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Irma, Art, & Hurricane Preparedness in “South Florida’s Gold Coast”

Miami and Miami Beach are home to many significant collections of art.

Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest contemporary art event in North America showing about $3 billion in works, has been situated in Miami Beach since 2002.

Some of the works of art are housed in residences maintained in any of the more than 400 luxury condo towers that have been developed since 2011. Some are kept in single family homes. Of course, works of art are also to be found housed in museums, both public and private, and in cultural centers.

Marion Maneker of Art Market Monitor, writing from the 2017 Global Auction House Summit presented by Invaluable, reports:

“At the Invaluable Auction House Summit in Boston, Thomas Burns from Fortress Fine Art Storage and Simon Hornby of Crozier both addressed the problems with hurricane preparedness in South Florida’s Gold Coast.

“Burns says his teams have been working all week to move their clients art into Fortress’s facility and prepare the building for an unprecedented blow. “Starting Tuesday we were inundated with clients who were completely unprepared,” Burns said. It turns out major works are in place without insurance and the insurance companies have placed a moratorium on new insurance in the area this week.

“Fortress has a program that allows collectors to put their works in storage in June when they leave the area. The big question is how many have had their works moved back to the beach houses so early in the season.

“Hornby pointed to the fact that art insurance carriers were slow to engage these kind of hurricane preparedness programs waiting until this Tuesday to call for logistical support. By then, it was already too late to add capacity amid the jammed traffic and fuel shortages caused by the massive evacuation taking place.”

Meanwhile, workers at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach have been working to fortify the bullet-proof glass that protects Damien Hirst’s life-size, gilded with 24-karat gold sculpture of the skeleton of a mammoth. Entitled “Gone But Not Forgotten” (2014), the sculpture was acquired at auction in 2014 for $15 million by Ukrainian-American Len Blavatnik. “Gone But Not Forgotten” was then installed in the garden of the Faena Hotel Miami Beach ahead of the opening of Faena Forum in 2016. Mr. Blavatnik is owner of Warner Music Group and a partner, with Argentine entrepreneur and developer Alan Faena, in the Faena Forum.

Mr. Hirst explains the sculpture of the mammoth as “an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful.”

“The mammoth comes from a time and place that we cannot ever fully understand. Despite its scientific reality, it has attained an almost mythical status and I wanted to play with these ideas of legend, history and science by gilding the skeleton and placing it within a monolithic gold tank. It’s such an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful, it is gone but not forgotten.”

See:

“A Miami Transformed by Wealth Braces for the Storm” | Michael Smith and Katya Kazakina, Bloomberg, 8 September 2017

“Irma Threatens Art Spread Throughout South Florida Homes” | Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 8 September 2017

“Culture’s a carnival for opening of dazzling Faena Forum” | Andres Viglucci, Miami Herald, 25 November 2016

“Hirst’s golden mammoth on display at Faena Hotel Miami Beach” | Damien Hirst.com, 8 December 2015

“Len Blavatnik buys Damien Hirst work for $15M at amfAR gala” | Emily Smith, Page Six, 23 May 2014

#Miami #MiamiBeach #Irma #HurricaneIrma #preparations #insurance #art #artmarket #artstorage #FortressFineArtStorage #Crozier #ArtBaselMiamiBeach #Faena #FaenaForum #AlanFaena #LenBlavatnik #DamienHirst #GoneButNotForgotten

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real estate investment & climate change futures ・ the next dry neighborhood

If there’s anything more complicated than the global forces of thermal expansion, ice sheet melt and ocean circulation that contribute to worldwide sea-level rise, it might be the forces of real estate speculation.

Real estate investment may no longer be just about the next hot neighborhood, it may also now be about the next dry neighborhood.

“‘That’s it, it’s that simple. To be on the beach and to be on the water costs a lot more money, and the cheaper parts of town were furthest from the beach — but it just turns out that the cheapest parts of town farthest from the beach are the highest elevation, and now they’re worth a lot more than they used to be.'”

Jesse M. Keenan, Harvard Graduate School of Design

“‘The real issue is: Are people making real estate decisions based on climate change futures, rather than sort of normal speculation?'” observes Hugh Gladwin, an anthropologist at Florida International University in Miami. Gladwin’s specialty is using geographic information system mapping to understand large, diverse urban settings.

Jesse M. Keenan is a lawyer who teaches climate change adaptation at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Mr. Keenan formerly served as the co-founder and research director of Columbia University’s Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE). His family roots are in Miami and he owns a house and has an office and parking space in Miami. He thinks people are making real estate decisions based on climate change futures.

Using survey data, Mr. Keenan is beginning to see see evidence that middle-income people are leaving Miami Beach and other places with nuisance flooding. Such flooding makes  it difficult to get around at high tides or insure a car.

Mr. Keenan observes, “‘Everybody I know that is a small owner of real estate that isn’t within the billionaire class — average middle-class, upper-middle-class Miamians who have real estate on the beach — is in the process of selling their properties and moving to the mainland.'”

Sea-level rise is exacerbating the effects of coastal flooding in South Florida. A 2016 University of Miami study finds that coastal flooding is accelerating. The coastal flooding is coinciding with an accelerated rate of sea-level rise in South Florida. The average rate of sea-level rise jumped from an increase of 3 millimeters a year before 2006 to an increase of 9 millimeters a year on average after 2006. Over the course of one decade, from 2006 to 2016, that’s about 3.5 inches of sea-level rise.

Sam Purkis, a marine geologist at the University of Miami, observes,

“‘What will happen, more than likely, is that you’ll have one big hurricane, and you’ll get a big inundation into the city. And that will serve to rot out the infrastructure — the sewer lines, the electricity, the telecoms. Everything that’s under the road. That becomes very costly to keep replacing every time this happens.'”

“‘That’s it, it’s that simple,'” says Harvard’s Jesse Keenan.

“‘To be on the beach and to be on the water costs a lot more money, and the cheaper parts of town were furthest from the beach — but it just turns out that the cheapest parts of town farthest from the beach are the highest elevation, and now they’re worth a lot more than they used to be.'”

Local governments are considering  what sea-level rise means for all those mortgage holders who pay taxes.

Coral Gables released an analysis of how it would pay for infrastructure investment in the face of a shrinking tax base if people leave.

“We’re concerned about it, we’re planning for it, we’re spending money on vulnerability studies trying to know what our vulnerabilities are in terms of our essential infrastructure, and planning to build up and save our communities as long as we can,” Jim Cason, Mayor of Coral Gables, said.

See:

“High Ground Is Becoming Hot Property As Sea Level Rises” | Erika Bolstad, ClimateWire, 1 May 2017, re-printed from ClimateWire by Scientific American with permission from E&E News

Hugh Gladwin, Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs, Florida International University

Jesse M. Keenan, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Center for Urban Real Estate, Columbia University GSAPP

Sam Purkis, Professor & Chair, Department of Marine Geosciences, Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science, University of Miami

#realestate #realestatedevelopment #realestatespeculation #art  #ArtBaselMiamiBeach #Miami #MiamiBeach #climatechange #sealevelrise #resilience #Harvard #Columbia #FloridaInternationalUniversity #UniversityofMiami