"In case you haven't heard, here's the situation," Sweat Records' Lauren "Lolo" Reskin writes on the record shop's blog. "Two companies have proposals on the table to completely renovate the Miami Beach Convention Center site.
"South Beach ACE wants to preserve the Fillmore Miami Beach and make it better," Reskin continues, bluntly breaking down the options. "Portman CMC wants to bulldoze the Fillmore and build a new, smaller venue that primarily houses a Cirque du Soleil show."
Over the years, the Fillmore has often been threatened by big-money Miami Beach development. But as Reskin says, even if Miami's best midsized live music venue has beaten the odds before, "it should be clear to any music lover in South Florida [that] WE CANNOT LET THIS VENUE BE TAKEN AWAY FROM US."
Of course, Lolo's also offering concrete tips for helping preserve SoBe's beautiful, old Jackie Gleason Theater.
How to Save the Fillmore, According to Sweat Records' Lauren Reskin
1. Write to the Mayor of Miami Beach and the Commissioners and (politely and cordially) tell them you support preserving the Fillmore as a live music venue. Here are their email addresses: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. Definitely mention if you are a Miami Beach resident and/or if you are involved in the music industry and/or you just have great memories of attending shows there.
2. Go like these two Facebook pages: Save the Fillmore and South Beach ACE
3. Mark your calendars and come out on Monday, May 13. This is the next community meeting about the project, and it'd be great to have a strong showing of support from the local music community. We're planning more for that and will keep you posted here and via FB.
And urgently articulating how bleak a Fillmore-less existence would be for Miami music fans, Lolo's even penned a letter to the editor, published in the Miami Herald.
"To hear that we might lose the Fillmore (formerly the historic former Jackie Gleason Theater)," she writes, "is the worst possible news for music lovers in South Florida... Losing the Fillmore would be a huge step backwards, with booking agents again seeing Miami as a desert for their artists.
"This," Reskin concludes, "would be a tragedy that reverberates through South Florida for years to come."
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