MIAMI’S INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART MAY DEMOLISH HISTORIC HOMES TO BUILD SCULPTURE PARK

The Institute of Contemporary Art received permission Tuesday night to tear down three homes in a historic district in order to build a sculpture park, reports the Miami Herald’s David Smiley.

In a three-to-two vote, Miami’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board will allow the Design District–based museum to demolish homes on the southern area of the Buena Vista East Historic District. However, conditions placed on the approval may ultimately deter the museum: for instance, that it may not use the sculpture park gate to bring in sculptures too big to fit through the museum’s other entrances.

The neighborhood association first frowned on the project, but has since worked out terms it approves with museum chairwoman Irma Braman and her husband Norman Braman. Still, some neighbors are “angry at the idea of sitting on their front porch and looking at cocktail parties and social functions behind a fence, and bamboo and buttonwood trees,” as Smiley writes.

Steve Helfman, the museum’s attorney, said that if the approval’s too restrictive, his client may file an appeal. A rezoning of the whole museum property must also still be approved by the city.