The Village of Bal Harbour is set Tuesday to retake a vote taken last Spring on the proposed sale of its City Hall 
property — now that there are two new council members who were put on the dais by the people who want to buy it.
Councilmen David Albaum and Jeffrey Freimark, both elected in November, were practically funded by the Bal Harbour Shops and the Whitman family that owns it through their respective campaigns ($37,000 for Albaum and $54,500 for Freimark) and two political action committees that collected close to $350,000 between them.
Now, the Shops have the votes they need Tuesday to get the sale of City Hall on a referendum, preferably on a special election day when nobody will show up. Next, they will fund a slick PR campaign to urge voters to sell the building to them for $15 million and they will drum up absentee ballots from their friends and family.
There’s only one thing in their way: A fiesty Colombian abuelita named Patricia Cohen who is a councilwoman in the Village of Bal Harbour and who is adamantly against the sale, which she voted against in April in a tie vote. She may lose on the dais Tuesday. But she will campaign hard for a no vote on any referendum to sell the city’s oldest building. And she is a person with some influence in the tiny, posh town.
“It’s 62 years old and it’s our history. It’s all we have,” Cohen told Ladra.
“We don’t have 500 year old buildings.”
Cohen is also concerned about the mall’s proposed $400 million expansion. She says the trend is against more brick and mortar and doesn’t believe more retail is in the best interest of the village residents.
Her opposition, claim the mall owners and their attorney, is based in her friendship with the families that own competing retail centers — Aventura Mall and the Design District, specifically. Or that’s what they want us to think anyway. That’s why they slapped Cohen with not one but two lawsuits in an effort to get her to recuse herself.
The first came a couple of weeks after the February 2016 public records request for all of Cohen’s emails and text messages about the Bal Harbour Shops and the Church by the Sea and the Suntrust building — dating back to 2010. Also requested were any emails that were related to or associated with Aventura Mall and the Design District and some specific people, like Beth Berkowitz and Craig Robins and members of the Soffer family (who own and operate Aventura Mall). Guess they thought that 23,000 or so emails that were caught in the search terms could be collected and reviewed and redacted in two weeks.
The second came in the summer, and accuses Cohen of violating ethics ordinances and the Sunshine law because of something she whispered in the mayor’s ear at the time of the vote. He ended up voting against the sale also.
The idea is to claim Cohen has a conflict of interest because, as a landscape artist, she has worked for the Soffer family and because she sold her house 15 years ago to the younger sister of Jackie Soffer, who is married to Craig Robins, who is credited with developing the Design District.
One email was provided to another website by Whitman attorney John Shubin (Ladra could not reach him over the MLK weekend), who told the Real Deal that it indicates she was happy about the competition’s impact on the Shops. “Can u imagine a world class public green space with possibly gorgeous works of art right smack in the middle of Collins instead of that hideous suntrust bank,” Cohen asked with three question marks in a letter to a real estate broker hired by Bal Harbour to inquire about the SunTrust building site. “WE need to create something special besides Bal Harbour Shops which is gradually losing its exclusivity thanks to Craig and Jackie’s GENIUS MOVE!!!”
That email and others that the mall owners published on a website called Bal Harbour Public Records (and just let me say wow, they are going to some awfully great lengths) are taken out of context, Cohen and her attorney said. She was talking to the realtor about buying the building for the city to open a cultural or arts center before the Shops bought it first. She was being sarcastic about [Craig] Robins and [Jackie] Soffer, as it indicates with the all caps and three exclamation points.
Another email among the “10 highlighted communications” — the ones apparently deemed the most damning evidence — is about the Church by the Sea, when she learned that the mall had purchased it and heard that they may have applied for a demolition permit to make way for the expansion. But all it proves is that the longtime preservationist was on her toes.
If that’s what they got for a smoking gun, it’s lacking.
Cohen said she loves the Bal Harbour Shops. But she wants to see the kind of mixed activities that are being created in other venues.
And… wait for it… what if she’s right about the trend? She worked in the industry, after all. She was a fashion consultant who founded the Oxygen Boutique with her husband 30 plus years ago. Her now ex husband still owns the store at the Bal Harbour Shops. It’s the breadwinner for her family. One would think the conflict of interest was the other way around.
She says she is acting in the best interests of her constituents.
“The residents don’t want more luxury stores,” Cohen, pictured left with her granddaughter, told Ladra. 
“They want restaurants. They want venues, places to take their children or their parents.
“I have very fond feelings for Bal Harbour Shops but the retail landscape has changed in the past 30 years and that model is obsolete,” she said. “I am doing what I was elected to do, which is to watch out for the residents of Bal Habour.”
Ladra would say so let the people vote then. But that’s not the best answer anymore because some interests can fund slick PR campaigns and absentee ballot drives. Remember the FIU “expansion” referendum that has now become a “mandate” from the people in the university’s blatant attempt to steal a lease from the Dade County Youth Fair? This would similarly have a million dollar campaign funded by the Whitmans in favor of the sale and only grassroots abuelita opposition.
Which is what it looks like Bal Harbour is shaping up for. And it’s why the Shops haven’t dropped their lawsuits despite the fact that they’ve got the majority they need now to move ahead. Because last year, these lawsjuits intended to get Cohen to recuse herself from anything to do with the Bal Harbour expansion plans. But now that they have the vote to put the referendum on the ballot bought and paid for, it’s to discredit her when the campaign comes.
And to harass her. And to bully her. And to intimidate her. And to silence her.
They have filed motion after motion and forced eight hearings to get the councilwoman to hurry up and turn over the emails. They filed a contempt of court when she was almost finished. Cohen — who could be feeling very Hillary Clinton about this — has turned over 9,000 emails. Her attorney, Kent Harrison Robbins, says that 14,000 others do not fall under the definition of a public record (one example is meeting her son at the Shops she used to work at and did we mention it’s where her husband still has a store?). The Bal Harbour Shops attorney wanted 2,400 of those 14,000. An independent magistrate said that only 19 of those were relevant to the public records request.
“They want to bury her in paper because they know she can influence a public vote,” Robbins said, adding that while he disagrees with the magistrate on the 19 emails, he is willing to turn them over if that means the issue is settled.
Good luck with that! It doesn’t look like the Whitmans are going to let up any time soon. In fact, on 
Tuesday, they will intimidate Cohen from within the City Hall, pictured right, that she so ferociously wants to protect.
In addition to the City Hall sale item, there is another item on the agenda — a discussion regarding the legal fees for Robbins, who has an associate working full time to review the emails and has billed at least $500,000 so far. The item is put forth by — who else? — newly-elected Councilman Albaum, whose first and only item last month was to discuss these fees — which nobody has raised objection to before. Then he deferred the item so it could be discussed in a shade meeting (out of public eye) between council members and their attorney. How much you want to bet the move Tuesday is to change or suspend the agreement the Village has with Robbins to pay Cohen’s legal fees?
Who has a conflict of interest now?
Bal Harbour Shops pays for a referendum on City Hall sale added by Ladra on
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