MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

SOUTH BEACH RESTAURANT VANDALIZED BY CODE COMPLIANCE

Code Officials Retaliate Against Owner of Flame Caffe & Grill

2 March 2014 By David Arthur Walters MIAMI MIRROR Miami BeachI was shocked to discover that Miami Beach Code Compliance officials retaliated against Flame Caffe & Grill owner Antonio Halabi on 26 February for notifying them on the evening of 23 February that three restaurants at the Washington Avenue mouth of Espanola Way had set out dozens of unpermitted seats to absorb the tourist foot traffic before it got to him and his neighbors at the end of the block. At $50 in lost revenue per seat, I estimated that the loss of business cost Halabi at least $1,000 during my two-hour visit that evening. When the excess traffic was so overbearing that the violators at the entrance of the block could not absorb the traffic, which occurred briefly that night, a restaurant at the end set out extra seats too, but Halabi refuses to break the law at

Page 1 of 8

MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Flame Caffe & Grill, saying that the law should be enforced equally so that the few do who obey it are not injured. As a consequence of reporting the seating violations, which he had reported on several previous occasions in meetings with top city officials, a code compliance officer visited him and cited him for having a rug on the sidewalk, which his staff removed immediately, and for having plants in planters exceeding the maximum 34-inches allowed under the sidewalk caf ordinance. He said he believed that compliance officers were trying to get him on 6 violations within a year so he would lose his sidewalk caf and have to close his restaurant.

Plants at Flame Caffe & Grill prior to Compliance vandalism

The 34-inch rule is rarely enforced unless someone familiar with the requirement, namely sidewalk caf operators and code compliance officers, want to harass or retaliate against someone they do not like or are jealous of. Everybody violated that rule because it is ridiculous, Halabi said. He uses the planters to partly barricade his customers along the street from parked cars, from panhandlers, from vagrants picking up coins cigarette butts, people urinating, and condoms and other detritus tossed along the curbs after he cleans them prior to opening. It was no coincidence that he was forced to brutalize his plants shortly after he reported the seating overage, for he had fretted about the planters during my visit, saying they were the only violations he had, and expected Code Compliance officers to maliciously force him to kill his plants.
Page 2 of 8

MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Then they are vandals. I declared, after he pointed out that his neighbor across the street had not been warned about many more, much taller potted plants. How could they miss that?

A competitors plants after Halabi was forced chop off his own plants I reviewed recent citations, several of which did not describe the actual violation except with failure to adhere. Halabi complained that a violation against him was made up out of thin air and the city magistrate went along with it although it was not in the law, and then refused to rehear his plea to rehear the case. It was raining one day so he moved his fans to elsewhere within his permitted space, under the awning, to protect them for two hours. The online violation records revealed a number of repeated violations, including failure to even have a valid sidewalk cafe permit, where no fines were imposed. Halabi was not the only one cited for planters on 26 February. One of the frequent violators he had reported for extra chairs was warned, not fined. Section 82 -385, 82-371: Failing to adhere to the standards, criteria and conditions required of sidewalk cafes. REF: To many planters, planter height over 34", storing heat lamps, planter on city property, lights attached to tree and speakers. And on 27 February, that restaurant was actually fined for extra chairs: Section 82385, 82-371: Failing to adhere to the standards, criteria and conditions required of sidewalk cafes. REF 97 Chairs, 3 over the amount permitted. Counted twice with manager; Violation Issued - $250 Fine - Signed 2nd Offense $250 Fine. Another frequent violator was visited on 27 February: Failure to adhere to the standards, criteria and conditions required of sidewalk cafe permits. Sec.82-371 Sec. 82-385 Written Warning, Open and close case. No Fines Ref: Plants and planter combined exceed 34 inches: storing heaters on sidewalk cafe; extra planters; no five feet space from city structure (city lamp post) . 24 hours to comply.
Page 3 of 8

MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

And yet another restaurant was caught with extra seats as a result of Hal abis most recent complaint; however, it was not fined: Failure to adhere to the standards, criteria and conditions required of sidewalk cafe permits. Sec. 82-371 Sec.82-385 Written Warning, Open and close case. No Fines Ref: Extra table; 24 hours to comply. Look, these restaurants put out extra seats when Compliance is not around, when no one is complaining, and the owners do not care about a $100 or $250 fine once in awhile because they are getting a lot of revenue off the extra chairs, revenue that should be mine and the restaurant over there, he said, pointing to a rest aurant kitty-cornered from his. They went after those planters on the front end because of my complaints, got me too for complaining, to make compliance officers look good, but left the most obvious violator across from me untouched. Maybe they will nail them tomorrow, I conjectured. I see they tagged them twice for failing to renew their permit this year, and for stacking chairs, but not for those plants. And have they paid for that parking meter with a red hood on it? I was innocent when I came here. I made a mistake opening a business here, Halabi said bitterly. I suggested that since each chair is worth about $50 for each person sitting in it, and several people sit there in an evening, it would be fair to fine the restaurant owners $50 for each unpermitted chair, and, if there is an informer, give the informer half of the fine.

The law limiting plant height to the maximum height of tables is ridiculous. Halabi was seething with anger. They gave me trouble about the size of my planters, made me change them, and now they made me murder my plants. Everybody has plants, and they should have them. He showed me a number of photographs taken around town, including at 5 th Street and
Page 4 of 8

MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Washington Avenue, and at Moshi restaurant off Espanola Way, next door to the one they warned.

