The Sweet Buy-and-Buy

Last summer University of Miami urban-planning professor Jack Winston drew up some sketches of what Dadeland Mall might look like in the first decade of the 21st Century. The sketches show motorists flowing down a tree-lined North Kendall Drive, framed between the Palmetto Expressway and Dixie Highway by twin Arcs de Triomphe. Dozens of parking garages-cum-condos stand like huge battlements surrounding Dadeland, where a vast, leafy plaza has taken over the roof covering the broad front parking areas. The self-sufficient economy of this futuristic suburban city is fueled by lawyers and bankers in nearby office towers, and fed by an existing pair of Metrorail stations.

"My wife doesn't like me to talk about this, but I'll tell you a little story," says Sternberg, who has been president of the Dadeland Merchants Association for nine years and who was the first inductee into the recently established Dadeland Hall of Fame. "My mother died a few years back, and we had to take her up to New York for burial. It got me thinking. So I bought a plot not far from here. It's just up the parkway, about a mile, on the other side of the road. I tell my wife she can wave at me when she goes by on the way to go shopping." Sternberg pauses for a moment. "The truth is, I'd like to be buried right here, anywhere, as long as it's on Dadeland property. I love this mall. It's been my life, really.