Nightlife and Gentrification

a toxic or true romance for Miami Beach?

Photo by Antoine J. on Unsplash

For the first time since the early nineties, Collins Avenue, just below 5th Street in South Beach, is quiet.  Famed Story Nightclub’s doors are shuttered, the oonce oonce thrumming is gone.

It’s a relief for one group of residents, nobody’s throwing up on their stoop and they can finally get a good night's sleep. For another group, however, it signifies an unwanted suppression of what makes the neighborhood great. As the beach goes upmarket, the first group is out shouting, voting, and fundraising the second. 

The Miami Beach Commission has angled for a long time to transition the city away from its raucous reputation. This year's spring break, with the event’s requisite mayhem and shootings, has given them the chance. With just thirty days notice, the commission decreed that venues in the South of Fifth neighborhood with space for over a hundred people could not serve alcohol after 2am. 

For Californians, Britons, and anyone from a more mellow party culture this might sound adequate. In Miami you're lucky to finish dinner by 2am much less make it to a nightclub. According to club owners Jeffrey Soffer and David Grutman, the majority of their profits come in the wee hours and the new rules make their business unviable. 

Story is a big loud club. It has 27,000 square feet, 60 VIP tables and five bars. In its appeal to Florida courts, Story's owners claim, according to the Miami New Times, that the commission is seeking to "ensure Story's destruction, while allowing the city's more favored venues to do business as usual." These “favored venues” are quieter bars inside hotels which have local political connections. 

I can imagine you thinking to yourself, who cares? Society tends to see the worst in nightlife, that it's just a source of drugs, crime, and disorder. Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber wants to change the character of the South Beach Entertainment District away from what he calls the “anything goes” atmosphere to an Art Deco district with an “elevated cultural experience” that includes art galleries, businesses, and shopping.

There are some big reasons why cities shouldn’t start closing down early. 

New York City is in many ways ahead of the curve on nightlife as well as gentrification.  David Byrne, the Talking Heads lead singer, in 2013 described Manhattan as a “pleasure dome for the rich”. In 2023, this vision has expanded across urban America, especially in Miami. 

The essential point is that cities become all the same, with undesirable things like nightclubs pushed to the periphery. Mayor Gelber wants Miami Beach to be just another outpost on the global elite travel circuit, with the same expensive yet bland creature comforts the affluent demand. 

These new “Global Citizens” aren’t rooted in any community.

They love to party, traveling on a global socialite circuit from Sundance, to the Monaco Grand Prix,  and on to Art Basel. This doesn’t  mean, however, that they want a place for hoi polloi next to their five million dollar condos. If you need an image for context think about the memes of Jeff Bezos trying to look 25 at the Coachella music festival in California. 

Outside of specific weeks and events, quieter upscale venues serving an older white cohort are favored. Boundary pushing clubs for a younger more diverse audience, not so much. Politicians and business leaders love to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but are loath to see it in their own neighborhood.

Some local politicians are taking a more measured approach and not using the scary but contained spring break violence to make major changes to the city's culture. “What we’re seeing is panic-stricken politicians who feel the need to do something,” Ricky Arriola, a city commissioner who voted against the curfew, said in an interview. “The heavy hand of government is being imposed on residents, our visitors and businesses”. 

The irony of all this is that nightlife is what made these cities and neighborhoods cool in the first place. 

In the 1980s, South of Fifth was a crack den war zone. The Mariel boatlift had dropped 125,000 Cubans in Florida and a lot of them went straight to this neighborhood of abandoned warehouses and seedy efficiency motels. The Browns Hotel, now home to exclusive Prime Steak, was abandoned and occupied by vagrants. 

Things began to change in the 1990s. Thomas Kramr, a German real estate tycoon, saw the area on a helicopter joy ride and had an idea, why not remake this blank canvas? Around the same time André Boudou opened Amnesia nightclub, bringing the brand to the shores of South Beach after first opening an Amnesia in the South of France. This space, continually operated as a nightclub, would become Story. 

Real Estate and nightlife rose in an unsteady tandem. The clubs and restaurants brought people to the neighborhood who then stayed for the shiny new condos, warm ocean waters, and luxurious amenities. Without the clubs this would have been no different than Palm Beach County or any number of country club style communities around Florida.

As the LMFAO song goes, “Welcome to Miami, Bitch”. This edge is what made Miami Beach Miami Beach.

The connection between night life, development, and gentrification is clear if you look at New York City. In her 2012 book The Gentrification Of Nightlife And The Right To The City, York University professor Laam Hae argues "Thriving nightlife has ushered in and even constituted an essential part of the revitalization of neighborhoods." Her research showed that nightlife can "revalorize depressed property and trigger gentrification, enabling landlords and real-estate investors to reap 'monopoly rent.'"

Beyond pushing development, Nightlife is an economic good in its own right. Again let's talk about New York. In 2016, the nightlife industry supported 299,000 jobs with $13.1 billion in employee compensation and $35.1 billion in total economic output. This annual economic impact also yielded $697 million in tax revenue for New York City. This has probably changed post COVID but it’s still an important economic force for the city. 

A bothersome big question, however, is will future generations be as interested in nightlife? A new post pandemic community poll from the organization Keep Hush shows that only 25% of Gen-Z are interested in nightlife and the number drops to 13% for Millenials. Price is a major concern. New technologies and a fear of sex drugs and rock n roll also threaten to flip the script.

This trend began long before the pandemic. According to the research firm IBIS World, In the decade before the pandemic, the number of nightclubs shrank by 21% in Britain, and by 10% in both America and Germany. NYMBISM has made it much more difficult to start new clubs and party all night long. This is especially true in affluent cities like London where the number of nightclubs has been cut in half. 

If fewer young people are into partying what will that mean for future gentrification? Nightlife has been at the vanguard in turning decrepit neighborhoods around but this could break down the virtuous circle. A Gen Zer who lives mentally online can choose to live anywhere physically. As urban areas plan for the future they should consider if this is a good thing or not.

It’s also a safe assumption that NYMBISM will not stop at your local nightclub and it's only a matter of time before it comes for something you really care about.

 I live in the same neighborhood as Story in Miami Beach and now Luxury condo dwellers have found a new target. They’re pushing to shut down a Sunday sunset drum circle in the local park. The event provides free family friendly entertainment to a diverse range of people, exactly the sort of locals first cultural event the Mayor purports to desire.

 A few distant drum beats through hurricane glass is too much for some affluent residents and they have again flexed their political muscles. The park is now closed for maintenance, a clear way to get the dirty hippies to move out of the highriser’s ears and eyes. The neighborhood is one step closer to its bland and peaceful future. 

Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to shut down nightlife once the process of gentrification is nearing completion. Nightlife is exactly the sort of community led, organic capitalist enterprise that we need to keep our Urban areas vibrant for the future. Limits obliviously should be set, and safety maintained, but it is wrong to give into the more reactionary impulses of city zoning and planning.