks south to Northeast 11th Street and dance the mad night (and mad morning) away in your choice of already-open after-hours spots — Club Space, Nocturnal, Studio A.

In the future, you may be able to drive a bit farther west and take in a blues or jazz band at the refurbished Lyric Theater in Overtown.

Spurred by the opening of the MPAC and the surrounding condo boom, nightclubs and restaurants are springing up in the gritty areas around it. Nightlife finally is returning to an area that boomed in Miami’s early days, hit rock-bottom with the riots of the 1980s and has been stuck in time since.

“There’s no question we’re pioneers,” says Elliott Monter, a Long Island developer and partner with restaurateur Cesar Sotomayor in Karu & Y. “We’re making our investment based on it becoming an entertainment and dining district when the PAC opens in October.”

Three districts

To encourage restaurants and clubs around the PAC, Miami city commissioners several years ago enacted zoning laws to fashion three entertainment districts:

· An upscale “Media/Entertainment” area west of the MPAC:
Planners envision a Lincoln Road atmosphere west of the PAC, with wide sidewalks and outdoor cafes, nightclubs, cabarets. The district is bounded by Northwest and Northeast 14th Street on the north, Northeast Second Avenue on the east, Interstate 395 on the south and the Florida East Coast Railway tracks near Northwest First Avenue on the west:

· An anything-goes “Park West 24-Hour Entertainment” area south of Interstate 395.
This area, touching Biscayne Boulevard, would have a Times Square or Vegas Strip atmosphere, with neon signs, nightclubs, open-air rooftop lounges and strip clubs. Boundaries are being updated; planners propose I-395 on the north, Biscayne Boulevard on the east, Northeast 10th Street on the south and Northwest First Avenue on the west.

· An “Overtown Blues/Jazz Entertainment” area farther west:
This area would resemble Beale Street in Memphis, with late-night blues and jazz clubs — an attempt to recreate the pre-World-War-II scene when the old Sir John Hotel rocked all night. Boundaries are being updated; planners propose I-395 on the north, Northwest First Avenue on the east, Northwest Eighth Street on the south and Northwest Second Avenue on the west.

The vision is ambitious: In a decade or less, tourists and locals would ride a San Francisco-style trolley up Northeast Second Avenue through the heart of Miami’s new arts district, with restaurants and clubs, film-production offices, theaters and retail shops.

“We want a community where people live full time,” says urban planner Bernard Zyscovich.

“With housing, restaurants, nightclubs, shops, entertainment,” adds Frank Rollason, director of Miami’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

Monter is a believer: “Five years from now, you won’t recognize this neighborhood.”

The City of Miami has proposed an as-yet-not-financed, $200-million San Francisco-style electric street car on steel tracks on Northeast Second Avenue, from Flagler Street to the Miami Design District, with an east-west link to the Civic Center.

But already, a little nightclub district has sprung up along Northeast 11th Street including Club Space, Nocturnal, Studio A, Gold Rush and others.

Just east of Karu & Y on 14th Street, promoter Eugene Rodriguez for a decade has been operating the Ice Palace, a film studio/party venue in an old ice house. Parts of the new Miami Vice movie, Bad Boys II and others were filmed there.

Rodriguez praises the “Media/Entertainment” district idea. He says he plans to build an office tower beside his Ice Palace, with retail shops, a studio for TV shows and offices for movie and TV execs above that.

Source: www.MiamiHerald.com.

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