Proposed Belle Isle apartment complex

A three-judge Miami-Dade Circuit Court panel has upheld the city of Miami Beach’s decision to limit the height  a proposed Belle Isle apartment complex, rejecting a lawsuit filed by the owner of the Belle Isle Key Apartments.

In a decision released last week, the panel said Miami Beach had the right to tell the developer, EuroAmerican Group, Inc., that it could not exceed four stories one of the two buildings it proposed at 31 Venetian Way.

EuroAmerican wanted to replace the current complex — 120 units in four, three-story buildings — with a complex that would include 181 apartments in two five-story buildings,  including a 315-space parking garage topped by two tennis courts. Eliminating one floor from the smaller of the two buildings would have trimmed eight units from the project.

The city commission in November 2010 upheld an earlier recomendation from the Miami Beach Design Review board, based on advice from city staff.

The developer’s lawyer, Neisen Kasden, first challenged that decision to the city commission. The city attorney’s office and the city planning staff recommended the commission reject EuroAmerican’s appeal.

They commission did, and the developer sued, saying the design board didn’t have the authority to condition approval of a design based on reducing its height.

In their decision, the judges — Marcia Caballero, Orlando Prescott and Rosa Figarola — said the Design Review Board staff recommendations were consistent with how the design board and the city commission voted.

“Since both the Design Review Board and the City Commission relied upon those recommendations to make their decisions, those decisions are supported by competent substantial evidence,” the judges concluded.

Volunteers from FIU hydrate the runners as thousads cross the bridge to Belle Isle.

Fast or plodding, amid splashes of clear water and green Gatorade, the 25,000 runners in Sunday’s 10th ING Miami Marathon brought cheers and energy as they crossed Belle Isle and the Venetian Causeway.

Volunteers prepare for a city of runners in the ING Miami marathon

The race ended up with the closest finish in marathon history. But the story on Belle Isle was the achievement of all the mid-pack runners, the folks who trained to prove something to themselves, to make a statement for a loved one, to raise money for a cause.

Eager volunteers from Florida International University staffed the Belle Isle water station before 5 a.m. to fill cups with Gatorade and water while preparing energy snacks for the runners.

One of the first wheelchair runners reaches Belle Isle.

The first wheelchair competitors crossed the island at about 6:25 a.m. (after a 6 a.m. start); the first runner reached Belle Isle at just before 7 a.m., about 41 minutes after the elite runners got going.

The first of the elite runners reaches Belle Isle in under 41 minutes.

Just as the sun began to rise, a bank of clouds blocked the sun, great news for the runners. It was a little warmer than most of them wanted, but overcast skies kept temperatures down for a good portion of the run.

The elite runners just fly by. It's a blur!

As usual, the race brought out some inventive running apparel.

Elvis was running about a 7:10 pace.

Dennis "Coatman" Marsella always makes the marathon.

And this tutu is a little too-too.

Lady Liberty?

The crowd cheering them along included friends, family, passersby and Belle Isle residents who just got out early to be a part of the event. Although the race causes disruption for a few hours on Sunday morning, it showcases all the Venetian Islands as the runners head from Miami Beach back to the city of Miami.

We also saw a good number of pets out to cheer the runners.

Mile 8 seems a little early to be out of breath.

Watching the race -- and not watching the race.

As usual, the horde of runners left bushels of crushed cups in its wake. But with almost military precision, race organizers cleared the route within hours of the last runner’s footfall.

Here’s a gallery of other great moments. We have more than 100 photos of groups of runners. Maybe you are in there!

The 10th anniversary poster

Road workers have smoothed out a path on the pock-marked Venetian Causeway. The Port-a-potties are being placed at strategic spots near  water stations on Belle Isle and San Marino Island.

The runners are streaming to the Miami Beach Convention Center to pick up their race numbers and get some last-minute inspiration at the fitness expo.

It’s Miami Marathon weekend.

For Venetian Island residents, we know that means a mix of spectacle and inconvenience.

So here’s what we should keep in mind to avoid the hassles and have some fun:

– Expect slightly heavier than usual Venetian Causeway traffic early Saturday. Marathon weekend includes the Tropical 5K, a five-kilometer run that starts on Watson Island on MacArthur Causeway and ends in South Pointe Park and Nikki Beach. Finishers party then get bussed back to their cars. Disruptions on the MacArthur between 6:30 and 9:30 a.m. (race start is 7:30 a.m.) could mean more traffic on the Venetian Saturday morning.

– Sunday morning, the marathon really takes over the islands. The marathon starts at 6 a.m. on Biscayne Boulevard in front of American Airlines Arena, crosses the MacArthur, snakes through South Beach and then returns west over the Venetian Causeway. Belle Isle is roughly Mile 8. The elite runners will pass around 6:30 a.m., and by 7:30 a.m., Venetian Way will look like a giant Conga Line of marathoners. It will stay that way for at least an hour.

