City officials are pushing for the removal of graffiti on the former VITAS building in downtown Miami. Commissioner Joe Carollo led a news conference yesterday, urging property owners to clean up the building’s facade before the New Year’s celebrations at Bayfront Park. Officials say the graffiti creates a negative image for the city. “I mean, would you love to have that next to you where you lived? I don’t think so!” Carollo emphasized at the conference, as reported by WSVN.
Enforcement efforts from earlier in the year had pinned the property owners with a one-month deadline to cover the graffiti or face fines up to $500 daily, an initiative that has since seen several delays. However, the city’s patience appears to have waned. During a meeting yesterday, the code enforcement board denied any further extensions to the property owner. “It looks like the because they allowed it to be open season on their structure,” said Assistant City Attorney Rachel Dooley, according to an NBC Miami report.
In response to this ongoing controversy, other city leaders have echoed commissioners’ frustrations. In a statement obtained by WSVN, Commissioner Damian Pardo promised a solution within weeks, stating, “The city administration has worked diligently with the building’s developers and we expect screens to cover the graffiti within 2-3 weeks at the latest.”
Despite these efforts, feelings among residents and tourists are mixed. Some view the graffiti as a blight, indicative of neglect or worse, while others appreciate it as urban art that could enhance rather than detract from Miami’s image. Indeed, during Art Basel 2023, artists from across the world painted the building, transforming it into a canvas that now sparks this debate. “Graffiti is art all in itself. I like it,” Lydia Price said in an interview with WSVN, expressing a sentiment that clashes with the city’s leadership’s resolve to cleanse the space of its colorful skins.
“Not in over a year painting, covering up, doing anything to remove this graffiti is quite frankly unforgivable,” Dooley remarked in a moment of frustration echoed by the city’s demand for aesthetic conformity ahead of its luminescent holiday festivities, as noted by NBC Miami.
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