Coconut Grove Spotlight

24/10/2025

Coconut Grove’s once-gritty working waterfront is generating millions in rent for the City of Miami as an upscale entertainment zone. But a close look at the lease shows the city may be shortchanging itself — with favorable terms for the developer, missing improvements, and lost revenue that could add up for decades.

Read more about the Spotlight’s investigation at the link in bio.

Story by Dave Villano and Jenny Jacoby

22/10/2025

On any given Sunday morning, a line of diners stretches down Commodore Plaza and Main Highway. They’re hoping to score an outdoor table for brunch at Greenstreet Café, a Coconut Grove institution. 

For owner Sylvano Bignon, sidewalk seating has been synonymous with his brand since opening in 1990. “We have such a beautiful corner location that gives us great exposure,” Bignon tells the Coconut Grove Spotlight. “It is working extremely well.”

In fact, sidewalk cafes have become part of Coconut Grove’s identity as much as its tree-lined streets and brick-paved walkways. 

For more than 30 years, restaurateurs have staked out patches of public right-of-way, turning sidewalks from mere pedestrian throughways into outdoor dining areas. 

But how much of a good thing is too much? For some Grove residents, the outdoor tables, decorative planters, menu boards, and electric fans that accompany sidewalk cafes have become a nuisance.

Read more at the link in bio.

Story by Francisco Alvarado and Jenny Jacoby

17/10/2025

Over 10 days last April, fans of the French luxury brand Hermès, maker of the $14,000 Birkin handbag and other high-end consumer goods, descended upon the Coconut Grove waterfront for a “cinematic and poetic performance,” as promotional materials described it, a dazzling multimedia production highlighting the quality and craftsmanship of Hermès products.

Wings of Hermès is but one in a long list of high-profile events staged at The Hangar at Regatta Harbour, part of a larger entertainment complex on seven acres of city-owned property on historic Dinner Key. Over the past two years the venue – built in 1934 to house seaplanes — has hosted concerts, art fairs, wine tastings, fundraisers, sumo wrestling, boxing matches and much more. 

And the list is growing. In June, at the urging of Miami District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo, the city commission unanimously agreed to exempt, for all of 2025, The Hangar from rules that limit city-owned facilities to ten special events per year.    

But the growing lineup of events underscores a larger question: How did a city-owned facility pitched to voters more than a decade ago as a marine retail store — selling bait, fishing gear and boating accessories, in support of a broader working waterfront — become a high-capacity special-event venue for, among others, luxury brands and their wealthy clientele?

Read more at the link in bio.

Story by David Villano and Jenny Jacoby

16/10/2025

In 2007, after a run of hurricanes, the City of Miami joined other local municipalities by signing on to an ambitious goal: roughly doubling total citywide tree canopy to 30 percent by 2020. 

The announcement, made with much fanfare by then-Mayor Manny Diaz, came with a comprehensive blueprint of strategies and initiatives — the Miami Tree Master Plan – to get there.

Five years after the deadline, the city is nowhere near its goal, and may even be back where it started.

That’s the conclusion of Florida International University (FIU) environmental scientist Chris Baraloto, who has developed computer modeling to track both the short- and long-term impacts of tree removal. 

Baraloto, associate director of FIU’s International Center for Tropical Botany, announced his findings last Friday from his offices adjacent to the Kampong National Tropical Botanical Garden in South Grove. 

“Many of us are feeling development and the loss of canopy,” Baraloto said. “I know there’s probably not a lot of political will to characterize that loss right now, but we need to understand what we’re dealing with if we want to get to the how.” 

Read more at the link in bio.

Story by Jenny Jacoby
Photo courtesy of Chris Baraloto

15/10/2025

Federal officials have rejected an unfair housing complaint filed against the City of Miami by three community groups who contend that the city’s planning and zoning policies resulted in the large-scale displacement of Black residents in the West Grove.

In rejecting the claim, federal officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sided with the City of Miami, which denied the allegation and challenged the “standing” of the parties who brought the complaint.

“HUD determined that the claimants were without specific injury or harm, and therefore lacked standing,” lawyers for the three community groups and one individual claimant said in a statement shared with the Spotlight on Saturday. HUD’s decision was issued on September 16.

The complaint contends that hundreds of Black residents living on or near Grand Avenue in the West Grove were pushed out of the neighborhood because of unfair and discriminatory land-use and zoning policies put in place by the City of Miami.

Read more at the link in bio.

Story by Don Finefrock

14/10/2025

During a fiery debate two weeks ago between the six candidates favored to be Miami’s next mayor, the only person on the dais to have served three – almost four – terms as mayor somehow managed to avoid the fusillade. 

