![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/MIA_2026-01-14AD0574CoconutGrovePlayhouse_1.JPG\" "\\"The")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The historic front building of the Coconut Grove Playhouse is seen shortly after the auditorium at its rear was demolished in early 2026 to make way for a smaller 300-seat theater under a Miami-Dade County plan to rebuild the fabled but long-closed theater.<\/p>\n
PHOTO BY AL DIAZ<\/p>\n
adiaz@miamiherald.com<\/p>\n
Miami city commissioners on Thursday unanimously gave what could be the final green light to a $40 million plan to rebuild and reopen the historic, long-shuttered Coconut Grove Playhouse after 13 years of legal and political battles.<\/p>\n
The commission voted 5-0 to grant an appeal by Miami-Dade County, which is running the playhouse project and was challenging a May decision by the city\u2019s planning and zoning board that would have blocked the plan<\/a> from moving forward.<\/p>\n Miami-Dade County Commissioner Raquel Regalado, whose district includes Coconut Grove and who has served as the playhouse project\u2019s public face, was jubilant after the vote. She compared the result to seeing the plume of white smoke rise from the Vatican when a new pope is elected.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are done and ready to go,\u201d Regalado said in an interview after the quasi-judicial hearing at Miami City Hall.<\/p>\n She said final designs for a modern new 300-seat standalone theater and restoration of the playhouse\u2019s 1927 Mediterranean front building have been finished and await only building permits from the city to proceed to construction. The front building, protected as a historic landmark, is already undergoing structural stabilization after the completion of interior demolition and the controversial razing of the large auditorium behind it earlier this year.<\/p>\n Separately, the city\u2019s Miami Parking Authority can also move ahead with a linked $45 million plan for a new garage and office and commercial space on the playhouse\u2019s adjacent surface parking lot, though its specifics are still being finalized, Regalado said.<\/p>\n Will there be another appeal for the Coconut Grove Playhouse plan?<\/p>\n David Winker, an attorney for a group of Grove residents who have persistently challenged the county plan, said they are considering appealing Thursday\u2019s decision to the administrative division of the Miami-Dade Circuit Court.<\/p>\n Past court decisions in numerous legal challenges that have consistently gone in the county\u2019s favor, however, suggest that may be a long-shot effort. Earlier this year, a court dismissed the latest legal challenge by the group, Preserve the West Grove.<\/p>\n The filing of an appeal won\u2019t slow the project unless the group wins an injunction, Regalado said, a prospect she called unlikely given its string of court losses.<\/p>\n The commission hearing came two months after the city planning board effectively denied the county a set of zoning variances needed for construction of the new theater and parking garage as well as public plazas, a promenade and elaborate landscaping on the property, which sits at the corner of Main Highway and historic Charles Avenue, once the heart of Miami\u2019s first Black settlement.<\/p>\n While the planning board voted 5-4 for the variances, that fell short of the required six-vote supermajority required for approval.<\/p>\n The county had previously won the board\u2019s OK for the same plan, but long delays caused by legal and political challenges by Grove residents and then-Mayor Francis Suarez meant those original approvals had expired, while the board\u2019s composition in the meantime changed.<\/p>\n What are the objections to the county\u2019s plan?<\/p>\n Residents of Charles Avenue and the historically Black but rapidly gentrifying neighborhood around it objected to the county plan, saying they feared intrusion and increased traffic from the project, which they described as a large commercial and shopping development.<\/p>\n After the planning board vote, Miami City Commissioner Damian Pardo held a town hall meeting at which Regalado and other county officials sought to allay those fears, promising to shield the neighborhood and develop traffic-mitigation measures.<\/p>\n That was enough to satisfy West Grove church and community groups, leaving only the Preserve the West Grove group to contest the plan on Thursday. The group was seeking to intervene in the county appeal as a legal party and secure a legally binding \u201cbenefits\u201d agreement that would include a traffic plan, guarantee of jobs to community members, and access for local churches and organizations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not oppose the playhouse,\u201d West Grove resident Mamie Armbrister told commissioners during public testimony before the hearing. \u201cWe just don\u2019t want our neighborhood invaded.\u201d<\/p>\n But another West Grove stakeholder, businessman Jihad Rashid, said it was time to allow the county to move.<\/p>\n \u201cDammit, let\u2019s do something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins denied the West Grove group formal legal status but allowed Winker to make his case that the zoning variances the county sought and the size of commercial space its plan envisions, about 35,000 square feet, violate the property\u2019s civic and institutional zoning classification.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the bottom line here,\u201d Winker said. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to circumvent the code, and they can go back to the drawing board.\u201d<\/p>\n But commissioners agreed with the county and the city\u2019s planning department that the variances are appropriate. In granting the county\u2019s appeal, they also established requirements for a traffic plan and measures to lessen the impact of commercial activity on the neighborhood behind the playhouse.<\/p>\n \u201cThis obviously has been an incredibly emotional and contentious issue,\u201d Pardo said, noting that the county had already stripped back the garage and office space facing the neighborhood in response to residents\u2019 concerns. \u201cI think the county has done a good job of designing and preserving what could be preserved.\u201d<\/p>\n And, he added: \u201cWhen you hear that this is a big commercial thing, it\u2019s just not.\u201d<\/p>\n Higgins, who doesn\u2019t have a vote on the commission though she served as meeting chair Thursday, said the county plan and the zoning exceptions it requires represent a significant improvement for the site, which Regalado described as an \u201casphalt jungle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe exceptions are so much better than what we have today,\u201d Higgins said. \u201cWe are literally going to have eight times the amount of green space and double the number of trees.\u201d<\/p>\n Efforts to save the playhouse, widely considered to be one of the city\u2019s leading architectural and cultural landmarks, stretch back to the abrupt closing of the debt-laden nonprofit theater in 2006. The county has been trying to resurrect the theater under a 2013 agreement reached by then-Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez with the state of Florida, which owns the property.<\/p>\n The county concluded that revenue from parking and office and retail space, which the playhouse\u2019s three-story front building used to include, is essential to the economic viability of the reopened theater, to be managed by the GableStage company and Florida International University.<\/p>\n Its consultants also concluded that its expansive auditorium was antiquated and had too many seats for the theater to fill, opting instead for a smaller, more viable modern theater in its place with around 300 seats \u2014 a decision that led to years of litigation and objections from preservationists, theater buffs and neighbors.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Image21.jpeg\" "\\"Image21\\"")
A 2017 rendering showing how the Coconut Grove Playhouse\u2019s historic front building could look on Main Highway after restoration. A proposed parking garage is visible behind a street tree to the right of the historic building. Arquitectonica and Miami-Dade County <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/MIA_106CgrovePlyhouse04NEWP.jpeg\" "\\"MIA_106CgrovePlyhouse04NEWP\\"")
A cyclist rides on Main Highway past the historic Coconut Grove Playhouse in 2024. The theater\u2019s facade was reinforced with temporary beams after a contractor\u2019s error during interior demolition work caused a partial ceiling collapse. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com <\/p>\n
![\"Profile](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0.jfif.jpeg\")