STILTSVILLE ADRIFT - SPECIAL REPORT

Sunday, May 2, 1999
By CURTIS MORGAN

BAY TREASURE: Stiltsville, which doesn't cost taxpayers a dime to maintain, is a tourist attraction and considered the last of its kind, a touchstone to a Miami lost long ago on the high-rise horizon. Life, like the Biscayne channel current, swirls around the last seven homes in Stiltsville.

As always, a sunny weekend spills a flotilla around the cluster of cottages suspended between sea and sky, luring people to a place that could and does exist only in Miami. At least until its lease in Biscayne National Park expires.

Back from a morning dive, Mike Jenks sits in the shade under the Miami Springs Power Boat Club's stilt home and struggles to see the sense in erasing such an irreplaceable place.

``The National Park Service,'' he says, ``has forgotten it's here to serve the public.''

The Stiltsville battle centers on the fate of a local landmark, but it's also become a broader dispute about national park policy. Stiltsville's owners and supporters fear they're about to lose a treasured piece of Miami's past to federal rules they call inflexible, especially toward local people who want more from nature than a guided tour. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, who has taken up the preservation banner, brands the park service ``bureaucrats hellbent on destroying Stiltsville.''

But Biscayne Superintendent Dick Frost says the park's actions have been unfairly maligned. He has searched mission statements, explored creative options. But nothing, he insists, justifies preserving buildings in public waters of a national park for the exclusive use of private individuals.

And he isn't happy being cast as executioner of a Florida icon.

``I'm fond of Stiltsville. I like the people who own the buildings. That's why I get really upset when a number of articles portray us as being anxious to get rid of Stiltsville. I'm not anxious to do anything about it. In fact, I don't have much control at all.''

Hurricanes, politicians, civic and environmental groups have all tried to kill Stiltsville over six mercurial decades. But the community has never been this close to going under for good.

Leases homeowners signed 25 years ago expire July 1 and last month, the park service announced it would stick to its longstanding intention to enforce clauses requiring owners to remove the structures (estimated $10,000 to $20,000 jobs). Any razing, however, likely wouldn't occur for several more months. Frost says he won't rush owners to complete a tricky job in fragile turtle grass beds.

For homeowners, it's a late gesture of compromise. After years of talks, many now believe the park service never gave them a real shot.

``It seems to me they think the park is better off with fewer people,'' says Will Harden, a tree trimmer who in 1960 helped his father, Jim, build what is now the oldest remaining home, a funky, much-photographed A-frame. ``They're more interested in protecting the park from us.''

Stiltsville's slow drift toward oblivion goes back to 1965, just after Hurricane Betsy. Florida, looking to control the community's growth, pressured rebuilding owners to sign leases for the property a mile south of Cape Florida. As part of the deal, owners agreed not to rebuild any home more than half destroyed.

Over the years, hurricanes whittled away 20 shacks and remaining homeowners always assumed only nature could kill Stiltsville. But when Biscayne National Park annexed the area in 1980, Stiltsville's biggest threat became yellowing legal papers, the leases.

The park, originally established by Congress in 1968 as Biscayne National Monument, was created specifically to protect a system under increasing human siege.

``The very reason this park was established was because of things like Turkey Point (Florida Power & Light's nuclear power plant) and the landfill (a South Dade dump known as Mount Trashmore),'' Frost said.

Many people don't understand the national park principle, Frost said. They're for public enjoyment but park managers are also required to maintain the natural system ``without human interference, without human alterations, even alterations we might by some standard consider `beneficial.' ''

Under that standard, shared by every national park, private playhouses leased in public land are ``inconsistent and that's an understatement,'' Frost said. If they owned the land, it would be different - the park does have one private holder on the Ragged Keys and ``we're not out there trying to kick those people out.''

in fact, because the park was content to let nature or the lease run its course, Stiltsville has already had what amounts to a 19-year reprieve. Owners even got a free ride for at least the last five years. The park, Frost says, decided the annual lease fees, ranging from $700 to about $1,200, weren't worth the paperwork and stopped cashing the checks.

Nevertheless, when several owners approached the park about an extension two years ago, Frost agreed to listen.

``I wanted to make sure we all did the right thing,'' Frost said.

New leases, he told them, were outside his or park service authority. He discussed the possibility of special permits, an option superintendents use for one-time events like weddings, or specific uses like farming or research. Frost also suggested applying for historical designation, which wouldn't ensure preservation but might have given the park some leeway.

Hopeful, homeowners pursued both, drawing up a proposed 25-year special permit and collecting endorsements from a wide number of Miami-Dade civic groups and prominent historians, including a nomination from the state preservation board last year.

But the bay bottom, to their shock, fell out last month.

The National Register of Historic Places, which issues federal designation, rejected the site - and local and state endorsements don't carry much weight in federal parks. Frost, after consulting with regional administrators concerned about establishing precedents, deep-sixed special permit possibilities, an idea he acknowledges he pushed too far. There's no provision for recreational permits. ``It became clear to me that I'd be in deep trouble if I did that.''

