What is up with Mayfair?
The bull stands in a completely dead shopping complex on this particular day.People have been commenting on Mayfair, and I have been meaning to post about this.
What is the problem with Mayfair? Why can't they keep a tenant? Is it the rent? Is it the set up or location? Planet Hollywood is gone, The News Cafe is gone, Borders is gone, Chicken 'n Grill is gone, the movie theater is gone, The Fitness Company is going. The Farmer's Market is a sorry sight.
Maybe free parking for visitors and lower rents would bring in business and customers.
I say it all the time: Make the place resident-friendly. The Grove is not drawing tourists or other folks from the rest of the county. Why not make the area user-friendly for the locals? Put in a supermarket where Borders was, add a small Books and Books type store, maybe add more family-friendly restaurants like a nice Italian place. And most of all, lower the rents!
Are the owners sacrificing Mayfair for tax write-offs? Is this their goal?
Maybe free parking for visitors and lower rents would bring in business and customers.
I say it all the time: Make the place resident-friendly. The Grove is not drawing tourists or other folks from the rest of the county. Why not make the area user-friendly for the locals? Put in a supermarket where Borders was, add a small Books and Books type store, maybe add more family-friendly restaurants like a nice Italian place. And most of all, lower the rents!
Are the owners sacrificing Mayfair for tax write-offs? Is this their goal?
posted by Tom Falco at 10:05 AM
YOU MAY NOT LIFT THE PHOTOS & TEXT. IT'S COPYRIGHTED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. YOU CAN HOWEVER SHARE A STORY ON SOCIAL MEDIA BY USING THE LINKS HERE.
For linking to this one story, just click on the time it was posted & just this story will open for sharing - only through social media. Not copying and pasting.
16 Comments:
The design of that place is TERRIBLE. It is segmented and divided every way possible. I have lived in the Grove for over 10 years and I STILL find Mayfair confusing. First, it is setup in alleys running north-south, to get from one "alley" to another you have to go to either Florida or Grand and reenter the complex. Then everything is stacked vertically, it feels claustrophobic. I can not for the life of me remember how many floors it has despite having lived here for so many years.
They layout of Mayfair is not the problem, many cities have this winding street to street set up and it is very quaint.
The Mayfair people just don't care, it is a tax write off and they don't care if it ever fills up.
If they cared, they would lower the rent, lower the parking fees and bring in a nice mix of shops and restaurants.
CocoWalk is always trying to improve itself. Mayfair is not. They even allowed a small arts group to be kicked out by the Grove Arts Festival. Mayfair doesn't care about the Grove. Mayfair is in it for the money and the tax write offs.
What I don't understand is how the owner can withstand such high vacancy for so long? I mean, that place has got to be 25% full at most. Are the tax write offs that valuable? He still has to pay property tax.
Mayfair never seemed to reach a critical mass of stores and restaurants. I agree it has a bad layout but I don't see how it can be revitalized now. They could demolish and rebuild but who knows what we would get- perhaps another Sunset place monstrosity. At least we'd have a bookstore.
CGGV wrote: "Make the place resident-friendly. The Grove is not drawing tourists or other folks from the rest of the county. Why not make the area user-friendly for the locals? Put in a supermarket [...] small Books and Books [...] more family-friendly restaurants like a nice Italian place."
I find that remark infuriating. It is so true my head swells from the blood rush and ears start ringing. The local market is as huge as it is unserved. The last 10 years has seen a gentrification of the neighborhood- yuppies, families, more condos and townhouses. Yet, I have to drive to the Gables everytime I need something, namely Publix and Books and Books, why!? because Milam is a ghetto supermarket- dirty and sketchy. The last straw for me was a cashier who had TB or something and was coughing and spitting phlegm while chucking my food across the scanner. I was shocked speechless and walked straight out of the store sans groceries. I've never been back. Gardners has great prepared food but I can't use them for groceries. There are some nice restaurants in the Grove but nothing family oriented. Nothing I can eat at regularly with out breaking the bank. Why we don't have a bookstore is incomprehensible to me.
