We still are a Village despite the changes

I use the term "the Village" often to describe Coconut Grove; basically because we are that and also it's just another way to say Coconut Grove in a story. I have a friend who says he cringes every time I do that because he says that the Grove is no longer a village. We may be on the cusp of being overrun with development, but hopefully we aren't. It's no secret that I am not a fan of these high-rise developers, but as someone told me recently, I should have protested the building of the SBS Building when that first started, now the genie is out of the bottle.

Someone else went further and said that perhaps people should have stopped The Mutiny back in the 1960s or '70s.

There's always been a struggle with this. About 10 years ago I was at a garage sale at a house on South Bayshore Drive and I was amazed that through all the foliage you could see Grove Isle in the distance, the homeowner started  putting down Grove Isle when I mentioned it; now this was 40 years after it was built, and he was still bitter about the development.

I never feel that developers do us any favors. I think it's all about money in their pockets, they aren't building housing for the poor, in most cases they are catering to millionaires and billionaires.

The new buildings going up are pretty, no doubt. But they are out of scale for The Village. Rumor has it that some of the properties are not selling fast enough and the developers are in Mexico drumming up buyers. This of course proves my point that the purpose of building these is to make money for the developers, not to help the Grove out in any way. Importing buyers from foreign countries is not a good thing for Coconut Grove.