He calls it the Kush corner.
It’s a construction site where crews are renovating the historic building at the corner of North Miami Avenue and NE 20th Street in Wynwood. That’s where Matt Kuscher is rebuilding Kush restaurant, which closed a couple of years ago, and to literally top it off, he’s creating 10 studio apartments upstairs. They will be affordable housing units reserved for hospitality industry workers.
“Centrally located so you can work in Wynwood, so hopefully, all my employees are walking to work and living an amazing life,” Kuscher said.
Wynwood is booming with construction sites. South Florida in general is booming, but Kuscher says too many people are on the outside looking in.
“You know, we’re building, building, building, and all the employees have nowhere to live because they’re getting priced out,” Kuscher said.
Veteran food writer Carlos Frias first reported Kuscher’s plan on his site, carlosfrias.com.
“This is providing housing for people that are going to live and work in this area,” Frias said.
The idea is unique and fills a void.
“We’ve heard stories of people who are living in Hialeah and taking a series of buses and bus systems to get to Miami Beach to work in the hotel industry, right, and then back, and we’re talking about hours, two, three hours of someone’s life just evaporating in a commute, something like this eliminates that.” Frias said.
“I’m hoping to start a movement and be the king of affordable housing and restaurant mix-use here in Miami. I want Kush and I want affordable housing to go hand in hand together,” Kuscher said, adding that he has plans to replicate this project in other sites.
The Omni Community Redevelopment Agency played an integral role in getting the plan off the ground. The CRA invested in the project, and in return, Kuscher signed a contract to keep Kush there and to keep the apartments affordable for the next 50 years.
“So the building was set to be demolished and the reality is, I’m a romantic at heart and I wanted to keep the soul of Wynwood, that building has so much history, it’s a hundred years old, Whitey Bulger used to live up there,” Kuscher explained. “It was a brothel for 30 years where you just buy your drink here and go upstairs to the apartments where they were so a little Miami culture, a little magic city.”
The new Kush restaurant and the apartments should be ready to go in about three months. The brothel, however, will remain a relic of history.