Remember when Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago ditched a city commission budget hearing early last year so he could dedicate a FP Journe clock on Miracle Mile? Remember what he said about not having his own timepiece from the watch company?
“I don’t own one of their watches. I wish I did,” Lago said at the Aug. 24 meeting at City Hall. “Maybe one day I will.”
Well, it looks like that day has come.
Read related: Reward time? Vince Lago promotes clock maker that helped Francis Suarez
Lago is sporting what looks like a fancy, new FB Journe Élégante 48MM Titalyt on his wrist in a photo on page 33 of the latest edition of Coral Gables Magazine.
The watch is listed for sale, new, at $75,000, but you can get a used one for around $60K, according to the internet.
“They only make 800 a year,” Lago said in August.
Was it a gift that he needs to disclose? Was it thrown in with the fancy clock installed on Ponce de Leon and Miracle Mile? Like a BOGO deal? Or did the mayor buy it with his share of the $640,000 commission his brokerage firm got in the sale of that Ponce de Leon Boulevard building to developer Rishi Kapoor, who was later investigated by both the Security Exchange Commission and the FBI.
Lago made a big deal last year of installing the clock, which is, coincidentally (right) made by the same company that hosted a “cigars and cocktails” fundraiser in 2023 for his BFF, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. He first said that the clock was donated. Then he said that he himself purchased it to donate it to the city. “I paid for a part of it,” he said.
John Bell Construction did the install — he said he paid for the $32,000 installation himself — and he thanked them and several others, including the podcast A Day in Miami, where he is often a guest, in social media posts.
Read related: Coral Gables mayor ducks out of budget hearing for clock unveiling
Lago originally scheduled the installation for Sept. 11 — saying it was “not a national holiday” — and that was later changed to Sept. 12, when he sneaked out of a city commission meeting for the ceremony, where he also shamelessly plugged his handpicked candidate for commission.
But he lied about the value of the clock. The mayor said it was worth almost $100,000, but an email to the Anna Pernas in the city’s public works department from Susan Weisenfeld at Electric Time Company — an American clock manufacturer that seemingly built the clock here, in Massachusetts, for FP Journe — would cost $23,000 to replace it. That’s a whopping $77,000 difference. FP Journe letter lago clock
Another email from an accountant at Electric Time — which also made the clock on Main Street in Disney World — to Pierre Halimi of FP Journe seems to indicate that FP Journe paid them to build the clock. So is it an FP Journe clock or an Electric Time clock with a FP Journe logo sticker slapped on?
As usual, Lago did not return calls and texts to his phone. Maybe he’ll address it in one of his self-aggrandizing Instagram videos. Hopefully, he’ll be wearing the watch and will show us a close-up.
Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago has a fancy new watch from guess who added by Ladra on
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