Goodbye to the City’s Birthplace
Two Years of Handwringing Ends With a Wrecking Ball
May 2019
It had remained standing at the intersection of Aragon and Le Jeune since 1923, older than City Hall. For years the home of LaSalle Cleaners, it was the original headquarters for city founder George Merrick’s construction company. But it could not resist a demolition order signed by the city, and last month was leveled.
The effort to save the building ultimately came down to cost – and how much was left. To the naked eye the building’s exterior appeared fairly intact. But after an exhaustive review, the city’s Historic Preservation Board decided that too much had been lost – buckling walls, collapsing floors, architectural details erased – and declined to grant historic designation.
That was in early 2017, and since then a variety of efforts have been made to save the building, including protests last year by the Historic Preservation Association of Coral Gables and an offer from the same developer who saved the Books & Books building. But owner Mirella LaSalle wanted well more than $5 million for the property, and estimates of what it would take to bring it back added at least another $2.5 million.
LaSalle herself, now 81, was reportedly unhappy with criticisms of her in the press. As a longtime Gables resident and philanthropist, she has given generously to UM and Jackson Memorial. “I don’t think the public understands who Mirella LaSalle is,” says Myles Stepner, whose firm Avison Young represents LaSalle in the sale of the property. “She has done a tremendous amount for the community, more than most.”
Preserving this particular piece of its history came at too high a price, however.
Complete travesty. This comment is primarily about the utter failure at historic preservation of an important structure, but also about an inept city government that has lost control of its city. No one who is really from here or who has a deep affinity for where our community came from elects these people, and as a result, the city’s heritage has as sure as this building, disappeared. The Gables has officially gone to hell in a handbasket.
Incompetent, amateurish, moronic Coral Gables municipal government, including a developer-whore of a mayor, and a commission and city attorney with a collective IQ of 10, manage to lose to the wrecking ball, the building where Coral Gables was planned and built. A circa 1923 building that housed George Merricks offices, existing before City Hall and all but about 8 other buildings in CG. All this, because the bumbling commission first voted to create a 30 space parking lot and raze the structure, then reversed, then couldn’t manage something as simple (with THIS building) as an historic preservation designation process with a volunteer board, and then failed to negotiate in an adult fashion with the site’s property owner, who has now demolished the historic property even though there is no contract for sale pending on it. And this, because the city couldnt make a deal with her (uh, minicipal offices maybe??) berore the demolition permit pulled and granted on the property was set to expire.
Readers, Coral Gables is well past the beginning of the end, with the cast of characters leading the residents of CG.
Thank you for this news article.