Delayed project has merchants begging for help Ladra doesn’t know who needs to hear this at City Hall, but East Flagler Street is not supposed to be a ghost town. Black Friday is going to be blacker than usual on Miami’s oldest commercial corridor, where mom-and-pop shops — the same ones the politicians love to […]
The Miami Downtown Development Authority just can’t help itself. The agency that’s supposed to make life better for people who live and work downtown keeps giving away public money to millionaire vanity projects — and this time, they’ve literally thrown ten grand into Biscayne Bay. That’s right. The DDA approved a $10,000 “sponsorship” for the […]
Residents want out of agency’s ‘hostage tax’ The Downtown Neighbors Alliance — which represents about 40,000 people living in Downtown and Brickell — is done playing nice with the Miami Downtown Development Authority and city officials that have mostly ignored them. Earlier this month, DNA fired off a formal request to Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia […]
While there is a new chairman at the Miami Downtown Development Authority in freshly minted City Commissioner Ralph Rosado, it looks like the 58-year-old agency, which is tasked with assisting and incentivizing business in the urban core — hasn’t exactly shaken off the stink of recent scrutiny, with legit questions still swirling around its bloated […]
Months before the Miami Downtown Development Authority approved a controversial $100,000 gift to the UFC, an organization worth around $12 billion, the agency — funded through a special taxing district of downtown, Brickell and Edgewater property owners — gave more than four times as much to one of the wealthiest sports franchises in the world. […]
The Downtown Neighbors Association will have a public safety town hall Wednesday with Miami Police Chief Manny Morales to discuss some “recent high profile incidents” in the urban core, talk about the homeless crisis and look at the 2025 downtown public safety action plan. DNA President James Torres has been very vocal recently about what […]
The Miami Downtown Development Authority, an entity that was formed in 1967 to promote the urban core and bring development, has a budget of $13.5 million through a special tax levy on properties within its district boundaries in downtown, Brickell and Edgewater. About a quarter of that is on salaries, some of which seem excessive and […]
It’s time to dissolve the Miami Downtown Development Authority Op-Ed by James Torres, President, Downtown Neighbors Alliance The Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA) was established 58 years ago in 1967, when Lyndon B. Johnson was president and Robert King High was Miami’s mayor. That’s right—this agency was created before Miami even had air conditioning in most buildings, let alone the […]
Representatives of homeowners in Downtown Miami, Brickell and Edgewater joined forces last week to respectfully ask the Miami Downtown Development Authority — an agency that focuses on promoting and strengthening the “economic health” of Downtown Miami — not to give $100,000 to the UFC for events at the Kaseya Center, formerly the American Airlines Arena. […]
Another one bites the dust: former Miami Beach Commissioner John Elizabeth Aleman, who had been selected as the executive director of the Miami Downtown Development Authority, resigned from her unconfirmed position Tuesday, because of the tenure (read: power shift) at City Hall. “I have concluded that the prospect of working within the current political climate is […]