City of Miami commissioners will vote on a resolution to sell the historic Olympia Theater in downtown Miami to rapper Pitbull’s charter school nonprofit.
The commission will consider an item to waive competitive bidding for the property at 174 East Flagler Street and authorize the city to negotiate the sale to Sports Leadership and Management, known as SLAM. Pitbull, whose legal name is Armando Christian Pérez, co-founded the first SLAM charter school in Miami’s Little Havana in 2013.
Former commissioner Ken Russell, who is running for mayor of Miami, raised the issue on social media, calling the deal a “giveaway.”
The Olympia Theater, which opened in 1926 as a silent movie palace, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The downtown Miami property has fallen into disrepair in recent years.
The late Maurice Gusman, a real estate developer, saved the property from demolition in the 1970s. It was designed by famed architect John Eberson, and architect Morris Lapidus renovated Olympia’s main auditorium for Gusman.
In 2019, Gusman’s heirs sued the city, alleging that Miami violated a covenant requiring the Miami Parking Authority to oversee and manage the property. Litigation between the city and Gusman’s heirs is pending in the Third District Court of Appeal.
The litigation would be settled if the property is transferred to SLAM or a related entity, and if it’s restored and brought up to code within five years, according to the resolution. SLAM would be required to restore, manage and operate the property as a public education facility.
Required work includes reconstruction of previously demolished dressing rooms and crew rooms; reconstruction of decorative paint and plaster repairs in parts of the theater that have been damaged by water intrusion; interior structural repairs; a mechanical systems retrofit; and exterior work that includes replacing the roof, windows and doors, restoring the railings, facade, the Flagler Street marquee and the ticket booth.
Russell said the property is worth millions of dollars and called the potential sale to SLAM “bad government.”
“It has 80 units on the front of it, which could be a perfect small boutique hotel. And this theater inside where Elvis Presley performed is one of our greatest assets, owned by the taxpayers and about to be given away for nothing to a charter school by the city of Miami commission,” Russell said on Instagram.
SLAM, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and commissioner Damian Pardo, whose district includes the property, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
As part of the proposed sale, SLAM would operate Miami Tech at Mater Innovation Academy in the building, which would be renamed the Miami Innovation & Arts Academy with Miami Dade College as a likely partner offering dual enrollment programs.
The city acquired the property in 1975 when the nonprofit Maurice Gusman Cultural Center transferred the theater and the 10-story building to the city. The theater, part of the first air-conditioned building in the South, has also hosted B.B. King, Luciano Pavarotti and Etta James.
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