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IT’S
ALL IN THE PLANNING --- OR LACK THEREOF
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published August 11, 2014
Every year, I am lucky
enough to take my family on a trip to another city, whether it
be here in the United States
or even in a foreign country.
It seems that every city I go to was planned far better
than South Florida. On the contrary,
it seems as if all of
South Florida
was built with no plan whatsoever and solely with the concept of
pleasing as many residential developers as possible.
Every city, except for
South Florida
seems to have a main downtown area filled with parks,
restaurants, museums, theaters and night life.
Even the stadiums for the local sports teams are located
there. There is no
question that the heart and soul of the city is located in the
downtown area.
For example, New Yorkers have Manhattan.
The Gas Lamp area
of
San Diego
is sensational. Atlanta’s downtown area is great with its museums and cultural and
educational centers. Chicago
has the downtown area and the Navy Pier. Philadelphia
has a wonderful historic district that is simply a source of
pride for the community. Do
I even need to mention
Washington
DC
,Boston, San Francisco and the endless amount of culture there?
It seems as if much thought went into the designing of
each of these cities. Their
downtown areas were created to be the source and center of
attention and to leave no doubt.
So I ask each you….where is the heart and soul of
South Florida? Is it
South
Beach? Give me a break.
A few restaurants (all with no view of the water) does
not make a cultural city. Is
it the Miami
downtown area? Not
if you expect something more than going to a Miami Heat game.
There isn’t even a good restaurant in the area.
Is it Fort Lauderdale almost 30 miles away? One
block of some shops and bars on Las Olas also presents little in
the way of culture.
Ask yourself…..if a friend from another city was coming
to visit South Florida for five days, other than the beach, what
places would you tell them are the “must sees.”
I’m dying to know your answers.
It really is difficult to think of almost anything.
Here’s what we do have though….an endless view of
condos, condos and more condos.
Along with the condos, we now have tremendous traffic
congestion. To
make matters worse, there is no doubt in my mind that we have
the absolute worst public transportation system of any city in
the country. If your
tourist friend doesn’t rent a car, they see nothing and go
nowhere. How can you
call yourself a major city without sufficient public
transportation?
Instead of building a city center where all of our
stadiums are located, we have them spread out from
Sunrise
to
Miami
Gardens
to downtown Miami
and Hialeah. Other than those
stadiums, there is nothing to attract visitors to those cities,
unless we say Sawgrass Mills shopping in
Sunrise
is the type of culture we are offering. Over
the years, we became
all about cramming as many people as we can into as many
buildings as we can. We
don’t have a single world class museum.
Even more embarrassing is the fact that it is impossible
to believe that the most tropical city in the entire country
does not even have an Aquarium for visitors to see! Toronto
just completed a world class aquarium and 7 months a year it’s
probably below freezing there.
They put tropical fish on display, we can’t.
We have other priorities here it seems.
Build more bars for people to drink in.
Build more casinos for people to gamble in and build more
condos to cram more people in.
So tell me……other than the weather……… what’s
the draw to
South Florida?
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About
HOA & Condo Blog
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Eric Glazer graduated from the University of
Miami School of Law in 1992 after receiving a B.A. from
NYU. He is currently entering his 20th year as a
Florida
lawyer practicing |
community association law and is the owner of
Glazer and Associates, P.A. an eight attorney law firm in
Orlando
and Hollywood. For the past two years Eric has been the host of Condo Craze and
HOAs, a weekly one hour radio show on 850 WFTL. See: www.condocrazeandhoas.com.
He is the first attorney in the State of Florida
that designed a course that certifies condominium residents as
eligible to serve on a condominium Board of Directors and has
now certified more than 7,500 Floridians. He is certified as a
Circuit Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has
mediated dozens of disputes between associations and unit
owners. Finally, he recently argued the Cohn v. Grand
Condominium case before The Florida Supreme Court, which is
perhaps the single most important association law case decided
by the court in a decade.
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