Immigration agencies moving from iconic Miami headquarters
The cottage industry orbiting the immigration building at Biscayne Boulevard and 79th Street is moving on as federal agencies move to new digs.
Sunup at the beehive-like intersection of 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard on Miami’s north side breaks with a steady, rain-or-shine buzz.Orange-vested parking attendants flag motorists into $10-a-space lots.
Interpreters translate Spanish, Haitian Creole and Portuguese documents into English.
Attorneys pore over paperwork to help clients obtain green cards.
This daily ritual will end when the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services moves out of the landmark building at 7880 Biscayne Blvd. and into fresh digs in Kendall, Hialeah and central Miami this fall.
Two more offices will open in Oakland Park and Royal Palm Beach.
After a four-decades-long ride, the cottage industry orbiting the immigration building is already shutting down. Some business owners aren’t sure of their next move; others are following the immigration agency.
The building once housed the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was absorbed in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Earlier this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement relocated its office for people under ICE supervision to the Krome detention center.
With immigration officers packing their boxes, so fades the poignant symbolism long associated with this boxy, sand-colored structure built almost half a century ago.
”It’s been a lightning rod for controversy — for demonstrations and frustrations,” Miami Dade College historian Paul George said. “It’s going to be an end of an era.”
Known among lawyers as the ”79th street building” — and among their Creole-speaking and Spanish-speaking clients as ”bilding INS la” or “la migra” — the 12-story structure was built for the Gulf American Corporation in 1962. After the company became entangled in shady real estate dealings in 1967, the edifice was taken over by Immigration and Naturalization Services, according to MiMo: Miami Modern Revealed, a book about the South Florida architectural style.
Through the years, the building was a magnet for protests, the parking lot across the street serving as the ready-made stage for condemning various controversial immigration issues, including the deportation of Haitians or the 2000 return of Cuban rafter Elián González. As backdrop, the fortress-like building has always kept an imposing presence, the grill facade allowing occupants to peer outside but denying outsiders an inside peek.
One longtime presence on the protest circuit said she had mixed feelings on USCIS vacating.
”It will be a bittersweet moment to see it gone,” said Marleine Bastien, the executive director of Haitian Women of Miami. “The building has brought a lot of hope to people — it’s reunited families. At the same time, the long-term struggle that we had to carry out there to get Haitians respected has overshadowed some of the other stuff that occurred at that building.”
REMAINING TENANTS
One of the few remaining tenants on the second-floor of the retro-future-inspired Biscayne Plaza across the street — attorney Liza Galindo and her firm Eran Ben Ezra — also are closing shop. They’ve already opened an office near the new Miami field office, between I-95 exits 7 and 8A on Northwest Seventh Avenue, having learned over the summer that Homeland Security was packing up.
”Almost all of the attorneys have already left,” said Galindo.
A few doors down is a tiny shop that provides translations of immigration papers.
”Economically, it’s going to be a big change,” said Jason Rico, who helps run the family business with his wife. “This corner is going to deteriorate.”
If Galindo’s firm is chasing its customers, tenants such as Rico are struggling to do so. He said he can’t afford property near the field office.
”For the lawyers, it’s different,” said Rico, a tenant for 15 years. “They make a lot of money — we don’t.”
Rico said he plans to stay in the neighborhood, relying on three generations of customers and recommendations.
In the office of attorney Jorge Rivera, above the Cool J’s clothing shop and a Payless shoe store, clients have passed through the glass doors here for some 20 years in need of visa extensions, work permits, re-entry permits.
Rivera’s practice, with offices also in Coral Gables and Kendall, has plans of moving out but the location has yet to be nailed down, said attorney Mayerlin Almonte.
She welcomed Homeland Security’s move as something positive for citizenship seekers, as the current building is worn down. The drab setting made naturalization an underwhelming experience, she said.
”I think they deserve to be in a comfortable place,” Almonte said, referring to the spread-out offices. “Everything will be more convenient.”
The new facilities promise to be state-of-the-art and energy efficient — part of a strategy to modernize the immigration agency. There’s also free parking.
PARKING SPOTS
Just down 79th Street, past the Goodwill, is a service station. The owners no longer sell gas, but they hawk parking spots for $10 a piece.
And what happens when immigration services move out is a lingering worry.
”I won’t have that income — it’s going to very bad,” Jean, an attendant who has worked at the station four years, said behind her tiny booth.
If the mom-and-pop businesses such as the parking lot owners fret about work-after-immigration, others view the building’s new life as an opportunity to inject further change into the neighborhood.
Before the economic downturn, the Biscayne Boulevard corridor had enjoyed a renaissance of sorts, with trendy boutiques and al fresco restaurants opening along the newly repaved thoroughfare. Though east of a Goodwill and north of an adults-only club, the building stands poised to reap the benefits, observers say.
”I think there’s going to be a minor decline but not for a long time,” said Seth Bramson, an adjunct professor of history at Florida International University. “Frankly, I don’t have anything but good vibes for that whole neighborhood.”
Bastien said she would like to see a benefactor turn the place into a museum that chronicles immigrant experiences in the United States.
The landlord’s asking price? $14 million.
The original source of this article can be found at:
www.miamiherald.com / Mon, Oct. 20, 2008
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