Miami approves $58M Coconut Grove Playhouse revival
A 20-year saga clears its last big hurdle as the city green-lights the county's plan for the 1926 landmark.
Miami city commissioners on July 10 approved Miami-Dade County’s plan to redevelop the Coconut Grove Playhouse, granting five zoning exceptions and four waivers and clearing a project stalled by two decades of disputes over what to do with the 1926 landmark.
The $58.4 million plan restores the historic front structure and builds a 310-seat performance venue behind it, along with retail, food-and-beverage, office, and educational space and a 289-space parking garage. Miami-Dade County, which leased the property in 2013, is the developer and leaseholder.
Why it matters
The approval ends one of Miami’s longest-running preservation fights and returns a shuttered cultural anchor to Coconut Grove’s commercial core. The debate had pitted advocates for a full-scale restoration against the county’s scaled-down, financially viable plan, and the smaller 310-seat design is what ultimately cleared the commission. For the surrounding village center, a working theater with ground-floor retail and food-and-beverage space is an activation catalyst, the kind of adaptive-reuse project that anchors foot traffic rather than adds housing.
The numbers
The $58.4 million budget draws on layered public sources: $28.5 million from 2004 Miami-Dade general obligation bonds, $13.4 million from a countywide infrastructure program, $9.1 million in 2005 special obligation bonds, $5.4 million in parking revenues, and a $2 million Knight Foundation grant. The program pairs the 310-seat theater with 28,000 square feet of offices, 2,600 square feet of retail, 3,800 square feet of food-and-beverage, and 2,600 square feet of educational space.
What’s next
With the city approvals in hand, the county can advance the Playhouse toward construction after a hard-won permitting path, the building was declared unsafe in 2010 and suffered a partial third-floor collapse about a year ago. Restoring it caps a revival first set in motion when the theater closed in 2006, adding a development milestone to the Grove’s ongoing reinvestment.