Dear Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones,We Grovites (the majority anyway) do not prefer a park to the Burn Notice studio at the Coconut Grove Expo Center. In fact, most Grovites prefer the studio and would like to see it remain as a movie and tv facility in Coconut Grove. We would love to be a little version of Culver City, in California.
You were fed a load of crap, and I'm sure you know that, and at some out of the way, illegal un-Sunshine Law sort of way, you were read the riot act and told to change your stance on how you felt about Burn Notice. At first you felt the Wynwood studio was not the proper place, at this point in time anyway, you also felt that jobs and business were being conducted in the Grove, so what was the sense in moving it all away?
Then, in the flip of a second, you changed. Why? And I have to laugh at your hypocrisy, because if anyone in your own district spoke of removing a major money making and job creating industry, you would be the first to cry foul very loudly. And for you to sit at the commission meeting and say, "Well, the Grove residents apparently would prefer a park," while staring at hundreds of people protesting against the park in that very audience. How dare you!
And while many of us put the "nut" in Coconut Grove, we are not nuts. We know what we like and don't like. We don't like trees removed for no reason at all other than to line someone's pockets. We don't like industry like Burn Notice removed to place another park in between two parks, we don't like being told what to do and when to do it. But until the powers that be in the Grove have the balls to stand up to bullying, this is going to be the fate of the Grove.
Even the Mayor, who I like very much, was seen on the tv news saying that the park is the number one issue and it must proceed. And that Coconut Grove residents mandated the park, so it must be done. THE PARK IS THE NUMBER ONE ISSUE? How about putting more cops on the streets and filling up the empty storefronts and things like that being made the number one issue? Not throwing out the only business in town that is thriving and paying the City $240,000 per year, too! Last time I looked the city was broke. Yet a park costing taxpayers $1.8 or more is the NUMBER ONE ISSUE?
The residents also mandated that the trees be left alone and that we have free parking on the streets, and more police presence, but that doesn't happen. All of a sudden the residents must have a park because they asked for one many years ago? They also asked for Burn Notice to stay. And more people asked for that than for another park in our park-filled village.
NBC 6 did a poll, 98% of the voters chose Burn Notice over the park. When do voters' voices ever get heard in Miami? Thousands of letters and emails have gone out to the City Commission, asking that Burn Notice be permitted to stay and film in the village. That falls on deaf ears. Why? When is one single politician in this city (county?) going to listen to the taxpayers and voters?
I think the real nuttiness is that we are killing the trees in one area of the Grove, then killing a crucial business in another area to replant trees. Think about it. It sounds more like busy work and a total waste of tax payer dollars than actual projects that make sense.
When even the rest of the City Commission is bullied into saying and voting the way they don't feel in their own hearts, how is anything going to change around here?
There is talk of huge towers going in the Coconut Grove Bank land, there is also the same talk about the Fuddruckers building in the Center Grove. The Grove is sinking fast and people stand by and watch. Peacocks were removed from the north Grove again, trees are scheduled to be cut down for no apparent reason. And this is all because people want to bitch and moan but they don't want to vote when they have that huge power to make a difference.
Will the last sane person grab the last coconut (and peacock, and tree) on their way out.
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