Booze sales will stop after 2 a.m. in South Beach party hub for now, may go to voters

Last call at some South Beach clubs will soon come hours earlier after the Miami Beach Commission voted Wednesday to restrict early-morning alcohol sales in the city’s entertainment district as part of a seven-month pilot program that will allow city staff to study the policy’s impact on crime.

Commissioners also unanimously voted in favor of adding a citywide voter referendum to the November ballot that would make the temporary restrictions permanent, although a binding vote cannot take place until July.

Despite the protests of club owners — and the recent failure of a 2017 voter referendum seeking to curb alcohol sales on Ocean Drive — the current citywide 5 a.m. last call for alcohol sales will be rolled back to 2 a.m. on May 22 for businesses on Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue from Fifth to 16th streets.

The change, which only affects businesses in that specific area, will take effect just days before the city hosts Memorial Day Weekend crowds.

Mayor Dan Gelber initially proposed a permanent 2 a.m. rollback, and pitched it as a tool to reduce rowdy partying and crime in South Beach. But he softened his stance and agreed to support a proposal by Commissioner Micky Steinberg for a temporary restriction that she said will allow city staff to study how the earlier cutoff affects police calls for service in the area and any potential crowd spillovers in adjacent residential neighborhoods.

“It’s an opportunity for them to really understand the issue at a greater level,” Steinberg said.

Commissioners Mark Samuelian and Steven Meiner joined Steinberg and Gelber in voting to approve the restriction.

But representatives of the bars that will be affected by the rollback said an earlier last call won’t work. And now a lawsuit from at least one impacted business — the Clevelander South Beach — is imminent, said attorney Alexander Tachmes.

“We are definitely suing,” Tachmes told the Miami Herald. “What they’ve done ... is illegal and it’s also really bad policy.”

Critics of the new law — including three commissioners who voted against it — note that for much of the last calendar year, Miami Beach has essentially had a midnight cutoff on alcohol sales due to the COVID-19 curfew, including during a chaotic spring break that prompted the proposed rollback.

“It sounds like the pilot is a bridge to an election,” said Commissioner Michael Góngora, who voted against the restriction but in favor of the referendum. “I’m not supportive of a pilot with no purpose. I am supportive of hearing from the voters again in November.”

David Wallack, the owner of Mango’s Tropical Cafe on Ocean Drive, said his business is not responsible for the parties that break out in the streets of South Beach. He said he would meet with counsel for the Clevelander to “learn what the proper course of action is.”

“It’s going to court,” he said. “A judge will decide.”

Mango’s, which reopened in April after closing early on in the COVID pandemic, stands to lose millions of dollars if it loses three hours of alcohol sales, Wallack said.

“We will lose mega millions,” he said. “We will have to redo our business plan to correspond with the law.”

The rollback is part of a 12-point plan Gelber proposed after a contentious spring break that aims to break up the bloc of bars in South Beach and convert the district into a “live-work-play” area with boutique offices and new apartment buildings.

The city said the rollback would affect 44 businesses that are currently allowed to sell alcohol until 5 a.m.

The commission also voted Wednesday to eliminate a noise exemption from Ninth to 11th streets, restrict future stand-alone bars in the district and remove off-street parking requirements for new residential developments in the district to spur investment.

The promised lawsuit from the Clevelander, which is located on 10th Street and Ocean Drive, will include a challenge to the noise crackdown, Tachmes said. The business owns a conditional use permit from the city allowing live outdoor entertainment until 5 a.m., and Tachmes said the legislation improperly infringes on its long-guaranteed rights.

Gelber said the zoning changes that created the entertainment district in the 1980s did not account for growing residential communities in and around the district. Even before the pandemic and spring break, he said, conditions in South Beach have grown more unruly.

“The pandemic might have revealed more of the fault lines of the area, but it’s pretty clear that over the last few decades this area has become an anything-goes area,” he told reporters after the vote.

In the run-up to Wednesday’s vote, Gelber said critics sent him messages calling him “a cancer,” threatened to sue the city and promised to run a candidate against him in November’s mayoral race.

“I know that there is a lot of emotion about this issue,” he said Wednesday.