24574: Hermantin (news) A Dream Dashed

[sak-pase@bimini.ws]

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.