Catching up on some news during the holidays…Here’s what I was working on while you gamboled:
Landmark watering hole Jimbo's faces uncertain future
The future of Jimbo's famously ramshackle beer and smoked-fish shack on Virginia Key was cast into doubt Tuesday after city of Miami officials ordered its power cut off, citing a trailer fire they blamed on a jury-rigged -- and illegal -- electrical system.
No one was seriously injured in the Sunday evening fire, which consumed a camper trailer belonging to owner James ``Jimbo'' Luznar's son, James ``Bubba'' Luznar Jr.
But the blaze came in the midst of a city code-enforcement crackdown on the long-unpoliced, publicly-owned site, underscoring inspectors' conclusions that much of it represents a health and safety hazard.
Bubba Luznar, his face seared from the heat of the fire and coughing continually because of smoke inhalation, said he doubted Jimbo's could stay open beyond Wednesday without electricity. It's unclear when -- or even whether -- it would reopen, he said.
Without power to run the fish freezers, beer fridges and ice-makers, he said, Jimbo's would go out of business.
Read more here, here and here.
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Miami Dade College embarks on a major new building for its Wolfson Campus downtown
Miami Dade College has announced plans for the first major addition to its downtown Miami campus in years, a $25 million multipurpose building that administrators hope will provide a fresh boost to the city's urban renaissance.
The six-story building, to be erected on a long-vacant lot on Northeast Second Avenue, will house classrooms to ease serious overcrowding at MDC's 14,000-student Wolfson Campus, as well as a wellness center and two public facilities: a food court and offices for the Wolfson Florida Moving Image Archives.
But MDC administrators have broad ambitions for the building, to be designed by the firm of prominent Miami architect Bernard Zyscovich (right).
Campus president Mercy Quiroga says the building presents an opportunity to fill in the gap in the block and markedly better the public realm along a critical stretch of Second Avenue, now a corridor of fast-moving traffic that divides the college and downtown.
Read more here.
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Redland's Anderson's Corner store at center of historic preservation battle
The Anderson's Corner general store, a modest, two-story wood-frame building on a corner in the rural Redland, doesn't look like much. The white paint is peeling, porches sag, shattered windows are boarded up, and the Dade County pine siding is badly splintered where a hit-and-run motorist took out a chunk of wall last month.
Yet the long-vacant country store, built around 1911 by a Redland pioneer, is one of Miami-Dade's oldest and most resonant buildings -- and also one of its most endangered.
And now it's a test case in a county effort to boost enforcement of an ordinance meant to save historically designated buildings from what is happening to Anderson's Corner, a phenomenon commonly described by preservationists as ``demolition by neglect.''
Read more here.
What's the latest on this? Great to see it written up.
Posted by: Whisperjet | 02/13/2010 at 08:23 PM
Anderson's Corner, I meant. At least I can say I ate there c. 1990!
Posted by: Whisperjet | 02/13/2010 at 08:32 PM
What is the result of the owners being written up? Alas, nothing!! I find the current condition of the store deplorable. Please sell the property, or take it over through eminent domain. As it stands, it is a fire hazard, and an absolute eye sore. The historical value of this commercial building should be significant enough that the government intervene IMMEDIATELY!!
Posted by: Michelle | 09/01/2011 at 08:56 PM