Talk of the Town: Garden at Risk, Merrick Controversy

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To Save a Tree, and a Garden

Bonnie Bolton, the daughter of late activist Roxcy Bolton, has spent much of the last three-and-a-half years urging the City of Coral Gables to preserve the Garden of Our Lord. Located at the St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church in North Gables, the Garden is also home to a 200-year-old oak tree that predates Florida itself. 

Bolton has led the movement against a planned nine-story development, which, if approved, would lead to the destruction of the garden and the church, and the removal of the tree. Previously, embattled developer Sergio Pino’s Century Homebuilders Group was leading the charge for a development at the location; now that Pino is deceased, Fifield Companies, a Chicago-based developer, is pushing for approval.

“I just think it’s worth fighting for,” Bolton explains. According to advocates, the garden is a religious landmark, one of the first three biblical gardens in America. It also serves as a World War II memorial. “I think where war heroes’ parents shed tears… that land is sacred,” Bolton says. 

As for the tree, displacing it would directly conflict with George E. Merrick’s original plan for the City Beautiful, which states that “new development also will take steps to save from destruction fullgrown trees when new buildings are erected in new sections, as all of the full-grown trees and old foliage will be kept intact.”

Bolton’s solution is to have Coral Gables trade a city-owned parking lot to the developers in exchange for the preservation of the garden and its tree. She wants the city to designate the garden and an adjacent playground as a city park. Nothing has come from this proposal yet, however. – Luke Chaney

Keeping History Straight

In this centennial year of Coral Gables, it’s good to give credit where it’s due. So, when the Community Newspapers’ Centennial Edition came out, and its story of the founding of the University of Miami (UM) left out the name of George E. Merrick, it raised eyebrows.

Turns out the source for that summary came from UM itself. If you go to the history section of UM’s website, it says the university “was chartered in 1925 by a group of citizens who felt an institution of higher learning was needed.” No mention of Merrick, the founder of Coral Gables who launched UM with a gift of 160 acres of land and $5 million (the equivalent of nearly $100 million today).

The reason for this gross omission goes back to 2020, when UM’s Board of Trustees voted to remove Merrick’s historic association with the university (including the removal of his name from a building), based on a student-led petition that claimed Merrick was a racist. When former journalist June Morris discovered this omission, she conducted in-depth research which debunked all of the cited sources for the complaint. Merrick not only built housing for the Black Bahamian workers who built Coral Gables, in the very speech which was misquoted by the students, he spoke compassionately about Black rights, saying “we cannot receive fairness unless we give fairness.”

Morris has since made numerous requests to the president, vice president, and members of the Board of Trustees to correct the website omission As of press time, the board agreed to discuss the situation in the fall. For the full text of Morris’ research, go to coralgablesmagazine.com/umhistory. – J.P. Faber

The Mounted Patrol

If you see a Coral Gables police officer atop a horse in Tropical Park, don’t be surprised. The city has come to an agreement with Miami-Dade County to patrol county-owned Tropical Park and Matheson Hammock Park three days a week for four hours, in exchange for the use of three stalls at the Ronald Reagan Equestrian Center inside the park. Coral Gables is still responsible for the food, care, and riding gear of the horses, as well as any messes they create. – J.P. Faber

Time to Tighten Belts

In last April’s election, Mayor Vince Lago campaigned in part on his record of fiscal management. As mayor, he has kept the city’s AAA bond rating intact, maintained its emergency disaster fund, and significantly paid down its future liabilities for pension obligations. 

Over the last two years, however, his fiscal apple cart has been overturned by Commissioners Ariel Fernandez and Melissa Castro, and former Commissioner Kirk Menendez. The first two were elected in an upset two years ago and then joined by sitting Commissioner Menendez in making a series of “fiscally irresponsible” decisions recently listed by Lago in a memo e-blasted to citizens and officials across the city.

In the memo, Lago cites the votes by Fernandez, Castro, and Menendez to: 1) hire Amos Rojas, Jr. as city manager for the then-highest annual salary in the city’s history ($368,620.79); 2) to hire an extra 14 employees (in addition to five new police officers, five new firefighters, and two new police civilians), at a cost of $11.5 million over the next decade; 3) to increase Commissioner salaries by 101 percent (reversed by the new Commission with Richard Lara replacing Menendez); and 4) to grant a four percent increase of payments to retirees, which will add $2.3 million to the budget next year and increase the city’s unfunded liability for retirees to $170 million. (Under Lago, it had previously been reduced from $243 million to $157 million.)

Lago ended his memo by recommending that the Commission adopt a conservative financial roadmap. “The future of our city depends on this,” he concluded. – J.P. Faber

Vindication

We also note the “amicable” settlement of Mayor Vince Lago’s lawsuit against Radio Station Actualidad 1040 AM. Lago filed a defamation suit two years ago when the program “Contacto Directo” reported that he was under investigation by the Miami- Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust for a conflict of interest in the city’s efforts to annex Little Gables. In fact, the Ethics Commission had simply opened an initial review following a confidential complaint, and dropped the matter after finding insufficient evidence to launch an investigation. According to Lago, the settlement resulted in a mid-six-figure payment in exchange for dropping the suit. – J.P. Faber

Our Next Celebrity

Anyone familiar with British pop music knows how big a star Robbie Williams is in the UK (download “Millennium”). So, it was big news this summer when Williams paid $40 million for a seven-bedroom water-front mansion in the Old Cutler Bay neighborhood of the Gables. The record purchase, reported everywhere from the New York Post to the Robb Report, amounted to $5,000-persquare-foot. The mansion reportedly has an 18-car garage and will soon have a floating padel court for the pop star, his wife, and their family of six. The home was sold by “Real Housewives of Miami” star Dr. Nicole Martin and her husband, attorney Anthony Lopez, who bought the estate for $21.5 million in 2022.