Scenes from 5th Street and Washington Avenue

Halabi complained over and over to me that his business had long been harmed by the grossly negligent and prejudicial enforcement of code by compliance officers and their administrators. He said that he did not hate his neighbors but he had to protect his business, so he had to report the restaurants that were violating sidewalk cafes ordinances. After making an anonymous complaint on one occasion, and alerting high officials that it had been made, he said that at least one of those officials, most likely the head of Code Compliance, identified him to compliance officers, and that they must have told an owner who was fined for extra tables. He said a Cuban fellow from one of the offending restaurants visited and threatened him, saying he was making trouble on his Espanola Way. In a letter to Jimmy Morales, he likened the episode to The Untouchables, whose antagonist, Al Capone, had favored the Clay Hotel on Espanola Way as his gambling hideout on the Beach. I had several Meetings with Mr. Santos Alborna and described how some of my neighbors placed many more seats than they were allowed by their permits and how only one of them had a permit for 34 seats but we counted 88 seated persons at any moment during one night. After many complaints, Code enforcement had no other option than acting and one night, on
Page 5 of 8

MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

April 24th, which is recorded and Mr. Cardeno knows about it, two guys, like in Chicago in the 1930s went to my restaurant to intimidate me because there was a turmoil in our peaceful street because I was complaining. It is important to say that those guys appeared 10 minutes after officers fined two neighbor restaurants so how did they know it was me if that night my complaint was filled anonymously online, and sent by email only to Mr. Libbin (then Commissioner Jerry Libbin), Mr. Cardeno (Hernan Cardeno, Police Officer Overseeing Code Division) and Mr. Santos (Robert Santos-Alborna, Director)? After speaking with Halabi about his predicament, I contacted a friend of mine who has owned a dozen restaurants on Miami Beach over the last two decades. Speaking anonymously, since he was certain Code Compliance officials would retaliate against him for criticizing them, Mr. X said he was well aware of the practice of putting out extra seats on Espanola Way, but that Halabi should not cross the Cubans who run the show, and that I might get a bullet up the ass for exposing them. Mr. Halabi should just toe the line. I said I did not take The Cuban Thing seriously because it is just an urban myth. Any mention of it deeply offends Cuban Americans in South Florida, infamously dubbed North Cuba. In fact, Halabi had dismissed my fanciful comparison of the troubling events in his country, where the opposition was accusing Venezuelan President Maduros socialist government of being a Cuban-style dictatorship, to his experience with the Code Compliance Division of the City of Miami Beach. Halabi told me he did not want to offend Venezuela. Although he said he would not vote for Nicolas Maduro, just as many Americans would not vote for Hillary Clinton, he was not a politician or political activist, and that his main concern as a businessman was with security, the protection of peoples lives and property wherever they might be, no matter who governed. He had learned to hate the City of Miami Beach because of the prejudicial and selective enforcement of its Code Compliance Division. Mr. X observed that President Maduro was just a bus driver, to which I responded that our former mayor, Matti Herrera Bower, was a dental hygienist. So what? This is a democracy, and so is Venezuela, where Maduro was elected by a slim margin. Radical American politicians like U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and Florida Governor Rick Scott should not be making self-serving inflammatory remarks in a politically motivated attempt to divide Venezuelans in Florida by imposing sanctions on those who are investing and spending money in Florida. People like Halabi might be misidentified as a Maduro supporter by Miami Beach officials offended by his exposure of their own Cuban-style code enforcement policies. Anyway, I said, the Cubans do not control Miami Beach simply because they are Cubans. Besides, read the Miami Herald: the Jews have taken over the city commission again, and are striving to eliminate ethnic employment policies.

Page 6 of 8

MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Nonsense, said Mr. X. He insisted that Cubans control Code Compliance and the Building Department of which it is a division, the Police Department, the City Managers Office, and the City Attorneys Office. I remarked that the city attorney, like Maduro, is a Sephardic Jew, both Cuban and Jewish, and that the city manager is both Puerto Rican and Cuban, so it is foolish to neatly sort things out into ethnic, religious and political factions. You believe what you want, but Im telling you from experience, if you are in the restaurant business around here, do not cross the Cubans. Code Compliance belongs to them, and you will be sorry. I ventured back to Flame Caffe & Grille for Happy Hour the next evening. Halabi was in Valencia managing his construction company, yet he was remotely attending to business at his restaurant, taking reservations, watching his place via video cams. Drinks other than those made with top shelf liquor are two-for-one from 6 to 8 pm. I like beer, so that amounts to $2.50 for imported beers and $2.00 for domestic beers. Samuel Adams and Brooklyn Lager, two of the finest beers in the world, count as domestic beers. I left The Flame and strolled along Espanola Way with mood considerably elevated by Samuel Adams. What a romantic place it is to have dinner and drinks and to watch people from all over the world stroll the two blocks or so when it is closed to traffic. The illegal planters, illegal lights, illegal seats, and such are charming. It must be difficult for Compliance officers to crack down on such a place because, if the code were strictly enforced, it would detract from its charms. The owners are simply trying to make their places attractive and to accommodate customers, I mused, but here are these laws, so ridiculous that they are meant to be broken, made by jealous people more bent on making things ugly than beautiful and safe. Legislation needs to relax the rules. Still, the rules must be equally applied, and one business should not be punished for following them. Instead of vicious competition along Espanola Way, why not have spirited cooperation? The Espanola Way Association should be created to do just that. Espanola Way should self-regulate itself in a cooperative way, even if silly laws are violated. A monitor should be appointed to make sure that extra chairs are not put out until all the sidewalk cafes are full. He or she could look out for code compliance officers and deal with them. Fines imposed would be shared. A house attorney should deal with unfair fines and legislation. Espanola Way should be promoted as an entity. Special fiestas, carnivals, street fairs should be held regularly all over the street and the large plaza between the blocks. I should get a case of Samuel Adams each month for making these suggestions.
Page 7 of 8

MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Am I dreaming or drunk? ##

Page 8 of 8