Wasting your tax dollars
I'm just wondering when people are going to say enough is enough at the ignorance and stupidity of our City. One or two people decide what they want and they waste tax dollars doing what they want.
Now that the pefectly good Coconut Grove Expo Center is being demolished, the City of Miami is offering a developer $10 million to build and operate a tv and movie studio somewhere else in the City of Miami. Property taxes are being used to fund the project. Your property taxes.
While the Expo Center was perfect for tv and movie productions (Burn Notice, Marley and Me, etc.), it is being demolished in the name of a park, to sit in the center of the other umpteen parks we have in Coconut Grove.
I thought the City was broke. We cannot afford police officers, but we can afford to demolish a perfectly good and working studio to pay someone to build another studio?
Madness.
Now that the pefectly good Coconut Grove Expo Center is being demolished, the City of Miami is offering a developer $10 million to build and operate a tv and movie studio somewhere else in the City of Miami. Property taxes are being used to fund the project. Your property taxes.
While the Expo Center was perfect for tv and movie productions (Burn Notice, Marley and Me, etc.), it is being demolished in the name of a park, to sit in the center of the other umpteen parks we have in Coconut Grove.
I thought the City was broke. We cannot afford police officers, but we can afford to demolish a perfectly good and working studio to pay someone to build another studio?
Madness.
posted by Tom Falco at 11:30 AM
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6 Comments:
cg expo center was garbage.to many maintanaince problems and not big enough for major movies.i only know cause i work in the movie bizz
It makes little sense to be offering $10 million to help establish a new TV Studio in Miami, when the Dinner Key Expo Center has been a successful and profitable one for over seven years. It is shameful to be demolishing the 107,000 sq. ft. South Hall and 45,000 sq. ft. North Hall that have provided and excellent facility for the success of Burn Notice, Marley and Me, as well as countless other TV and Film productions. City of Miami has benefited with $250K – $500K annual leases, MDC has received thousands of dollars in permit fees, hundreds of filmmakers have been employed, thousands of companies have increased revenues, hundreds of home houses have rented out their homes as locations, and GMCVB has benefited with tens of thousands of positive PR impressions throughout the world. Dinner Key Expo Center has been a valued facility and should remain so. To lose it as a productive and profitable TV and Film Studio, will be a travesty.
Would the new location be in Wynwood by any chance? When I spoke to Ron Nelson about the Burn Notice extension debate, he assured me it was not about giving Wynwood the business of a movie studio instead of leaving the Coconut Grove Convention Center -- my thought is at the time that it was all about "money". He assured me it was not so. Just want to know what is the TRUTH.
Anon 8:36 PM
Of Course it's near Wynwood . They are also lobbying the State to offer incentives for production.
The property is the old Miami-Dade School warehouse on 14th Street and NW 1st Ct. The OMNI CRA purchased it for $3.1, and then sold the south parking lot for $1 million to FDOT.
As for the claims of the 1st poster,regarding size and parking, this property is a lot smaller - less than 100,000 sq feet, and a lot less parking. The FEC tracks are about 75 feet from the West wall, and the FDOT purchased the parking lot because they plan to widen I-395.
All of us in the "film industry" who toured the place, and do what we do for a living, realize that this location, like Ice Palace Studios across the street - another "movie studio" - is not well suited for a movie studio.
Now, it could be something smaller, like a small stage, with production offices, and maybe providing space for a post house, but what seems to have been ignored by everyone - even some folks within the film industry - is that all of these hundreds of millions spent on tax incentives didn't provide any lasting benefits to the industry.
After 10 years of incentives, the digital lab quit processing film in Miami, much of the equipment used by all of these TV series was not really provided by Florida companies, but by out-of-state companies who obtained a corporate shell, opened a small office, and now that the circus has left town, they are too.
There are some nasty stories about how the real local companies were treated by Burn Notice, that would make some of my best nasty stories about Regaladoland pale by comparison.
But, as to this $10 million. I believe that this is Commissioner "Ethics" and his two elves, Pieter Bockweg and Burt Gonzalez doing what they do best - screwing folks.
There will be more to this story, but for now, don't bet on Miami becoming the next "Hollywood" as a result of this bullshit.
Another one of Sarnoff's questionable pet projects.
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