WGM Weekly: Miami Is Monaco not Manhattan, Carbone Beach vs Met Gala, & Delano 1st Look
+ Elon Watch, Alex Karp Spends 75 Million On The Venetian, & Disney On Ice
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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 5.5.26
On My Mind: Miami Is Not Manhattan. Miami Is Monaco.
A small, dense, international city-state with disproportionate influence, a magnetic policy posture, and a self-selecting population of people who chose to be here.
Hospitality Local Insider
First Look: The Delano
Only time will tell whether the Delano returns to her grandeur. She will never be what she was and that is the point. She needs to be what she is.
Beach Business
Implosion Number 2: The Fight For The Deauville
A 110-page lawsuit, an 88-year-old matriarch, $500 million of oceanfront, and the developer who keeps ending up in the room.
Carbone Beach Vs The Met Gala
New York can keep the staircase. We’ll take the rigatoni, the ocean, and the music.
Real Estate
Elon Watch: 300 Million Dollar House & A Helicopter
A mystery billionaire landed a chopper in Biscayne Bay, took a raft to shore, and walked the most talked-about lot in America.
Palantir’s Alex Karp Spends 75 Million On The Venetian
Alex Karp has now spent roughly $75 million on a Venetian compound.
Family Affair
Disney On Ice Was The Move
Saturday afternoon, 30 minutes to Coral Gables, none of the Orlando hassle, and a smile on my daughter’s face I will not forget.
ON MY MIND: MIAMI IS NOT MANHATTAN. MIAMI IS MONACO.
There are two Miamis right now, and they are sitting at the same table.
On one side: small businesses are hurting. I’m hearing it directly, bookings are down across multiple operators from doctors to tennis instructors I know personally, the kind of soft-quarter signal that doesn’t show up in a press release but tells you exactly where the consumer is. Spirit Airlines, the airline that quietly made South Florida accessible to half the country, is gone, and combined with rising fuel costs, that almost certainly means a meaningful dip in visitation for a stretch. Or maybe the opposite happens: maybe it just means the people who would have gone to Europe this summer come here instead. I genuinely don’t know which way it cuts. Both are possible. Brightline, a train I deeply want to win, is carrying $5.5 billion in debt against $214 million of revenue and a going-concern letter from its auditors. The macro picture has teeth.
On the other side: mega-restaurateurs from Dubai and hoteliers from all over the world are arriving with plans to build entire empires here. Gaia reportedly spent north of $30 million on their build-out, and they don’t even own the real estate. That is not a restaurant opening. That is a statement of belief about where the next decade of global capital wants to eat dinner. U-Hauls are still pointed south. Stephen Ross, a man who has built more of this cities than most governments, is on record saying we are in the first inning of corporate relocation to Miami. The capital is here, and the capital is still moving.
How do you hold both of those Miamis in your hand at the same time?
You stop trying to compare Miami to the rest of America, and you start comparing it to the right peer set.
Miami is not Manhattan. Miami is Monaco. A small, dense, international city-state with disproportionate influence, a magnetic policy posture, and a self-selecting population of people who chose to be here. We are no income tax. We are pro-business permitting. We are second-home capital from São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Lagos, Riyadh, Madrid, Dubai, and yes, New York and Los Angeles. We are the only American city where the international money treats us as the home market and the domestic market as the secondary one.
That is not a soft factor. That is the entire game.
The rest of the country is staring down a hard 18 months, a debt cycle that has run too long, a consumer that is tapped, a federal balance sheet that doesn’t get fixed by hoping. There will be pain. There will be retrenchment. There will be cities that get smaller and meaner before they get better.
Miami will not be one of them. The capital here is global, not American. The migration here is structural, not cyclical. The policy stack, state and local, is the most business-friendly and residential-friendly in the country, and it was built deliberately, by people who watched what happened to the cities that chose otherwise. We are insulated. Not immune. Insulated.
But, and this is the part that matters, insulated is not invincible. Monaco is Monaco because Monaco protected what made Monaco. Every great city-state in history that lost its edge lost it the same way: it stopped defending the conditions that created the magic.
Miami’s job, right now, in this moment, is to protect the protections. Keep building, keep welcoming, keep saying yes.
The world is in a very interesting moment. We are in our own world inside of it.
Welcome to the new world.
CARBONE BEACH vs THE MET GALA
Two events. Same Monday. One winner.
Food:
Met Gala: Anna Wintour has reportedly banned chives, onions, garlic, and anything resembling flavor. Past menus have included a single edible flower on a plate.
Carbone Beach: Mario Carbone’s spicy rigatoni vodka. Veal parm the size of a hubcap. Meatballs. Bread that tastes like bread used to taste.
Setting:
Met Gala: a museum, a building specifically designed for not eating and not having fun.
Carbone Beach: the Atlantic Ocean is the centerpiece, the sand is the floor, the sky is the ceiling, and God did the lighting.
Entertainment:
Met Gala: a string quartet and a brief Rihanna sighting.
Carbone Beach: Ludacris, John Summit, DJ Khaled, Fat Joe, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Hart, Snoop Dogg, fifteen feet from your linguine.