Theaters by Any Other Names

GableStage has announced a transformative gift by longtime Gables resident Jessie Fox Wolfson on behalf of the Wolfson family to “support this important cultural institution,” she said. The gift comes at a critical time for the theater company which has, like all arts organizations in Florida, been stripped of state funding by Gov. Ron DeSantis. In recognition of the Wolfson family’s generosity, the GableStage’s theatre at the Biltmore Hotel will be renamed The Wolfson Family Theatre, with new signage. “Given the uncertainty in the current arts funding landscape, the Wolfson family’s gift gives GableStage the strong footing needed to navigate the challenges we face today,” said Producing Artistic Director Bari Newport. “‘I want to make your life easier,’ she told us. And she meant it.”

Meanwhile, Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre has announced that it will honor its founders with the dedication of the Dr. Lawrence and Barbara Stein Center for the Performing Arts. The dedication recognizes the couple’s enormous contributions to the performing arts in Coral Gables. Together, they saved the Miracle Theatre from destruction with a $10 million capital campaign and public-private partnership with the city, transforming the Art Deco jewel in 1995 into a multi-stage center for live theater. The theater opened with a production of “Man of La Mancha,” which will be reprised this 30th anniversary season. A gala celebration at the theater is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 4 to commemorate the dedication.

Castro’s Cause

Commissioner Melissa Castro – along with fellow Commissioner Ariel Fernandez – has long been a proponent of keeping Coral Gables’ elections in April. They were outvoted 3-2 in May, however, when Commissioner Richard Lara, Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson, and Mayor Vince Lago voted to move the elections to November, a measure that could dramatically increase voter turnout from 20 percent to 80 percent. Castro and Fernandez were elected two years ago with one of the lowest voter turnouts in Gables’ history.

Despite the vote to move the election date, Castro has not given up the fight, declaring that it violates the Florida constitution. She cites a recent effort to move the date in the City of Miami, which was reversed by a court decision (now being appealed). The circumstances are slightly different – Coral Gables’ election date change means that commissioners must sacrifice several months of their term limits, while the date change in Miami would add an extra year to the terms of incumbent commissioners and Mayor Francis Suarez.

Pursuing her cause, Commissioner Castro personally reached out to Florida’s attorney general to receive an opinion on the date change. Having done so without the support of her colleagues, she was formally censured by the Commission in July. Nonetheless, her argument won out, and Coral Gables residents will be given a chance to vote on the date change next April, via mail-in ballots sent to the homes of all registred voters.

Supporters of the change say the move will save the city $200,000 in expenses and make the election more democratic. Detractors argue that local candidates will receive less attention on longer November ballots and that grassroots campaigners will have a harder time getting elected. – Kylie Wang

Goodbye Roy

One of the Gables’ most celebrated residents, criminal defense attorney Roy Black, has died at the age of 80. Black rose to national prominence in 1991 when he successfully defended William Kennedy Smith (nephew of former president John F. Kennedy) from rape charges in a Palm Beach case carried on national television.

Since then, he has won numerous other high-profile cases, and defended clients ranging from pop star Justin Bieber to radio host Rush Limbaugh and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

His defense of Miami police officer William Lozano, who was acquitted in the shooting death of a Black motorcyclist, sparked riots in Miami in 1989. Black is survived by his wife Lea, who formerly starred in “Real Housewives of Miami.” Black met her when she was a juror in the Kennedy Smith trial.

Local Hero

Most people know about attorney Mike Eidson because of his devotion to the arts and historic preservation. Those two passions came together three years ago when he secured a long-term lease to restore the historic Church of Christ Scientist across from City Hall, turning it into the Sanctuary of the Arts. Before that, he was a long-time supporter of the Miami Ballet, and restored the historic building where Books & Books now resides on Aragon Avenue, among other such accomplishments.

Few people are aware, however, of Eidson’s stellar career as a nationally recognized litigator who has won some of the most important product liability cases of our times. At age 29, Eidson won the first case against Ford Motor Company for the deadly exploding gas tanks in their Pinto cars. Later he won the famous Ford Bronco lawsuit against Bridgestone/Firestone and (again) Ford Motor Co. for suppling tires with treads that ripped off and caused fatal rollovers. That led to vast settlements for victims and the recall of some 40 million tires.

For those and many other lawsuits in which he fought for the right to trial by jury for individuals against huge corporations, Eidson was recently given the 2025 Leonard M. Ring Champion of Justice Award from the American Association for Justice (AAJ). This prestigious award recognizes attorneys with exceptional integrity and a lifelong devotion to civil and human rights.

Nineteen years ago, Eidson became president of this 35,000-member legal organization, the oldest and largest trial bar in the world (two of his partners, Bill Colson and Julie Kane, have also served as presidents). At the time, the organization was called the American Trial Lawyers Association, but the day Eidson was elected president, they changed the name to the AAJ. That makes him the only person to possess two of the black onyx rings given to its presidents. As for the man who spent decades litigating 140 jury trials, “I was surprised when they called. I said ‘You must have the wrong number,’” recalls Eidson. “There are a heck of a lot of people who also deserve this as much or more than I did.” Aw, shucks.