Coral Gables is a city that prides itself in looking classy and keeping its aesthetics pleasing to the eye. The City Beautiful, after all, spent a quarter of a million tax dollars and fought all the way to the Florida Supreme Court in 2003 to keep its prohibition on trucks from being parked overnight in front of a residence. You'd think with all its stuffy rules about keeping everything pretty, Coral Gables city government would do something to address the eyesore of a public garage at 245 Andalusia Ave., says luxury condo real estate broker Andres Asion.
For the past two months, Asion has been complaining to city officials about the deteriorating state of the garage. He fired off emails to Mayor James Cason, City Manager Pat Salerno, and city commissioners with photos of the garage falling apart, but no one has responded to his inquiry, Asion claims.
We're waiting on a call back from Salerno for comment.
Asion, vice president of sales at Fortune International Realty, says if a regular citizen owned the garage, the city's code enforcement arm would have issued hefty fines by now. "Who fines the city when they have abandoned looking property?" Asion says.
On May 21, Asion had some time to kill waiting for assistance after he had damaged the front bumper of his car on a broken parking stopper. He walked around the garage and with his cell phone snapped pictures of rusted out railings, structural beams and fire hose holders, as well as mold seeping through the exterior walls of the garage.
Follow Francisco Alvarado on Twitter: @thefrankness.
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