– It’s a great opportunity to cheer weekend warriors. Watching the race is like seeing a parade of humanity. The runners are inspiring and amusing and enthusiastic. And they draw strength from a crowd. You can help them achieve their goals.

– If you need to leave Belle Isle on island Sunday morning, walking is the best way. A bike is second-best. By car, you can only go east, and it won’t be easy.  You best be is to stay put until about 10 a.m.

Team Blog will be out there taking photos, and we’ll get them posted as early as we can on Sunday morning.

Enjoy the race!

One of the West Avenue bridge options.

With a key decision on whether to build a bridge over the Collins Canal on West Avenue less than four months away, the Florida Department of Transportation has scheduled its next public meeting on the proposal for March 27.

Housing Authority parcel is south of the Colllins Canal

The city of Miami Beach has until May 2 to decide whether to exercise an option for an easement on a small triangle of land owned by the Miami Beach Housing Authority north of 17th Street and the Collins Canal at West Avenue, according to city public works engineer Rick Saltrick.

If the city exercises the option, planning for a bridge connecting Sunset Harbour and the area west of Epicure would move forward. A final decision on whether to build the bridge — and its features, if built — would come later.

But if the city commission doesn’t act on the Housing Authority option, there is no path across the canal, and the project essentially dies right there.

The state DOT held an earlier public forum on the bridge proposal on Nov. 15, in which it presented four options, including building no bridge at all. Many residents who attended the meeting proposed another idea — a bike- and pedestrian-only bridge.

There was much enthusiasm from residents around the no-car bridge, but it looks like it isn’t possible. There is still no mention of it on the project website, which lists the other construction options.

Here is the short description of the project from the site:

The proposed West Avenue Bridge would span the Collins Canal, which is a city-owned manmade canal.  Proposed improvements would likely include approximately 110 feet of new roadway and an approximately 55 foot long low-level fixed bridge over the Collins Canal.  The bridge would include two northbound and southbound through-lanes and possibly turn lanes as well as bike lanes and sidewalks on each side.

At the Belle Isle Residents Association meeting on Jan. 18, homeowner association president Scott Diffenderfer said residents shouldn’t delude themselves about a bridge that doesn’t carry cars.

The funding that’s in place from state and federal sources is specifically for a road for vehicles. If the city wants a bike-only bridge, it will pay for it on its own, he said.

The March 27 meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the Miami Beach Regional Library, 277 22 St.

A week from now, thousands of runners — as many as 25,000 based on the record number of registrants — will be crossing Belle Isle on Venetian Way on Mile 8 of their 13.1 or 26.2 mile journey.

It’s a great event that showcases our islands.

The event brings money and visitors to the community, and the group that runs it works hard to ensure it isn’t too disruptive on Sunday morning.

Whitney Murphy, the event manager, made a point of attending last week’s Belle Isle Residents Association meeting to hear from residents and assure them the island will be cleaned up and cleared as quickly as possible. She also said noise — which was a problem a couple of marathons back — will be kept to a minimum.

Belle Isle Blog thinks the good from the marathon vastly outweighs the hassle, and offers these tips to prepare for Sunday morning, Jan. 29:

– Get out and cheer the runners. The leaders will pass our island around 6:30 a.m., and we’ll see people who have trained for months crossing until 9:30 or 10 a.m. They range from elite athletes to average folks who committed to goal and are on their way to achieving it. Your cheers will help lift them to success.

– Plan your morning around the race. From about 5 a.m. to 10 a.m., you’ll only be able to go east on Venetian Way by car, and quite slowly. If you want to go to breakfast, you might want to walk. That way, you can cheer the runners as you go along. IF you HAVE to go to the mainland in the morning, plan to ease your way east on Venetian Way, then south on West Avenue, and east on the MacArthur Causeway, where westbound lanes will be open.

There are several key water stations on the Venetian Causeway leg of the route, one on Belle Isle (mile 8),  San Marco Island (mile 9) and Biscayne Island (Mile 10)

Enjoy the race . Belle Isle Blog will be taking photos of the runners from our island, and promises to post them on the site as early as possible Sunday morning.

They squeeze long-winded government meetings into their busy work days. They cajole public officials to do right. They get to know politicians, planners, road engineers so they can plead, protest, praise — all in the interest of our quality of life on this little island.

You have a voice because they take the time.

But….you aren’t as well represented as you could be. If you live in Costa Brava, The Vistas, Belle Isle Key, the Island House apartments or the bungalow homes, no one from your area serves on the residents association board of directors.

