Miami, FL
Underwater sculpture park brings coral reef art to Miami Beach – WTOP News
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — South Florida is seeing a wave of new cars, but they won’t add to traffic…
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — South Florida is seeing a wave of new cars, but they won’t add to traffic or lengthen anyone’s commute. That’s because the cars are made of marine-grade concrete and were installed underwater.
Over several days late last month, crews lowered 22 life-sized cars into the ocean, several hundred feet off South Beach. The project was organized by a group that pioneers underwater sculpture parks as a way to create human-made coral reefs.
“Concrete Coral,” commissioned by the nonprofit REEFLINE, will soon be seeded with 2,200 native corals that have been grown in a nearby Miami lab. The project is partially funded by a $5 million bond from the city of Miami Beach. The group is also trying to raise $40 million to extend the potentially 11-phase project along an underwater corridor just off the city’s 7-mile-long (11-kilometer) coastline.
“I think we are making history here,” Ximena Caminos, the group’s founder, said. “It’s one of a kind, it’s a pioneering, underwater reef that’s teaming up with science, teaming up with art.”
She conceived the overall plan with architect Shohei Shigematsu, and the artist Leandro Erlich designed the car sculptures for the first phase.
Colin Foord, who runs REEFLINE’s Miami coral lab, said they’ll soon start the planting process and create a forest of soft corals over the car sculptures, which will serve as a habitat swarming with marine life.
“I think it really lends to the depth of the artistic message itself of having a traffic jam of cars underwater,” Foord said. “So nature’s gonna take back over, and we’re helping by growing the soft corals.”
Foord said he’s confident the native gorgonian corals will thrive because they were grown from survivors of the 2023 bleaching event, where a marine heatwave killed massive amounts of Florida corals.
Plans for future deployments include Petroc Sesti’s “Heart of Okeanos,” modeled after a giant blue whale heart, and Carlos Betancourt and Alberto Latorre’s “The Miami Reef Star, a group of starfish shapes arranged in a larger star pattern.
“What that’s going to do is accelerate the formation of a coral reef ecosystem,” Foord said. “It’s going to attract a lot more life and add biodiversity and really kind of push the envelope of artificial reef-building here in Florida.”
Besides being a testing ground for new coral transplantation and hybrid reef design and development, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner expects the project to generate local jobs with ecotourism experiences like snorkeling, diving, kayaking and paddleboard tours.
The reefs will be located about 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface of the water and about 800 feet (240 meters) from the shore.
“Miami Beach is a global model for so many different issues, and now we’re doing it for REEFLINE,” Meiner said during a beachside ceremony last month. “I’m so proud to be working together with the private market to make sure that this continues right here in Miami Beach to be the blueprint for other cities to utilize.”
The nonprofit also offers community education programs, where volunteers can plant corals alongside scientists, and a floating marine learning center, where participants can gain first-hand experience in coral conservation every month.
Caminos, the group’s founder, acknowledges that the installation won’t fix all of the problems — which are as big as climate change and sea level rise — but she said it can serve as a catalyst for dialogue about the value of coastal ecosystems.
“We can show how creatively, collaboratively and interdisciplinarily we can all tackle a man-made problem with man-made solutions,” Caminos said.
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Associated Press videojournalist Cody Jackson contributed to this report.
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Follow David Fischer on the social platform Bluesky: @dwfischer.bsky.social
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Five men are facing charges after an undercover teen sex trafficking investigation in Miami, authorities said.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office Human Trafficking Task Force and Miami Police Department’s Special Investigations Section had posed as a mother to offered her daughters, ages 13 and 15, for sexual services in exchange for money, arrest reports said.
The five suspects agreed to pay for sex and when they showed up at a hotel for the encounter they were taken into custody by tactical officers, the reports said.
“I knew it, I knew, I knew that it was this,” one suspect kept repeating in Spanish as he was taken into custody, the reports said.
When the suspect’s duffel bag was searched officers found 18 condoms, 7 different lubricants and lotions, adult toys and bondage restraints, among other items, the reports said.
Another suspect said he’d never engaged in that type of activity before and “requested forgiveness,” the reports said.
The five face charges including human trafficking, records showed.
Miami, FL
Miami-Dade deputies detain elderly father who they say shot and killed his son after a domestic dispute
A 75-year-old man has been detained after Miami-Dade deputies say he shot and killed his son after a domestic dispute in Palmetto Bay.
