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24574: Hermantin (news) A Dream Dashed
leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>
Posted on Sun, Mar. 27, 2005
A Dream Dashed
Caribbean Marketplace's impending demolition is a symptom of throwaway
society
BY BETH DUNLOP
bdunlop@herald.com
Charles Harrison Pawley's Caribbean Marketplace is a once-in-a-lifetime
building. It tugs at our emotions, conjuring images of another place far
away. It is a building that speaks of both place and displacement, of hopes
and dreams. Once it was the centerpiece of all our aspirations for Little
Haiti, the cornerstone of renewal.
To see it today is to see hope lost. A once-beautiful building, it is now
forsaken, its brilliant paint faded and peeling. Plants grow from the
gutters. Cables and wires dangle over water-damaged walls.
When it was completed in 1990, Caribbean Marketplace bedazzled the eye,
painted in the sun-saturated hues of Haiti, its metal roof gleaming in the
bright daylight. More, it was a symbol of Miami's commitment to the
thousands of newly arrived Haitian immigrants who had settled, largely, in
the historic neighborhood once known as Lemon City. Soon after it was
finished, Caribbean Marketplace won a national honor award from the American
Institute of Architects, the highest award a building can garner.
In its prime, it was a heart-stopping sight, both sophisticated and
ingenuous. Pawley purposely left the finishes a bit rough to give the market
a handmade quality, as if it really had been crafted by Caribbean hands. He
chose to exaggerate the building's turrets and gables, which give it a
distinctive folkloric roofline. Operationally it was also drawn from a
pre-technological age with roll-up garage-door openings, easy-to-assemble
market stalls and ceiling fans to keep the air moving. The trim was all
gingerbread, so typical of its -- and the community's -- architectural
roots.
Now, inexplicably, it is to be torn down.
Of course, the Marketplace has endured years of indignities, municipal
mismanagement among them; over the years (Little Haiti has never been high
on the radar screen at the City of Miami), the building was allowed to
languish. And now -- though one study, which Pawley undertook without pay,
shows a $3 million cost to repair and restore it, the city's plan is to tear
it down and replace it with a much more expensive ($11 million) complex that
would include a black box theater, a city ''NET'' office and more.
There is much to say about this -- about the ways in which cities, not just
Miami -- misspend money, misapprehend local needs and local culture and
abuse and ignore local resources. It is also a classic statement on a
throwaway society. And all that aside, it is still, even in dereliction, a
magnificent work of architecture that should be preserved for its aesthetic,
historic (not because it's old but because it was momentous) and cultural
importance. But first, some history:
Pawley designed the building for a competition held in 1984. It was a
''blind'' competition, with jurors drawn both from the world of architecture
and the local community. Intriguingly, Pawley -- an almost lifelong Miamian
from a family with deep roots here, not to mention a distinguished career in
architecture -- was born in Haiti and had sustained a connection to the
country and its arts over the years. His design derived much more from
knowledge than nostalgia, an important point to make here. From start to
finish, this was a labor of love.
Even before setting pencil to paper, Pawley traveled extensively in Haiti,
studying vernacular architectural styles and building techniques and
luxuriating in the vivid Caribbean color palette. The result was a proposal
for a building that was at once bold and delicate, intricate and yet simple.
The jury, selecting the competition winner, called it ''a grand vision'' for
Little Haiti, which it was.
The original plan (based architecturally and conceptually on the famed Iron
Market in Port-au-Prince) was for this market to cover two blocks with an
array of shop stalls and activities at a cost of $1.5 million, but that was
scaled back to the building's current configuration as a restoration of an
old antiques shop. The project was done for $550,000, with government funds
and money from the Local Initiative Service Corporation. It was built by the
nonprofit Haitian Task Force, but eventually was taken over by the city.
Opened with both fanfare and expectations, it never succeeded financially
and ultimately it was closed.
In recent years, more attention has been paid to Little Haiti. In 2001,
Miami voters approved a $225 million bond issue from which the city
allocated $25 million for a new park for Little Haiti; the park plan, an
ambitious one, involved assembling a total of 60 acres worth of land,
including 112 business and 262 residences. The new ''cultural center''
building, which would be done by architect Bernard Zyscovich (it is not
designed yet) would be funded with a portion of this bond money. Though
Zyscovich -- whose body of work includes nearby Toussaint Louverture
Elementary school -- was originally charged with incorporating the Caribbean
Market into his new plan, he decided against doing so.
It is the wrong decision. It is wrong architecturally, urbanistically,
historically, socially. The building has been determined to be structurally
sound though it doesn't meet the stricter post-Andrew building codes. It's
not a sleek-slick building, nor was it ever intended to be. It was aimed at
being a market (and as such, an informal community center) and a tourist
attraction (and as such, an economic magnet).
Oddly, back when it opened, the sociology and the economics of Miami were
probably not right for such a venture. Little Haiti is showing small signs
of its own renewal these days -- a new restaurant here and there, fresh
paint -- but the steps forward are still incremental ones.
And with the resurgence of the city's Upper East Side and the region's
growing urbanity, it seems much more likely that it could succeed: a market
for tropical fruits and vegetables (not to mention prepared foods), a source
of Caribbean arts and crafts and more. That would seem to be much more of a
draw, and frankly much more of a life-giving force for Little Haiti, than
the proposed theater would be. There are other facilities within Little
Haiti (starting with Notre Dame d'Haiti Catholic Church, which is across the
street, basically) and theaters (including the Joseph Caleb Center) in
nearby neighborhoods. Mature cities in Europe and even in America rely on
their churches (and other institutions) as shared space for the performing
arts, which only makes sense.
A theater and ''state-of-the-art'' dance facility may indeed be top
priorities in Little Haiti (I am not so presumptuous as to tell a community
what it needs), but I would wonder about putting them at the top of the
list. Performing arts complexes are, generally speaking, blank-walled and
inward-turning buildings that do not necessarily contribute to the energy of
the city on a daily basis, and aren't really part of a vibrant street life
except possibly before and after performances. And even so, there must be
alternative sites that could be found; Little Haiti is a needy neighborhood
full of warehouses and empty lots. Why target the community's architectural
centerpiece? The logic of it all eludes me.
But put logic aside, because ultimately, what's at stake has to do with
emotion. The Caribbean Marketplace is a building with the capacity to make
the heart sing and the spirit soar. The intangible is irreplaceable, the
passion and zeal and sheer joyousness of this building. If it goes, we won't
ever get that back. That's all we really ought to be thinking about here.