Jim Confalone really wasn't paying much attention to the hoopla over Miami's efforts to become the headquarters for the Free Trade Area of the America until about 10 days ago, when a reporter for Miami Today happened to show him the plans for the proposed secretariat on Watson Island.
''It looked like it was on our property,'' said Confalone, owner of Chalk's Ocean Airways, the fabled seaplane business that has operated on Watson Island since 1919.
Confalone told the reporter she was crazy because city officials had already assured him the proposed headquarters was nowhere near his property.
He explained to her that he is in only the second year of a 50-year lease with the city -- a lease that took more than three years of litigation and negotiation to complete.
But the more he looked at the plans the reporter showed him, the more he wondered if maybe the city had lied to him.
So he drove down to the offices of Florida FTAA Inc., the government-sanctioned group leading the charge to bring the FTAA headquarters to Miami, to see their plans firsthand.
Confalone knew the competition for the secretariat is fierce.
The ultimate decision over which city to select will be made by representatives of the 34 countries participating in the free trade agreement.
When Confalone reached the offices of the Florida FTAA, he asked to see the group's Miami proposals and was shown an elaborate set of plans for two sites, one on Watson Island and one on Dinner Key.
As he studied the Watson Island proposal, he realized the Miami Today reporter was correct.
Nearly two-thirds of his three-acre property was being offered to the FTAA.
''Then they showed me this DVD, which they sent to the presidents of the 34 countries in the FTAA,'' Confalone said. '[Miami Mayor Manny] Diaz is standing there on our property, or at least what appears to be our property, showing the city skyline in the background, and saying, `This is the place the headquarters should be.' I couldn't believe it. We spent three and a half years in lawsuits and negotiations with the city to finally get that lease, so I was a little miffed when I saw that.''
Confalone said he found it ironic that ``the mayor can't pay his rent, but he wants to throw me off my property -- and I'm current with my rent.''
Confalone is referring to the revelation that Monty's in Coconut Grove, which is partially owned by Diaz, is three months behind in its rent payments to the city.
On Monday, Confalone sent a letter to Jorge Arrizurieta, the executive director of Florida FTAA, saying he was ''surprised'' by the group's proposal since it is ``apparently in conflict with our lease.''
Arrizurieta was attending a conference in Peru and was unavailable for comment. Diaz was also unavailable.
Otto Boudet-Murias, senior economic development advisor for Diaz, told me the city's proposal envisions merging the plans for the FTAA headquarters with the seaplane operation.
Two years ago, Chalk's had agreed to house the new headquarters for the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau on the Chalk's site.
The visitors' bureau, however, backed out, and Confalone was moving ahead with plans to build his own stand-alone terminal.
Now it appears -- based on Boudet-Murias' comments -- that the city believes it can substitute the FTAA headquarters for the visitors' center.
Unfortunately, the plans for the FTAA headquarters are far grander than the plans for the visitors' center and would consume most of the property Chalk's needs to operate, Confalone said.
Boudet-Murias claims those plans are ''strictly conceptual'' and that all of the city's obligations to Chalk's ``will be met.''
Confalone, however, wonders why no one from the city has ever bothered to talk to him about the FTAA proposal. ''It would have been nice if someone had picked up the phone to let me know,'' Confalone said. ``This whole mess is just the craziest thing.''
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