College, without a lease, seeks alternative to Tower Theater

Miami Dade College is searching for alternatives after 20 years of operating the Tower Theater art cinema, where Miami city officials decided to terminate the college’s lease.

For the past 20 months the college has been trying to negotiate, in good faith, to renew the operating agreement with the city before it expires on Jan. 2, 2023, said Nicolas Calzada, MDC Tower Theater Miami’s interim executive director.

Miami Dade College was seeking to renew its lease for an additional five years.

“We’ve informed everyone in the community about what’s happening and there has been a large public outcry,” he said. “People are really dismayed that they might lose the arthouse cinema theater that they’ve come to love.”

During a Sept. 22 meeting, Commissioner Joe Carollo sponsored a resolution to replace MDC with the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, Brigade 2506, but the veterans group has since articulated that it is not interested in the Tower Theater.

“The Bay of Pigs Veterans Association and the Bay of Pigs Museum are not interested in occupying nor running the Tower theater and we have communicated this to all concerned parties,” Bay of Pigs Veterans’ President Rafael Montalvo commented on Miami Today’s website last week.
In a Sept. 19 memo, the city’s Department of Real Estate and Asset Management notified the college that it will terminate its contract.

“We understand that the college is interested in reserving the use of the Tower Theater for certain programming that is scheduled to occur after the termination date, and the city is willing to discuss and consider the potential for such coordination,” said Jacqueline Lorenzo, the department’s interim director, in the memo.

The MDC Tower Theater is still set to host the GEMS Film Festival from Nov. 3 -10. The Miami Film Festival will go on in March at Silverspot Cinema in downtown Miami, while the college searches for alternative locations.

“In a worst-case scenario where the city doesn’t rescind its termination of our operating agreement, we are exploring contingency plans,” Mr. Calzada said. “We’re continuing to advocate on behalf of MDC’s administration with the Tower Theater because we know that if this holds, it will be the end of cinema in Little Havana.”

The Tower Theater at 1508 SW Eighth St. was built in 1926 as the “first state-of-the-art theater in the South.” The college has operated the city-owned theater’s 250- and 104-seat auditoriums under a management agreement for two decades.

The theater has been restored several times starting in 1931, most recently after Commissioner Frank Carollo, Joe Carollo’s brother, won funding for repairs there and at adjacent Domino Park in 2014. The building’s namesake 40-foot-tall steel tower is an area landmark.

“The City of Miami doesn’t know anything about operating a cinema theater. They don’t have the connections that we have with US distributors and international distributors. There’s just no way that the city can make a case that the programming will continue as normal,” Mr. Calzada said. “We’ve done an exceptional job for 20 years operating this theater and we’d love to continue to do it. We are hoping that the community continues to rally and this decision gets rescinded.”