Michael Grieco hits $500K, with help from real estate investor

Even before the next campaign report is due next week, Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Grieco passed the half million dollar mark in his quest to become the city’s next mayor. Last month’s campaign finance report shows $41,575 brought in April for a total warchest of $500,942.

But almost 10 percent of that comes from a real estate investor who supported higher zoning in North Beach and may want to gentrify several blocks of South Beach around Flamingo Park.

Adam Walker, who has given Grieco at least $40,400 bundled through his company, Boardwalk Properties, and 40 other related firms, bought 15 aging, low- and moderate-rent Art Deco apartment buildings in South Beach for $59 million last year and immediately raised rents 50 percent to force working people out and cater to a more affluent clientele.

“It’s true that instead of having taxi drivers and sous chefs, you’ll end up with younger attorneys, people who work in the Design District, people who work downtown,” Walker told the Miami Herald . “These are people who drive Porsches and are drawn to Miami Beach but don’t want to live in high rises.”

In a February, 2016, letter to the editor of the Miami Herald, Grieco — who is running for mayor against former Sen. Den Gelber, who has raised $361,519 and much of it from outside the city — defended workforce housing, saying that he and Commissioner Joy Malakoff had made efforts to preserve and increase it. But he told Ladra recently that what Walker did was invest in improvements to restore, even save Art Deco buildings that have long been neglected.

Meanwhile, Walker has been known to neglect his own properties. State records show that buildings his mulitple companies owns have, collectively, received dozens of violations since 2012 for such things as holes in the ceiling, holes in the wall, discarded appliances outside, cockroaches, and a failure to display balcony inpsections more than once, just for starters.

Miami-Dade Court records also show he’s filed paperwork to evict tenants 112 times since 2014. Grieco better hope they’re not still city voters.

“He supports me for the same reason anybody else supports me, because he likes what I am doing for Miami Beach,” Grieco told Ladra, questioning why I would even bring this up (because it’s the biggest case of bundling by far).