Bruno Barreiro to speak at Beach Tuesday Breakfast Club

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This week’s speaker at Miami Beach’s first Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club of the new year is Miami-Dade County Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, whose district includes the seaside city.

Barreiro has been the commissioner for District 5 since 1998, when he won a special election after then Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruce Kaplan was arrested for mortgage fraud and resigned from his seat as part of his plea deal. So he’s been to a few of these Breakfast Club meetings and is ready to be peppered with questions.

He expects the ferry to Cuba and the last vacant piece of land at the port to be an issue. “It’s what everybody is talking about,” said Barreiro, who, for the record, is “not in favor of giving it to one ferry company.”

Barreiro, who also served as a State Rep. in the 1990s, had actually proposed another use for a development there of a hotel and offices and retail linked to a marina. He said it adhered to both the Master Plan approved in 2010 and the condition from the city of Miami — which deeded the property to the county — that it be used for maritime purposes. But it was shot down in committee by a commission that wanted to go out to bid for the property.

So why isn’t there a request for bids out? Ah, that is a question for Mayor Carlos Gimenez, whose administration has apparently been having backroom discussions with several ferry companies about a sea shuttle to Cuba

But Barreiro said he expects a bid will go out soon.

He will also likely talk about achievements in 2015 and the long proposed BayLink light rail that would connect the Beach to the mainland. But if the audience asks about the convention center hotel measure on the ballot in March, Barreiro will tell them he has taken no public position  on it.

“I do believe that for convention centers to be successful they should have hotels attached. But, unfortunately, they did not go to the bigger scale convention center. They are rehabbing the current one. I would have liked to see a larger convention center,” he said.

Tuesday’s Breakfast Club meets at 8:30 a.m. at Manolo’s Restaurant, 685 Washington Ave., South Beach.

  Bruno Barreiro, Miami Beach politics