At its annual meeting on Jan. 18, the Belle Isle Homeowner Association elected three board members:  Belle Tower resident Charles Urstadt, Belle Plaza resident Nancy Beckham, and Jean-Francois Lejeune, also of Belle Plaza.

Lejeune is an architecture professor at the University of Miami, and starts his second term. (His wife, Astrid, serves as a substitute when his isn’t available.)

Urstadt, who runs a real estate firm, is the chair of the Miami Design Preservation League.

Beckham is a designer who has experience running hotels in the Caribbean.

They join BIRA president Scott Diffenderfer (Belle Plaza), vice president Josh Fisher (9 Island Avenue), treasurer Herb Frank (Grand Venetian), Secretary Sandra Money (Terrace Tower) and board members Nancy Liebman (9 Island), Barbara Frank (Grand Venetian), David Leeds (Belle Plaza) and Monica Tracy (Island Terrace). Those board members are all halfway through two-year terms.

“We’d love to have some people step up” from the buildings that lack a board member, Diffenderfer said at the Jan. 18 meeting.

If you are interested, you can get more information at the BIRA website. Or fill  out BOARD-APPLICATION and follow the instructions.

It could make a difference for you and your neighbors.

Looking west to downtown Miami from a Belle Isle balcony.

In case you momentarily forgot, amid the road construction and condo squabbles, we live in paradise. The view at 6:45 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 20.

Smoothing out the roadway on DiLido Island.

Work on the slow-moving, back-jarring, pothole-filled obstacle course we know as the Venetian Causeway is a good six months behind schedule, and th e current phase won’t finish the end of June, Belle Isle residents learned Wednesday night.

And the construction happening right now — a scramble of road surfacing and barrier moving — is preparation to make the Venetian safe for the 25,000 runners who will cross it during the ING Miami Marathon on Jan. 29.

“They are cleaning up for the ING Marathon,” said Richard Saltrick, a city of Miami Beach Public Works Department engineer who briefed the Belle Isle Residents Association on progress on the myriad road and bridge projects on and near the island. “They are doing milling and surfacing on DiLido and Rivo Alto,  safe-ing up” for the race.

The causeway construction was supposed to be complete by now — well before the annual marathon needed a clear path.

“It’s a mess,” acknowledged Whitney Murphy, event manager for US Road Sports, which stages the annual race. Her organization expects a record 25,000 runners for this year’s marathon and half-marathon, about 3,000 more than last year. No matter the distance, all runners cross the Venetian.

“There is a lot of construction,” she said, and joked: “I’m getting gray hair at 26.” She said the marathon organizers are “working with the county and the city and they are going to smooth out the road for the runners and wheel chairs.”

Saltrick said Miami Beach has been told current construction on the Venetian — a Miami-Dade Public Works project that includes wider sidewalks and lighting and drainage — should be done by the end of June.

In August, Saltrick said, the city of Miami Beach will begin work on drainage, sidewalk, lighting and drainage projects on the side streets of the Venetian Islands of Rivo Alto, DiLido and San Marino — the so-called Streetscape Project.

An August start of that work allows for the possibility of a little more delay in the current Miami-Dade project, Saltrick said. The Streetscape work will last another year.

And those are just two of many projects in the starting or planning phase that impact Belle Isle and the Venetian Causeway. Residents received updates on several others:

– The mixed-use path along the Collins Canal. Eastbound Dade Boulevard closed past Purdy Avenue on Tuesday as work on this project began. It will stay closed for less than a month, from the Dade-17th Street split to Alton Road.  The detour requires taking 17th Street to Alton.

The overall project — which includes seawall replacement and the construction of a landscaped sidewalk north of the Collins Canal along Dade Boulevard for bikers, runners, walkers and strollers — should be complete by July, Saltrick said.

– The proposed West Avenue Bridge. The city of Miami Beach is studying whether to build a bridge over the Collins Canal that would connect West Avenue behind Epicure with the Sunset Harbour neighborhood. The next neighborhood meeting will be in February, Saltrick said. If the Miami Beach City Commission decides to build a bridge, it would take two to three years of planning and engineering work before construction would begin, he said.

– Reconstruction of the Venetian Causeway bridges. The 12 historic bridges that make up our Venetian Causeway are crumbling in places, and make need extensive repairs or replacement. They were last redone a dozen years ago, after a lengthy battle to ensure their architectural features were preserved.

The Florida Department of Transportation is seeking bids from consultants who will determine the extent of work needed on the bridges, said Herb Frank, a Belle Isle Residents Association board member who attended an FDOT meeting on the bridges on Wednesday. A consultant could be chosen at a follow-up meeting in April. He said the consultant study would take about three years, to actual work is a long way off — if it happens at all.

