Editors Note: The Barbara Baer Capitman archives “Historic Threads” project is partly sponsored by the Department of State, Division of Historical Resources and the State of Florida.
Miami Design Preservation League and local advocates, including Andrew Capitman and his mother, Barbara Baer Capitman, were set to challenge local banks and the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce in 1979. They argued that practices like redlining had contributed to the area’s economic decline.
The Capitmans led the effort to demonstrate that investment in preservation and renovation could revitalize the district, using their renovation of the Cardozo Hotel as proof. Meanwhile, the Chamber of Commerce pushed to limit the district’s size, believing its expansion would hinder development and affordable housing initiatives. MDPL, however, viewed the district’s preservation as vital to both tourism and community stability, asserting that renovation could go hand in hand with economic growth, including providing housing for low- and moderate-income residents such as the elderly.
Excerpts and quotes from the article are highlighted below in blue.
The Capitmans, son and mother, view the Cardozo purchase as a symbol—a pilot project that will change the lending environment on Miami Beach. “One of the major reasons why this area of the Beach has declined is redlining,” said Andrew Capitman, warming up to a discussion of why he purchased the ailing hotel at 1300 Ocean Drive. Redlining is a refusal by lending institutions to offer mortgage loans on property in neighborhoods they believe are deteriorating. “Miami Beach bankers have tended to take money outside of the Beach and invest it,” says Capitman. “This is such a subtle type of redlining. It’s just a lack of vision that kind of builds on itself.” The Capitmans are out to show the banks that the institutions have been wrong in choosing not to invest in Miami Beach.
If the Capitmans and other MDPL members want to bring the district together into a unified entity, the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, representing local businesses, wants to destroy it. While Chamber spokesmen publicly acknowledge only an intention to limit the size of the Deco district, the implication is that a reduction in area would mean the demise of the district as a residential, business and tourist location, the very reasons for the designation of the locale as a historic district.
Housing for individuals on low and moderate incomes is a complex problem that must be dealt with on Miami Beach, with or without a Deco district. And it has to be dealt with with the redevelopment of South Beach also, she added. The issue of size, says Barbara Capitman, is “silly.” The size of the district has already been decided. Its boundaries were mandated last month in Gainesville at a meeting of the Florida Review Committee of the National Register. “We never said that we were out to save every building,” she said, echoing Camber. Part of the issue is to provide housing for 4000 people, 72 percent of whom are elderly. Camber and Capitman maintain there are price supports and rental subsidies available should renovation push up rental rates. “There are ways of making up the difference,” Camber says.
