In Miami, Warehouse District Becomes Art Haven

MIAMI, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 04th Oct, 2016 ) - A decade ago, Jessica Goldman Srebnick was afraid of walking through Wynwood, a derelict warehouse neighborhood in Miami. Today, she is the virtual curator of an open-air art gallery that has turned the area into one of the hippest places in the United States.

Windowless factory warehouses in the bleak urban district have become a venue where artists, including internationally famous ones, paint murals that raise street art to new heights. The flourishing neighborhood -- which recently made headlines as the first place in America where the Zika virus was locally transmitted -- has about 70 art galleries and 20 restaurants.

As it gentrified, rents skyrocketed, going from $3 to $6 per square foot to between $65 and $95 today. How did this transformation occur? The alchemy lies in buying up a critical mass of properties and having the vision of revitalizing a neighborhood while respecting its character.

That is what Tony Goldman, the late father of Goldman Srebnick, did in the 2000s, when he focused his Goldman Properties, specialists in turning downtrodden areas into trendy hotspots, on Wynwood. The real-estate pioneer, for example, was the force behind the transformation of New York City's SoHo neighborhood in the 1970s and Miami Beach in the '80s.