Residents Association Scott Diffenderfer said the organization is staying on top of the project to make sure whatever eventually happens preserves the historic bridges.

It starts at 6 p.m. with socializing; the meeting begins at 7. Here’s the full plan for the evening:

Miami Beach officials will be on hand to discuss ongoing and upcoming projects, answer your questions and hear your comments on issues that affect our neighborhood.

 To be added to our e-mail list or to apply to serve on the Belle Isle Residents Association Board, please send an email tobod@belle-isle-residents.org or call Scott Diffenderfer at 305-458-3334.

 AGENDA

 1.   Welcome and Introductions

2.   Project update/community information

• Miami Beach Community Resource & Outreach Team – Lynn Bernstein
• Belle Isle Park update/input from residents – Parks Department
• Project Updates – Richard Saltryck, Public Works
  • Collins Canal seawall & Dade Blvd. shared use bike path
  • Restriping of Dade Blvd./Venetian Way and effects on traffic
  • Miami Beach/Miami-Dade County construction timeline on Venetian Way
  • Proposed West Avenue Bridge Update
• Venetian Way Bridge Refurbishment/Replacement – Herb Frank
• Destination Casino Bill Opposition Update – Sandy Money/Herb Frank
• Other projects and questions from residents

3.   Upcoming Events affecting Venetian Way

• American Fencing Conference – Jan. 23-27, 2012 – Bus Traffic
• IMG Miami Marathon – Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012 – Road Closures/Race Logistics – Whitney Murphy
• Miami International Boat Show – Feb. 16-20, 2012 – Bus, Boat Traffic

4.   Treasurer’s Report

5.   President’s Report and all other questions from residents

6.   Approval of the Minutes from the January 2011 Annual Meeting

7.   Nominating Committee

• Board of Directors Slate for 2012 & Election of new Board Members

8.   New Business

9.   Adjourn

Postcard between 1942 and 1951, showing downtown Miami and Venetian and MacArthur causeways.

As part of our continuing exploration of Belle Isle and Venetian Causeway historical images, we found a treasure.

It’s called the Florida Memory Project, a state of Florida archive that includes a collection of 170,000 digitized photos of the state’s early times from the Florida Division of Library and Information Services.

The archive includes beautiful old color postcards, like the one above, which we had not seen before, as well as photos that provide an even closer look at early Belle Isle (pre-condo) and the construction and development of the Venetian Islands and Miami Beach.

This 1949 photograph provides a similar detail as the postcard from east to west.

In the archive we found the clearest pre-condo development photos we’ve ever seen of Belle Isle, the only Venetian Causeway island that isn’t entirely man-made.

Belle Isle, with Carl Fisher's Flamingo Hotel in the background.

This 1930s early photo of the island shows both the Joseph Adams estate  on the land now occupied by Belle Plaza and the Grand Venetian, as well as the J.C. Penney Estate (9 Island Avenue) and relatively empty space on the site of The Standard/DiLido Spa.

The photos of the Joseph H. Adams Estate (dated 1929) are new to us; it covered the southeast quadrant of the island with several structures. You can see how the Bay Road area south of the Collins Canal looked as well.

The Adams estate on the east end of Belle Isle. What is now Maurice Gibb park and Sunset Harbour is behind it.

Subsequent shots show how the development filled in the green space. The old Flamingo on the mainland has been replaced by Morton Towers.

A similar view shows Belle Plaza, Belle Tower and 3 Island Terrace (1968).

On the Beach mainland, Morton Towers, the Venetian, Sunset Islands to the north.

And the view to Miami Beach looked different, too. No Sunset Harbour bayfront condos, though thanks to historic preservation, the beachfront skyline is similar.

Looking east over Belle Isle, you can see the old hotel on the Grand Venetian site.

The archive also includes some great images of the causeway islands and mainland Miami, pre-boom.

One, during the construction of the Venetian Causeway in 1923, shows Belle Isle and and freshly dredged Rivo Alto Isle, with no other islands along the causeway. You can see Lincoln Road and the old Miami Beach golf course, but note, that isn’t the Miami Beach Bayshore Course that exists today.

1923 photograph shows view to Miami across Venetian Causeway.

Another shows Biscayne Island, the closest to mainland Miami, with an airport on what is now the site of the 801 Venetian condo. To the right of the Viking hangar, you can see the original toll booth.

This photo, believed to be from 1926, shows the Venetian Causeway and Biscayne Island.

And, finally, a look at both causeways and freshly dredged Venetian and Sunset islands from a 1927 aerial, shot from a height of 7000 feet. You can see downtown Miami and the mouth of the Miami River, but no Port of Miami.

Note the similarity in perspective to the 1940s-vintage color postcard.

Biscayne Bay, 1927.