Environmental groups such as the Tropical Audubon Society, which have long opposed Stiltsville as a special privilege in a public park, have come to the park's defense.

``If they can lease land in Biscayne National Park, then I want to lease land in the Grand Canyon,'' executive director Don Chinquina said. Still, he wouldn't oppose letting Stiltsville stand as a public, research or park staff site. ``In that scenario, you could keep the buildings as long as Mother Nature wants them to stay there.''

But the park couldn't afford either the upkeep or liability, Frost said. So while Stiltsville's shacks might be rarer than any critter in Biscayne Bay, they're also privately held, man-made and federally nonhistoric. Three strikes. They're out.

Stiltsville owners feel ``torpedoed,'' said Laura Roberts, an organizer of Save Old Stiltsville, an owners group rallying grass-roots and political support.

The worst hit was discovering that their best hope, historical designation, was literally dead on arrival. Though Frost had assured them the park would remain ``neutral'' on the nomination, the park service's regional office advised the National Register to turn down Stiltsville.

``It makes you wonder if you can get a fair shake from the park service in a situation like this,'' Roberts said. Frost denies misleading owners, but understands the skepticism and says he was ``irate'' when he learned about it.

But it's also standard procedure. The National Park Service oversees the National Register. Kirk Cordell, chief of cultural resources for the service's southeast region, says his staff routinely makes recommendations.

Because they're less than 50 years old (the remaining homes were built in the 1960s), they must pass a higher ``exceptional importance'' standard. Cordell said the history didn't pass muster and the nomination was viewed primarily as a ploy to extend private use.

``We think it's a very interesting history but the National Register is about preserving real resources. It doesn't mean we shouldn't have interpretive signs or books written about it,'' Cordell said.

Replace the real thing with a commemorative plaque?

Stiltsville owners believe there's got to be a better solution. They're appealing the Register decision and trying to sway the park service with political and public pressure.

In addition to Ros-Lehtinen, they've received political support from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and South Florida U.S. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Carrie Meek, Alcee Hastings and E. Clay Shaw. Ros-Lehtinen, who is spearheading the political campaign, also secured resolutions from the cities of Homestead, South Miami, Hialeah Gardens, West Miami and Coral Gables, as well as the Florida House of Representatives.

Next week, Ros-Lehtinen is scheduled to meet with park administrators to press for negotiations and some sort of special permit.

``That's so untrue for the department to say they cannot do anything,'' she said. ``They could do it tomorrow if they wanted.''

Tom Caldwell, an attorney in the 75-member Miami Springs club, the largest owners' group, said the park has underestimated Stiltsville's history and overstated human impacts.

The homes are used sparingly, mainly on weekends. They don't cost taxpayers a dime and homeowners, who bought or built them, spend thousands to maintain the houses in a brutal environment. They also host dozens of public events every year, are havens by boaters in storms, tourist attractions and the last of their kind, touchstones to a Miami lost long ago on the high-rise horizon.

Besides, Caldwell says, ``It's not like the park service gaves us some kind of special privilege. We were already here. We didn't ask the park to come.'' Save Old Stiltsville's petition drive has topped 10,000 and is adding signatures daily. They've collected more historical endorsements - the lastest from the Miami-Dade Historic Preservation Board - as well as letters from everyone from business executives to authors such as Miami writer John Underwood.

``Stiltsville is every bit as important to my sense of place, and as impressive to my eye, as the Arch would be if I lived in St. Louis, or the Golden Gate Bridge if I lived in San Francisco,'' Underwood writes. ``Accessibility, after all, is a relative thing. I don't have to touch the figures on Mount Rushmore to enjoy their being there, and if I never set foot in the Empire State Building, I still wouldn't want to see it leveled.''

Scenes from a sunny Saturday: Boy Scouts from South Miami dangle bait from the Harden A-frame. North Miami Beach Police officers leap hooting from the roof of the old Ellenburg place. Kelly Mattox marks her 13th birthday splashing with friends around the Miami Springs Club.

A half-mile off, anglers coax mangrove snapper in rubble where cormorants sun their slick black feathers between submarine forages. A little farther on, dozens of boats beach on a sandbar.

Out here, owner or not, nobody wants this place to disappear. ``I liked it better when there were 30 or 40 of them years ago,'' said Rick DiNicola of Hialeah, an avid angler who fishes the nearby Biscayne flats also every weekend.

``We talk about it each time we come here,'' said fishing partner Ileana Anchia. ``Just look how beautiful these places are.''

On the Miami Springs Club dock, Bill Borroughs, a letter carrier and member for 20 years, explains his feelings for the place.

So many wonderful memories. Kids catching their first grunts. A member's granddaughter pulling bait fish from a bucket and kissing each one. Dawn that morning. ``There wasn't a breath on the water, not a slip of air. Spectacular. It even brings more sentiment now with what's going on.''

Connections run deep. He met Donna Durfey as a teenager here, and years later, she's become his fiancee. Nine years ago, they scattered the ashes of Durfey's mother. Each home has a hundred stories, a thousand memories.

``I've heard people say why should we have this and not somebody else,'' he said. ``Well, why should we not have it? Worse, why should nobody have it?''