This happened, according to investigators, at approximately 4:49 p.m. in the area of SW 168th Street and 92nd Avenue.
When deputies arrived, they found the elderly man, who had not yet been identified, and immediately detained him for questioning.
Afterwards, they conducted a security sweep and found an adult male, 47, suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.
Deputies say this isn’t the first time they have responded to the home.
“We have responded to this particular residence in the past due to mental health-type incidents,” MDSO PIO Detective Argemis “AC” Colome said.
Deputies say the dispatcher heard a dispute happening over the phone during the 911 call, but it’s unclear what led to the shooting and who was having the mental health crisis.
“The individual who shot was the father, and the male deceased on the scene was the son,” Colome said.
Neighbors reacted to this family tragedy with shock.
“So sad, a little bit concerned cause maybe you’re, you know, you’re staying somewhere, and you don’t know what’s actually happening at the other houses,” Giorgos Kollilekas, who lives in the area, said.
Colome said that there is no danger to the community as this was the result of a domestic dispute.
“There’s always help, please, there’s a lot of hotlines, there’s a lot of numbers. You can call us. At the end of the day, getting help early can mitigate situations like this,” Colome said.
No other information has been released, including the identities of those involved or what caused the dispute.
The investigation is ongoing.
Cain and Kushner are launching a South Florida real estate joint venture, planning a luxury apartment tower in Edgewater for their first project, The Real Deal has learned.
London-based Cain, led by Jonathan Goldstein, and New York-based Kushner, led by Laurent Morali and Nicole Kushner Meyer, plan a 40-story, 364-unit project on Cain’s 1.5-acre site at 614 and 720 Northeast 27th Street in Miami, according to a news release. The property is near the Missoni Baia condo tower that Cain co-developed with Vlad Doronin’s OKO Group.
BDT & MSD Partners provided a $42 million loan for the project, which is in the pre-development phase. Construction is expected to start late next year, the release says.
The Cain-Kushner JV is targeting residential and mixed-use investments and developments in the tri-county region.
“We are looking at all opportunities that we think are sensible,” Goldstein said.
Their South Florida JV comes as the region is experiencing another influx of out-of-staters after the pandemic-era boom, only this time the in-migration is primarily of wealthy individuals and their companies amid the blue-to-red-state migration.
Yet, Cain and Kushner’s plans for Edgewater apartments come as the multifamily market has softened due to hefty deliveries in recent years. A record 18,600 units were completed in 2024, outpacing leasing that year by about 20 percent, CoStar Group data shows. Although construction starts have slowed, last year’s 12,718 unit completions still surpassed total leasing for the year by about 1,000 apartments.
It has led to slower lease-ups, more concessions and a drop in the average asking rents across South Florida.
Developers starting projects now have said demand will catch up by the time they finish their buildings, with many adding that South Florida remains a strong apartment market. Many are betting on luxury rentals, which CoStar’s data showed made up the bulk of leasing in recent years.
“We are big believers in South Florida and big believers in Miami,” Goldstein said.
Cain, backed by Todd Boehly’s Eldridge Industries, has been investing in South Florida for nearly a decade, with the JV in some ways marking its second chapter in the region.
Cain’s most recent project is the Delano Miami Beach renovation. The hotel, which closed in 2020, is expected to reopen in time for the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix early next month.
Aside from the Missoni Baia condo tower, Cain also partnered with OKO on the Una Residences condo tower in Brickell and the 57-story 830 Brickell office tower. The office building was completed in 2024 fully pre-leased, catching a demand surge during the pandemic-era in-migration of out-of-state companies to Miami. Cain also is an investor in Doronin’s hospitality firm Aman Group.
Kushner has a presence in Miami’s Edgewater, completing the 37-story, 420-unit apartment tower at 2000 Biscayne Boulevard in 2024, with plans for more residential development next-door at 1900 Biscayne Boulevard. It also purchased the 276-unit Hamilton apartment building at 555 Northeast 34th Street from Aimco.
Elsewhere, Kushner plans a 932-unit multifamily development at 300 West Broward Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. It borrowed a $115 million construction loan last year for a luxury 68-unit apartment project in Surfside. And it scored approval in October for a 470-unit rental building and synagogue development near Hollywood’s Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
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