Flagler Street fiasco: Downtown Miami ‘makeover’ is more like a make-under

Delayed project has merchants begging for help 
Ladra doesn’t know who needs to hear this at City Hall, but East Flagler Street is not supposed to be a ghost town.
Black Friday is going to be blacker than usual on Miami’s oldest commercial corridor, where mom-and-pop shops — the same ones the politicians love to trot out during campaign season — are dying slow, painful deaths behind barricades that haven’t moved in nearly a year.
That’s right. Eleven months without a single pebble lifted, according to shop owners who have been watching the empty construction zone like it’s one of those Miami reality shows where nothing actually happens.
And after 4.5 years of this disaster? The only sparkling new thing on Flagler is the creative vocabulary of excuses.
Danny Moshe, co-owner of Miami Discount Center — a store he has run with his wife Jacqueline for more than 40 years — is so desperate he cried out to the highest office on a local news program. “President Trump, please help us,” he said to CBS News Miami last week. They’ve survived recessions, rent hikes, hurricanes, crime waves — but apparently they can’t survive a city project that’s supposed to help them.
“It’s two years almost and nothing is moving,” Danny told CBS. “Nobody is coming.”
Jacqueline adds: “We have to work seven days a week just to pay a little bit of the bills.”
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When longtime Downtown merchants are literally calling on the former president for help because they can’t get answers from the City of Miami or the Downtown Development Authority, that’s not just a red flag — that’s a five-alarm fire.
The grand five-phase plan was supposed to transform Flagler into a “curbless, festival-style” pedestrian paradise with brick pavers and fancy drainage. Very European. Very Instagrammable.
Very not happening.
Phase 1 opened in July. Mazel tov. Now, we’re in Phase Nope.
Everything west of NE 2nd Avenue? Crickets. Barricades. Dust. Ghost town. The construction company that was doing the work, Lanzo Construction, vanished like a Brickell renter who didn’t get their deposit back. The city won’t say why. Maybe something about FPL finding some “problems” with the plans?
Meanwhile, the small street retail businesses are the ones footing the bill. “Excuses,” says one owner. “Abandonment,” says another.
Daniel Cohen, owner of Sneak Peek Luxury — a high end sneaker shop — says he’s down 65% in sales. The only reason his store hasn’t closed is because his landlord gave him a break.
“Not one pebble or shovel was lifted for the better part of 11 months,” Cohen said. “They just keep finding problems.”
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This summer, the Miami Downtown Development Authority, which has spearheaded the project, celebrated the reopening of — wait for it — two whole blocks of Flager Street after more than four years of construction hell. The makeover, launched in 2019, is touted as a full five-block transformation project to activate and bring life back to the street.
The DDA said in a statement that it has tried to mitigate the situation.
“The Miami DDA has been fully engaged in supporting Flagler businesses throughout construction and we remain committed to helping them navigate this period while the city manages the project,” said DDA Executive Director Christina Crespi in a statement. “We’ve provided more than $700,000 in grants to small businesses and provided direct support through our free permit clinic. We’re also working hard to bring customers back to the corridor. Our recent holiday lighting celebration is proof of that. The even drew more than 2,000 visitors and generated a 323% increase in foot traffic compared to last year.”
Cohen calls BS. That flashy holiday lighting celebration didn’t bother to promote the struggling local businesses who could desperately use a few hundred customers.
Because why help the actual merchants when you can take selfies with twinkle lights?
Also, by the way, $700,000 is about what the DDA spent last year on public relations and marketing — in salaries.
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Downtown Neighbors Association President James Torres, the lead force behind the effort to dissolve the DDA, said the project’s delays are yet another example of how the agency has failed the community.
“The DDA was instrumental in this project and it is now the road to nowhere, creating more blight in the downtown area,” Torres told Political Cortadito. “And many small businesses are closing and not making it.
“A Thanksgiving update on Flagler falling apart. Sad,” he said. “Honestly, the DDA gives downtowners nothing to be thankful about.”
Flagler Business Improvement Executive Director Terrell Fritz didn’t mince words in an email to businesses: “I assure you the BID has done nothing but facilitate, advocate, challenge, protest and be ignored for most of the 4.5 years of this fiasco.”
Ignored. For four and a half years.
What Flagler Street is supposed to look like once the project is done.
And city spokesman Kenia Fallat‘s response? Very polished. Very generic. Very… let’s say City Hall-ish: “We remain firmly committed to the continued revitalization…” yadda, yadda, yadda. Vibrancy. Character. Bonding company. Stakeholders. “World-class Miami.” We’ve heard it all before.
Meanwhile, real world Miami is watching their livelihoods evaporate behind plastic barricades and a construction plan that works about as well as the elevators at the MetroMover stations.
The real story: Small businesses are drowning while the city argues about whose fault it is.
This is the same city that can fast-track billion-dollar deals for developers in 30 seconds flat, but somehow can’t reopen a street that’s, what, six blocks long?
But sure — let’s blame the contractor, the bond company, FPL, COVID, the supply chain, the moon phase, Mercury retrograde…
Meanwhile, the Moshes are watching 40 years of sweat equity circle the drain.
“Open the street,” Moshe said. Simple. Straightforward. The kind of thing a functioning city government should be able to do.
And the city better hurry. Before there are no businesses left to “revitalize.”

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