Nail down the details before handing over city’s historic site

Miami’s latest “solution” to the riddle of its historic but inactive Olympia Theater downtown is, unfortunately, no firmer than myriad other answers in the half-century since owner Maurice Gusman put the grand structure in city hands to safeguard.

The only thing certain about the offer by a charter school network to own and run the century-old Flagler Street theater and the tower above it is that pivotal facts are unknown to everyone, including City Manager Art Noriega, who must oversee any handover.

If the city is to avoid another of many fumbles of valued community assets, it needs to be absolutely certain that the charter schools have the aim and financial strength to treat the theater properly, be positive what the schools plan to do – details, not generalities – and what the community benefits are to be, and tell the public exactly how much the schools will pay for the theater and 11 stories of offices upstairs or whether this is to be a costly gift from the city.

As Mr. Noriega has pointed out, the charter school group has said Miami Dade College will be active in the theater’s future, so the city must hear from the college itself exactly how it plans to play a role – again, generalities have no place in disposition of a valued city asset.

Pivotal in any agreement with anyone for the Olympia’s use and ownership is resolving a six-year-running lawsuit by Gusman family members to regain the landmark. 

Plans now are for the city commission to vote on a deal July 24 – but what is the likelihood of resolving a six-year legal battle in two weeks? Without a solution, any deal is tenuous. 

So when city officials say a quick deal will allow the schools to program the Olympia for the fall school year, you have to ask what they’re smoking.

The Olympia-Gusman is a decaying asset with endless possibilities, none realized. Almost endless rescue efforts have failed.

A few: in 1992 the city looked at converting it into a flea market and later that year into a housing complex. The next year the city tried to get the county to take it over. In 1998 the theater threatened to close without a city subsidy. For years a Friends of Gusman nonprofit raised money to keep it going. Actor Sylvester Stallone, then a Coconut Grove resident, vowed to save the theater, but didn’t. It was handed to another nonprofit for eight years until that group folded. Then Miami Dade College looked at running the Olympia but decided it couldn’t afford to accept it as a gift.

If the charter schools’ offer provides a rescue for the Olympia on the proper terms I’d be pleased, because I’ve long been a Gusman advocate.

Among fond memories is seeing a Miami Film Festival offering from the balcony’s back row and finding perfect acoustics and sight lines; sitting on stage looking out into the ornate auditorium at a Miami Today panel discussion on community issues (Mr. Noriega was there with us); and finding the auditorium full as I introduced Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown in a Miami International Book Fair appearance. 

But I also have fond memories of a Miami Marine Stadium event (the city closed it 35 years ago and it decays), watching plumes of the Pepper Fountain in Bayfront Park (the city ripped out the mechanism and let the fountain go dry to save money for decades until it just reopened), and regularly viewing Miami Dade College film presentations in the city’s Tower Theater (the city took the popular theater away from the college and its art films disappeared). 

The city has long been a rotten steward of its assets, but as Commissioner Joe Carollo correctly asks, why are they looking to give away an asset that has been and can still be a downtown magnet? 

The sole value to Miami in this deal so far as the public now knows is that it will end the city’s cost of upkeep of a vital historic site. The city could save upkeep money just as well by giving away city hall, also a useful historic site – and that transaction would be just as dumb.

A nonprofit schools group might in fact be a fine operator of the Olympia on proper terms, but the public, at least, has not seen those terms and even the city manager and Mr. Carollo have raised unanswered questions. Facts should be at hand for the public to weigh in on – and available far ahead of any city action.

Even if everyone agrees to a turnover arrangement, moreover, the threat of legal action needs to be extinguished first. A turnover without certainty that the city has the right to act on the Olympia’s future is unthinkable. 

A rushed deal is a recipe for failure.