Mayfair as it stands is a colossal waste of space. To the North, there was a brief glimmer of hope we'd get a strip mall with bagels, books and restaurants, and then DENIED, say hi to Home Depot. Meanwhile, development dollars go to building even more condos at Mercy and elsewhere. Where will these people get food? Unfortunately, deep down I know this is just a cathartic rant. Nothing will change and I will continue to drive my dollars out of the Grove to get my needs met.
Cocowalk just raised rents and the place is starting to get even more empty. Mayfair is a complete disaster. The bottom line is that the Grove lacks the marketing draw to attract residents of other areas and nothing is pushing them to come here either. Youve gotta think about it though. THe Grove lacks one thing that Downtown, Gables, and South Beach have and thats businesses. Very few people come to the Grove to "go to work" unless they are a shopkeeper or in the restaurant biz. I think that really counts for something.
Seems like the Grove is slowly starting to turn around though. There are some nicer restaurants and wine bars popping up, and the makeover at Cocowalk really made the place look a helluva lot better. People need more of a reason to come here and hopefully these are steps in teh right direction. Parking is kind of a killer but I still think there are plenty of options on the outskirts of the Grove and people are just too lazy to walk.
About the restaurants... I think there are plenty of family options. Scottys, Cheesecake, Tu Tu Tango, Moe's, Sandbar, and Chili's is on the way. Id rather see less family focus and more of a specialty/trendy focus. I think that the newer places to open up have been successful because they provide a service along with an experience. Im really hoping we get something good in that building they are renovating that used to be Paolo Luigis (across from Coco Lofts or whatever that development is).
You also really cant complain about needing a grocery store. Fresh Market is in the Grove and so is Milams. Between the 2 of them, you should be able to buy your groceries. I actually dont mind Milams at all. If youre really anti-Milams, you can cart yourself across US1 and hit up Publix. Done deal. Think about it, youre already in the car so whats an extra 5 minutes to get to Publix? Last thing we need is another grocery store.
You know, it always seems like people who live in the Grove just love to bitch about the Grove. Why does anyone live here then? Id like to see a post on something like that. "Why I live in the Grove." So, Im posting it on my blog. Please take a second and add to it. That or Grapevine could post the same thing here seeing that I think a collective 3 people read my blog haha.
It makes me sad to see the Mayfair complex so empty. I have so many great memories of times spent shopping at French Bazaar, going to the movies, lounging around Borders, etc. News Cafe is one of my favorite local restaurants, and the one in the Grove was great. I miss those days. I frequent the shops and restaurants of the Grove several times a week. I love my neighborhood and support its businesses, but I feel like its vivaciousness has fizzled. I'd like to see more people enjoying it like I have all these years, and I am sure filling up the empty spaces with a variety of choices will help get people out there.
Why don't we see what Jorge Pérez can do with the place? He seems to have a knack for making money in real estate.
That property has great potential. A guy like Jorge Perez could actually make it work, if we all would just get out of the way and stop whining when something new and economically stimulating shows interest in making an investment in the business and retail center of the Grove.
Puleeze, anyone but that skank Perez.
When Mayfair opened the objective was to cater to rich south americans who would come to the US and spend a ton of money on trinkets. I'm from one of those South American countries...I know. My fellow Argentines used to come and spend fortunes on things that they could have purchased for much less in Dadeland or The Falls or even in New York City! The place had that exotic Moorish look and it was the place to see. Then Argentina for one, crashed and all that money was there no more. The locals knew it was overpriced and there were no more tourists to spend masses of money there. So, it shrunk and deteriorated and perhaps the place has some really bad Feng Shui???? Perhaps its a FRONT for serious money laundering of some type? Who knows...
I agree, we need more resident friendly stores. A good bookshop definitely, a nice (emphasis on the NICE) grocery store, you know...normal stuff. If I see one more restaurant or cheap clothing store I'll scream. Not that I need to buy everything in the Grove, but I would like it much more if it were more resident "user friendly"
"The local market is as huge as it is unserved."
