Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Mr. Giveaway” Gimenez‘s plan to privatize Vizcaya Museum
and Gardens, transferring operations to a non-profit board like the one at the county-owned Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, comes just as the public park and tourist attraction considers a $50-million plan to renovate its existing space and expand across the street.
Que convenient. Because that makes it easier for members of the mayor’s friends and family plan to get in on the project.
Remember, after Gimenez diverted $5 million toward the PAC Trust for roof repairs, a construction company that employs the mayor’s son got a $4 million no-bid contract. The semi-independent PAC board — whose members do not have to file financial disclosures — awarded the job with no public input or even notice.
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez’s sons’ firm got $4 million PAC repair job
This privatization of Vizcaya could be a bigger boon to somebody or lots of somebodies and it smells like another insider deal giveaway that the mayor has been secretly working on for months. 
You know, like the Key Biscayne golf course that Donald Trump wanted and has since abandoned. Gimenez had to turn to another giveaway project.
And it appears that the county wants to do this — transfer this gem of an asset that is ours — by October. Pero, por supuesto. Par for the course at County Hall: Hurry up and ram that through before we have any time to consider options or the public realizes what is going on.
The memo to the commission on behalf of Gimenez from Michael Spring, the mayor’s senior advisor, says the proposed reorganization is recommended by a consultant because of “shared concerns” for the museum’s future. The county would keep ownership of the grounds, buildings and historic furnishings and, we assume from the language, demand that some public access be maintained. The county would also keep funding it — like the Arsht and the Perez Art Museum Miami — to the tune of $2.5 million, which is a third of it’s budget.
But the museum’s main house, outside “village” buildings and 
10 acres of gardens and brush need more, much more, for a restoration of the existing structures and property is estimated at more than $30 million, according to a Miami Herald story by Doug Hanks. And the Vizcaya Foundation wants to grow. It wants to expand across the street to where the Patricia and Philip Frost Museum of Science is, now that it is relocating to its new home at Museum Park in the downtown. How could Vizcaya, a historic site built in 1916, you might ask, possibly expand? Well, Ladra thinks they want a gift shop. Oh, and probably some lecture rooms. Maybe a space for a summer camp?
Imagine! A gift shop on one of the last plots of open land in that area.
But it will cost more than $17 million to tear down the existing structures on the science museum side — including the planetarium, 
which would be a shame — and build what they want.
That’s a total of $48 million they need to raise for their wish list.
The plan to privatize Vizcaya is said to be in order for the museum’s board of trustees — which includes people like Laura Munilla, of the MCM firm, and JC Flores, who ran Gimenez’s 2011 campaign, and Inson Kim, who works at the county as
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