The saga to save some of the last remaining historic buildings in the City of Miami's "Historic Overtown" neighborhood, the
Mitchell Rooming House and
Phillip Allen Billianrds, continued today in a hearing with Judge Valerie Manno-Shurr of the Eleventh Circuit Court. Attorneys from both sides squared off but central to the hearing was a decision by the Miami-Dade County Unsafe Structures Board to issue a demolition order
due to the owner being a "no show" to the hearing. The
demolition order request, which was originated by the City of Miami Unsafe Structures Official Cedric Mar, claimed falsely that the reason for demolition was due to the building being "vacant, open, and abandoned," obviously not the case as the building has been occupied by the Apostolic Revival Temple, a vibrant church whose Sunday services were recently recorded by local news media such as
WSVN Channel 7 News. In an attempt to justify his claim, Mr Mar submitted
misleading photos showing only a small portion of the building housing the Church, attempting to group it with the abandoned building next door. "The photos are not of the Church," said Pastor Allen of the Temple, "those photos are of the building next door, we have been here for 13 years." Doris Hall, representative of the owner of the property said "the case wasn't even heard and debated as Rev Nevin was not properly noticed and was not even aware of the hearing, so a default demolition order was issued."
Even though public documents clearly show that the
notice of hearing was not mailed certified mail, and the box checked for "notice to owner/interested parties of hearing by certified mail" was not filled in (
see demolition order request), the City of Miami attorney insisted that at a photo of a notice of the hearing supposedly posted on the building constituted proper notice to the owner. "All I see is a photo of a notice posted on a white wall, this could be on any building." stated the owner's attorney. "That's proper notice to take someone's property?" said Pastor Allen of the Temple, "we are at the Church all the time and never saw anything posted - in this neighborhood, the homeless could snatch that in an hour."
"What really worries me is that this is the type of thing that would happen in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela or Cuba," said Brad Knoefler of the OMNI/PARK WEST REDEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION, which formally applied to
designate the properties historic last week. "I mean, what if I was out of town, and a City official posted a notice of hearing to demolish my building stating it was 'vacant and open', which is not true. Then someone removes the notice and I don't attend the hearing beacuse I don't know about it - next thing I know the City is taking my property and I have no recourse." he said, "if this is the precedent, every property owner in the City of Miami should be afraid."
Knoefler's group has requested an
emergency hearing of the Historical Preservation Board with a view to save the buildings from "being lost forever" and fails to see why the City of Miami would not back off and let a proper evaluatin of the occur. "There is enough evidence (
letter from Black Archives,
Overtown Community Advisory Board letter,
Irby Mcknight letter) that these are historically significant properties to the Overtown Community, I don't understand why won't they give us a some time to properly evaluate the situation," he said, "what is the urgency now that the properties are secured and safe?"
Judge Manno-Shurr is expected to issue a ruling on the matter Monday.
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