Well, apparently not! Goddamn places are still empty!
Knock the Home Depot's etc all you want, but 1) they pay their rent, 2) they pay high rent considering the sheer square footage they occupy, 3) they're not a credit risk 4) they almost never close a store up/go out of business and 5) people know they will get good prices on building supplies; it's not hit or miss.
Prattle on all you want about how Grove-ites need more foo-foo stores selling crap, but there evidently are not enough foo-foo crap buyers living (or more particularly, WORKING) in the Grove to sell all the crap you believe we apparently need.
If places are empty, it's because rent is too high and real estate has been over-developed relative to demand. If you think it's bad now, well until the local condo market collapses in the next consumer-led recession.
Elena is right on. I lived in the Grove before Mayfair and Cocowalk and it was a far better place to live. We had shops you could actually use in your day to day life. Mayfair was an open air drive-by laundry that everone used and enjoyed. As some have noted, what you need in a village community are normal and ordinary services like a decent supermarket and bookstore. But people would rather moan and groan about a Home Depot that went up in a horrible location with a dingy K-Mart! Guess what? You're lucky to have it! If you garden and do simple home repairs like I do, its convenient and so what if its big and ugly? It sits on big and ugly US1 anyway! Mayfair has been reinvented a dozen times and it just does not work. Get rid of it and build some nice street level shops there that people can actually use.
I have lived in the Grove for years and have watched the decline of the tenant mixes throughout the Grove. Alot of tenants would love to establish their businesses in the Grove, unfortunately the cost of rent is astronomical($45 plus CAM or Triple Net Charges, $110 plus CAM or Triple net) who in their right mind would beable to survive having to pay that monthly.
It seems as though the landlords would rather have empty spaces and use them as tax write offs. Only empty spaces does nothing to increase the attraction to Coconut Grove or to entice the locals to frequent the SD 2 district. Now on the brink of a reccesion in Florida, what will happen, will the landlords wise up?
The Mayfair case is really interesting. I met Ken Treister when he had just finished with it and worked on the first campaign ever for Mayfair. Exceptionalelena is right, it was set up for rich Latin Americans.
When I lived in Latin America I even used to stay in the hotel and the open air jacuzzis in the rooms were a hoot, private and public at the same time, they were great for the swinging parties of those days.
What happened was that it never got --and still didn't get-- the stores that make most of us go there; I'd say that a mix of medium priced restaurants, maybe an electronics stores (to draw the men in) and fashion would do it. For my money, I think I would also choose to have some "service" stores like a hairdresser, an upscale dry cleaner and anything else that would make real people keep returning to the mall.
To do that, they would have to lower rents, make the place a bit lighter and definitely lower the parking cost.
Having said that... it is a beautiful building that looks as exotic and different today as it did in the 80's
I know this is a little late but I found it amazing that no one bothered to look up who owns The Streets at Mayfair so here it is:
Amerishop Mayfair Lp
% Dra Advisors Inc
1180 Ave Of The Americas 18 Fl
New York NY 10036
That's right! New York, NY.
I'm sure if any of you really cared that much, you could start writing these people suggesting things or asking questions or getting local journalists involved and curious and poking around.
That company is a division of DRA Advisors, Inc. who happens to have local offices on Brickell:
701 Brickell Avenue, Suite 1550
Miami, FL 33131
Phone Number:
(305) 728-5155
Fax Number:
(305) 728-5156
Or goto:
http://www.draadvisors.com/ContactDRA.aspx?EID=1
And send them an e-mail if you don't want to call. Start asking questions because I don't care HOW big of a tax write off that place is...they paid $65,491,000 in June of 1998 for that place. All this info can be viewed on:
http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/fl_miamidade/Reports2/showsection.html?propkey=27277434
The link may not work, but if you sign up for free on PropertyShark.com, you can see for yourself. I googled the rest and got on the DRA website.
DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
-Alex Fumero
Key Biscayne Resident that LOVES Coconut Grove
Post a Comment
<< Home