HPB Minutes 2012-0717 - Laserfiche WebLink

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during Hurricane Wilma, on the pergola landing, the tide comes up and it is slippery. Jorge Camaraza said it is hard to tell where his property is, and Commissioner Scholl said that is a problem too. Mr. Camaraza said a lot of people are probably walking on it without knowing it is private property. Commissioner Scholl said they own right out to the point and even when the pergola was there, folks used to think it was a City park. The property is already walled and fenced on•about 2/3rds of the property, and they are just extending it. Cassey Gabor asked if Al Capone really lived there,and Commissioner Scholl said that he met a man about 15 years ago who was in his 80's, and said in about 1931 he came up there in a boat and it was a brothel. This was during Prohibition, downstairs they had a little speakeasy set up, and upstairs was where all the women were, and so he believes it was leased at one point by that organization. That is what he has come to understand because he has heard so many times from so many people about that, although he has never found any evidence in the house. He said Al Capone owned a house in Miami Beach on Palm Island and he did visit it years ago. Mr. Schulman said a Delta airline pilot by the name of Hank and Rosie Morrison owned it and he was very friendly and they went to that house. Commissioner Scholl said that somebody had leased his house during that time period and used it for something which created that urban legend, but there is no record of it. It was sold when Harvey Graves conveyed Sunny Isles to a German individual in the late 1920's, and at that time they put a value on the house of$100,000 in that conveyance, and then it went through a series of transfers based on that corporation. However it didn't have that many owners. Mr. Schulman showed an original Stock Certificate for the property for stock holders,there is$300,000, $200,000,and$100,000 in common stocks, and he hung.this in History Hall. Cassey Gabor said since it is historic, it is a good idea to study who lived there,and Commissioner Scholl said he can tell you that by the ownership but they are the first people to live there full time. When the Graves owned it and then the heirs owned it, they never lived there full time. Some folks bought it in the 1950's and they used it as a vacation home, and the individuals that he bought it from bought it for their father. They were real estate individuals from New Jersey named the Rubens but they never lived there because their father died before they moved him into it. They bought it but he died four month later,and they were going to move him down from New Jersey. Commissioner Scholl stated that from what he can see from the property records there has been only four families over the years that have owned it, and that he and his family are the first folks to live there full time since the house was built. Ms. Uguccioni asked Commissioner Scholl if he was the owner when it was first designated by the County, and he said no. It was his understanding after talking to the previous owners, the Rubens, that they thought they were going to get some kind of tax break by designating it but they were wrong. Nevertheless, it did get designated because of the history of it. Back then in the mid 1980's the County wasn't paying much attention to Sunny Isles and the beaches because it was kind of an outpost back then. Ms. Uguccioni said there is a tax incentive now, and Commissioner Scholl said he did not know that. Commissioner Scholl said that it has been quite a year for him because of Citizens Insurance who cancelled their insurance,and so his insurance went from $5,000 a year to $27,000 a year and they cut the coverage in half. Cassey Gabor said she doesn't understand why you don't paint the house the original color,and Commissioner Scholl said it started out that color and then the lime-based paint wore over the years. The house has had eight different colors on it, when they pressure cleaned it they could see there was a bunch of different colors on it, but they think it started out as an oak wood dark Agenda 2012-0717 HPB Mtg Page 4 of 5