Wheelchair ramp for Actor’s Playhouse becomes political war in Coral GablesPolitical Cortadito

It should have been a no-brainer.

Coral Gables Commissioners on Tuesday approved giving $42,000 to the Actor’s Playhouse, which leases the historic Miracle Theater from the city, for a new wheelchair ramp that will accommodate newer, bigger wheelchairs for patrons who need to get to the second floor.

It was a divided 3-2 vote — going the same way all 3-2 votes go in the City Beautiful these days — and came after more than an hour of heated debate, which should have been incredibly embarrassing in front of Actor’s Executive Producing Director Barbara Stein, who kept smiling throughout because, bueno, she’s a class act.

Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who sponsored the item, apologized to her on behalf of the commission when Mayor Lago basically inferred that Stein was trying to rip the city off.

After being told by city staff that the funds were available — in fact the city has half a million in unused ADA funds — Lago and Rhonda Anderson voted against the ramp because, they said, it was not fiscally responsible. The lease terms clearly make the Actor’s Playhouse responsible for such improvements and they don’t want other entities with city leases to pull the same move, they said.

Okay. So what? If some other iconic and long-serving organization with a city lease wants $41,900 for a wheelchair ramp, what’s the big deal? So be it. Are there dozens of leases? Ladra asked but it was made an official public records request, which takes time. But it can’t be a ton. It’s a nonexistent problem.

Still, Anderson wanted to make it a loan and challenged her colleagues to raise the funds to reimburse the city. Then, later in the very same meeting, she pushed to hire a designer to draw up bicycle lanes — not dedicated lanes, mind you, but stripes on the street — in an area where residents may not even want them (more on that later). That’s got to cost more than $40,000 for something the city may never do.

“I feel strongly that Actor’s Playhouse is a very important piece of our city, but the devil’s in the details. I cannot take a lease that has this in writing right now and we have similar terms with other tenants,” the vice mayor said. “We can’t treat them differently and just reimburse for things at the last minute here.”

The wheelchair ramp may never have been an issue if candidate Richard Lara, an attorney who is running against Menendez, had not made it an issue during public comments at the last meeting in May. He’s getting bad advice. Because this is not the issue to campaign on.

Tuesday, Mayor Lago — whose allies recruited Lara — doubled down on this wrong sword.

“I have doubts. I just find it hard to believe that that ramp costs that much,” Lago said, basically calling Stein a liar to her face. “It’s not out of ADA compliance. You’re in compliance right now.”

Just because it’s compliant doesn’t mean it’s working for everyone.

Stein explained that older patrons with walkers were having a hard time navigating the current lift and some younger people with special needs couldn’t use it at all. “There are people that have not come in a long time because they are not comfortable,” Stein said, adding that Actor’s had built and rebuilt and upgraded ADA equipment and facilities throughout the last 28 years since they moved to Miracle Mile.

“We filled a need in the city when the city’s downtown was dying by creating foot traffic.”

The urgency is because of a window in time that is unusual in the year-round organization’s operation. The city is shutting the historic theater down for four months to repair the A/C system, which could cost Actor’s $150,000 of guaranteed income, Stein said. “That makes the timeliness very critical, because there is no other time we are going to be close down to build this ramp.”

She defended the price, saying the railings alone were on the market at $12,000. “It’s not just a little bit of plywood,” Stein said, referring to Anderson’s sarcastic comment about having a “gold mine” in her garage.

There’s demolition, building, drywall, painting involved. “We really investigated and I might tell you was very difficult to get a lot of bids because a lot of people did not want to get involved in bidding because they do work with the city,” Stein said. But they did get two more — one about the same and one higher.

“We’re very happy to be able to show a comparison of a price that is equal,” Stein added, without explicitly saying “so you know we’re not ripping you off,” but kind of saying it. Wink, wink.

Actor’s also looked into a larger lift, but it would cost the same, and a ramp “allows more comfort to people, more independence and more opportunity to make people feel more dignified to come into the theater, without having to go on a squeaky lift.”

Any non psychotic person might be embarrassed by this already and back off. Not Lago.

“I’m a believer… that this sets a dangerous precedent,” the mayor doubled down. “As the owner of commercial real estate, when you have a contract with a tenant, you have to stick to that contract.”

Does he mean the empty retail space on Ponce De Leon Boulevard that he rented to developer Rishi Kapoor for a year? More on that later.

“If you start making, you know,, opportunities for your tenants to wiggle their way out of certain responsibilities, it only compromises that contract,” Lago said.

Boom. That set Menendez off.

“I find it offensive for anyone, especially with Barbara Stein here, to even use the phrase ‘wiggle out of their responsibilities.’ Because what Barbara Stein and her team is doing is not ‘wiggling out of any responsibility. We are! For politics over people,” Menendez said, emphatically.

“There are children, there are seniors that need to get there and feel like human beings! And we are letting politics rule the day! And I’m not going to allow it!”

He apologized to Stein for having to “go through the wringer for something that is so common sense, and so logical and so good for people that need it.”

Earlier, Menendez said that he had talked to the city attorney and was told that, regardless of the contract, the commission had the legal authority to expend the funds for a valid municipal purpose. “I think helping to provide an ADA compliant ramp and railings is a valid municipal purpose,” he said.

“Our role is to go case by case, item by item and sometimes make sometimes the easy decisions and sometimes the more challenging decisions,” Menendez said. “That’s why we’re here, to go on a case by case matter. And I honestly believe this is an honest municipal purpose.”

It was clear that Anderson was doing the mayor’s bidding. Again. After she made the motion to convert the $41,900 to a loan, Menendez tried to explain the window of time thing and Lago interrupted. What a minute, said the mayor. “We had a motion. Do we have a second?”

When nobody chimed up, he seconded the motion, for splits and giggles because he knew it would not pass. This is the same guy that accuses everybody else of political theater.

Before they could vote, longtime activist Maria Cruz — a former Lago ally who led the recall effort against him — brought up Burger Bob’s, one of the few other city leases, and the increasing costs the administration has presented for the refurbishing of that location, once a community icon, too.

“We started with half a million dollars and now, because we wanted to make it a world class place, it is more than a million dollars,” Cruz said. “This is a need, and we cannot keep postponing it,” she added, calling the figure “laughable, when we spend things that are really not needs that could have been done for much less.”

Lago said, to “correct” “some comments that were made,” that the Burger Bob’s location is a “city-controlled asset” with no tenant (more on that later). “No one is making money on that property,” the mayor said. He also said that the increase was made through the budgeting process and not as an emergency item, like the Actor’s allocation request.

Fernandez said that the mayor’s position was a double standard after he voted two years ago to waive the hurricane insurance requirement for The Biltmore Hotel, which put the city at risk. He said the city could be liable for ADA issues at the theater because it is a city property.

“We are putting money into a city asset, to improve that city asset, whether it’s Actor’s Playhouse who is running it or the Miami Philharmonic Band. This is a longterm investment to our asset in our city,” Fernandez said.

Lago used the discussion to try to demean Commissioner Melissa Castro. “Did you read the contract between the city and Actor’s Playhouse? Did you read the ADA report that was done by the city on July 2019? Do you know the Miracle Theater is in the report? “

“Where are these questions coming from,” Castro asked.

“I’m asking because I think it’s important. It’s things a lot of businesses and residents don’t know,” said Lago, trying to get that Best Actor nomination. And, no, he did not proceed to enlighten anyone.

The whole thing was very cringe and it just seemed that Lago, and Anderson, were comiendo de lo que pica el pollo.

But, hey, at least the mayor didn’t threaten to fight anybody.