Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (Photo by Sonya Revell)
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s call to make Miami the new Silicon Valley has Big Tech and real estate pouring cash into his coffers.
Newly minted venture capital billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya, crypto investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer and others are backing the mayor’s reelection campaign this year to the tune of more than $2 million.
Suarez himself admits that many of the major tech players who have written checks “don’t even live in Miami, but have been excited by my vision.”
The mayor has embraced cryptocurrency and proposed building a high-speed tunnel with Elon Musk’s Boring Company to alleviate the city’s traffic woes. He said that the business community “can only vote by contributing.”
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Gaining Popularity in Miami
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America s Wunderkind Mayor On Miami 2 0, Silicon Beach , And His Own Political Ambitions
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The Coconut Grove Playhouse and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (Phillip Pessar/Flickr, Getty)
A plan to partly demolish and renovate the historic Coconut Grove Playhouse is back in play, after a court struck Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s veto of the project.
Miami-Dade County wants to build a 300-seat theater that would incorporate elements of the original 1927 auditorium and restore the facade. The playhouse has a city historic designation and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
In its ruling, a circuit court appellate panel cited “troubling” emails between Suarez and several preservationists sent to him before his May 2019 veto. The emails “addressed the justification for and substance” of the veto message and “are presumed to be prejudicial,” violating the county’s due process, Judge Lisa Walsh wrote in the April 7 opinion.