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Grove Playhouse drops appeal of historic designation

Posted on Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Grove Playhouse drops appeal of historic designation

By DANIEL CHANG
dchang@MiamiHerald.com

The Coconut Grove Playhouse, shuttered since April after it fell $4 million into debt, has dropped its appeal of a historic designation conferred on the theater by Miami's preservation board in October 2005.

By dropping the appeal, the theater's board of directors took a step toward resurrecting the defunct Playhouse and reconciling with Grove preservationists and activists, who launched a campaign to save the building after Playhouse leaders announced plans in April 2005 to sell the property to a developer for $8 million.

The developer had planned to raze the building and replace it with two smaller theaters, condominiums and shops on the prominent corner property, ceded to the Playhouse by the Florida legislature in August 2004.

But the developer backed out of the deal after Miami's preservation board conferred the historic designation, which restricts changes to the building. The Playhouse was designed by early Miami architect Richard Kiehnel and is considered one of Miami's finest examples of Mediterranean Revival architecture.

The Playhouse board met in December and voted to drop the appeal as one in a series of steps they hope will restore public confidence, said Vice Chair Emily Cardenas.

''We're trying to clean house a little bit and approach these issues one at a time,'' she said. "The recovery plan is still being written. ... What we need to do is complete our strategy for recovery. Once we do that we can move forward with a fundraising plan for whatever that strategy is going to be.''

Playhouse leaders have been able to take these steps largely because the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners awarded the theater $150,000 in July to hire a management consultant, AMS Research and Planning of Connecticut.

The Playhouse still owes $125,000, plus interest, to the Florida Department of State for a restricted grant that former artistic director Arnold Mittelman misused as collateral for a loan.

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