As barbs flew over everything from campaign donations and public corruption to a failed attempt to move the city’s Nov. 4 election, Xavier Suarez stayed out of the fray. When the fighting escalated and turned to name-calling, Suarez sat mostly idle. 

There were so many rebuttals – and so much crosstalk – among the candidates that it was nearly impossible to know whose turn it was to talk, or even the topic at hand.

So, an hour into the debate, when asked whether the city should pay legal bills for commissioners accused of misconduct, no one was sure if Suarez was confused or sarcastic when he asked, “Are we rebutting?” before responding to the question.

Suarez’s response was almost beside the point. But his ability to avoid the shrapnel during the rowdy debate was a telling moment for the life-long politician whose eight years as Miami’s mayor from 1985 to 1993 had been anything but quiet.

Read more at the link in bio.

Story by Charles Rabin

09/10/2025

Charles Thomas Williams has been cutting hair in the West Grove for 55 years.
 
A self-proclaimed “legend in the Grove,” Williams is the sole proprietor of the Charles Barber Shop, one of the last – perhaps the last – old-school Black-owned barbershops in Coconut Grove. 

Since 2022, Williams has served his customers from inside a small blue building that stands apart on a quiet stretch of Grand Avenue, just west of Douglas Road. 

Over the years, inside this shop and at another location next door, Williams has trimmed thousands of heads, offered up advice on life, watched over the neighborhood’s kids, and been a friend to those just looking for someone to talk to.

Recently, though, Williams has been living in limbo, unsure whether the cut he bestows today or tomorrow will be his last. 

After 24 years in business, Williams is close to retirement, but his future and the fate of his barbershop are being driven by other factors – factors outside his control.

Read more at the link in bio.

Story & Photos by Jenny Jacoby

08/10/2025

Eighteen years ago, Josh D’Alemberte bought a golf cart. Not to golf, but to commute to work, run errands, visit his parents and take his kids to school. 

He did not have far to travel. All were within what D’Alemberte describes as his personal “triangle” inside Coconut Grove. 

“It’s a bad day when I have to cross U.S. 1,” said D’Alemberte, a North Grove resident and former history teacher at nearby Ransom Everglades School. “I just knew it would fit my lifestyle. When I bought it, I had three young kids. They loved to hop into it.”

But while D’Alemberte was once the cart-riding oddity in the Grove, that’s not the case anymore. During the tour, at least 10 other golf carts could be seen parked in driveways – in his North Grove neighborhood alone.

Read more online.

Story & phot by Erik Bojnansky

07/10/2025

01/10/2025

In 1925, the City of Miami annexed – some say stole – the small, quirky enclave of Coconut Grove. The takeover of the quaint, leafy waterfront village and its kooky cast of characters created a 100-year backlash from residents filled with failed attempts at independence.

And though none of the efforts toward self-rule stuck, a century later the Grove’s 22,000 residents continue to maintain their fierce independent streak, some still with fantasies of the village breaking away and becoming its own little ward with its own rules and policies and bylaws. 

“It’s a far-fetched dream. But the Grove is a magical place to live. It still is,” said not-quite-yet retired Coconut Grove developer Andy Parrish. “And though it’s a wonderful place to live, it’s also embarrassing because the [City of Miami] government is so pathetic. You don’t know who to call when there’s a pothole.”

Read more at the link in bio.

Story by Charles Rabin
Photos by Michael Carlebach

30/09/2025

Once they were as visible on the streets of Coconut Grove as traffic, tourists and peacocks are now. In flowing saffron robes, devotees danced to the rhythmic sound of drums and chiming hand cymbals, chanted “Hare Krishna” and handed out religious literature while inviting the curious to discover yoga and meditation.

Worshippers pulled a colorful “chariot of gods” down Main Highway each year in the King Mango Strut, and on Saturday nights showed up regularly at CocoWalk and Peacock Park, where they provided free vegetarian food and sold copies of the Bhagavad Gita, a holy book of Hindu scripture.

But then the dancing stopped, and the Hare Krishnas seemed to fade into the Grove’s vibrant, tie-dyed past. Some members moved away, priced out as the Grove gentrified. Others who lived outside of Miami found places of worship closer to home, went online to find classes and ceremonies, or relocated to a burgeoning community in Alachua, northwest of Gainesville.

“They were all over the Grove,” said Alan Cohen, of A.C.’s Icees, the food truck he’s been operating in Kennedy Park for more than 45 years. “I didn’t realize they were still around.”

Read more at the link in bio.

Story by Mike Clary
Photos by Patrick Farrell