AMERICA, THE OWNER'S MANUAL, MAKING GOVERNMENT WORK FOR YOU -- part 2

AMERICA, THE OWNER'S MANUAL, MAKING GOVERNMENT WORK FOR YOU
BY SENATOR BOB GRAHAM WITH CHRIS HAND

Review By Steve Wright

Preservationists, architects, planners, travelers, photographers and other lovers of Miami Beach's fabled Art Deco district will enjoy Chapter 3 of AMERICA, the Owner's Manual, Making Government work for YOU.

Author Bob Graham reminds us that before Crockett and Tubbs, glitzy condos and gastro pubs, fashion and clubs -- Ocean Drive and the rest of South Beach nearly bit the dust.

The book recounts the 1976 plan to demolish the aging deco district and the iron-willed widow, Barbara Baer Capitman, whose Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) battle to preserve South Beach and place the 1930s and 1940s Deco structures on the National Register of Historic Places.

While the still-active MDPL and the late Capitman deserve hero status in Miami Beach, Graham carefully points out their wise and unwise strategies. The book is, after all, a manual for effective government interaction.
Using one of his favorite catch-phrases, Graham said "the MDPL did its best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

"Given the opportunity to shape Miami Beach's comprehensive plan, the MDPL submitted a historic report that professional planners found confusing and unorganized and never took seriously," the book recounts. "When the city updated its state-required comprehensive plan in June 1978, the proposal did not include historic preservation."

"Then, rather than attempting to work out their differences with the city, the MDPL sought to reverse the omission through sympathetic local newspapers. Miami Beach leaders saw this media strategy as an end run designed to embarrass them, and the reacted angrily. This was a grave development."

"The MDPL would need the city's cooperation and support to implement historic preservation in South Beach. Less than six months before, that cooperation had seemed assured. Now it was in serious peril. "

Graham credits Capitman, who had focused too much on the support of federal and state officials while neglecting to continually grease the local wheels, for stepping into the breach and shepherding the issue toward ultimate approval in 1979.

In less than three years after the Miami Beach Redevelopment Agency announced plans to demolish the Art Deco district, the National Register of Historic places in Washington, D.C. officially designated a one-square-mile area of Miami Beach as a National Historic District.

For the Miami Beach hands-on lesson and dozens of other real-life examples of everyday people using government to better their communities, AMERICA, the Owner's Manual, Making Government work for YOU, is a must read.

http://www.cqpress.com/product/Graham.html