An ambitious moment for Miami
One of the most ambitious efforts in the country, here in Miami.
This is the Nov. 30, 2021 edition of the Opportunity Miami newsletter, which we send every Tuesday. Click here to subscribe to get our weekly updates in your inbox.
As Art Basel Miami Beach returns this week, I was reminded that pivotal moments can occur with little notice, or hardly be remembered at all.
It was a little more than two decades ago that Art Basel’s future in Miami hung in the balance. The Swiss fair wanted to launch in Miami Beach. But it was asking for a change in the city’s Convention Center booking policy. In 1999, the City of Miami Beach’s six commissioners and mayor gathered to vote on the measure. If approved, it would clear the way for Art Basel Miami Beach to become reality. But, if rejected, the art fair was ready to look elsewhere.
Many at the time, including Miami Beach Mayor Neisen Kasdin, touted it as a generational opportunity to put our young, aspiring metropolitan area on the map as a center of art and culture. But not everyone agreed. That day the measure passed by the slimmest of margins, four votes to three.
“In my experience, the most important ideas often meet the greatest resistance,” said Kasdin, now managing partner at the Akerman law firm in Miami.
Last week, as we were recording our second Opportunity Miami podcast, I wondered if history is repeating itself in a different way, by a different elected body and, thus far, without any of the contentiousness — but with the potential for similarly far-reaching results.
In April, the Miami-Dade School Board voted to do something that virtually no school system or government of similar size has dared do. It approved a resolution to appoint a task force to develop a plan to have the entire school system — the fourth biggest in the country — powered by clean energy by 2030.
Not 2050, but 2030 — just eight years from now.
The resolution was proposed by School Board member Luisa Santos, a product of Miami-Dade public schools and the entrepreneur behind Lulu’s Ice Cream. She proposed the pioneering measure just six months after being elected to the board as a first-time candidate. Her eight colleagues on the School Board joined in co-sponsoring the measure.
Santos and Jane Gilbert, who is chairing the task force turning the School Board resolution into a concrete plan, joined me on the Opportunity Miami podcast this week to talk about this far-reaching effort.
“This is the most ambitious goal that we know of,” said Gilbert, when compared to other clean energy plans by school districts across the country.
Gilbert was previously Chief Resilience Officer at the City of Miami where she helped craft the city’s recently approved plan to achieve net zero by 2050. Earlier this year she became the world’s first Chief Heat Officer, when named to the post at Miami-Dade County.
The School Board effort could play a catalytic role in answering the question we’ve been digging into the past two weeks: how do we make Miami a place where great climate tech companies are built? The reason is because governments have a key role to play simply in how they conduct their own business.
“For anyone working in government from municipal to federal, the biggest lever is sitting right in front of you, and that’s procurement,” said Clay Dumas, founding partner of Lowercarbon Capital, a giant venture fund focused on building a net zero future, who also joined our most recent podcast to talk about why he sees combating climate as the biggest business opportunity in more than a century.
We hope you will listen to the discussion with Clay Dumas along with Luisa Santos and Jane Gilbert. And, as always, we would love to hear from you. Email us at next@opportunity.miami or engage with us on social media, where we’re sharing what we’re learning.
Of course, we hope you have a great Art Basel week. There are many great things happening in art and tech; here is a terrific guide created by entrepreneur and community leader Ja’dan Johnson to help you navigate your journey. Some of the programs I’ll be participating in include La Casa Miami on Tuesday, Regenaissance by Future of Cities on Wednesday and PreMoney on Thursday. If you’re there, I hope we’ll have a chance to connect.
Here’s to a fun, memorable Art Basel week.
Matt Haggman
Opportunity Miami
@matthaggman
This is the Nov. 30, 2021 edition of the Opportunity Miami newsletter. Click here to subscribe to get our weekly updates in your inbox.
Photo (top) by Ussama Azam on Unsplash. Opportunity Miami is powered by the Miami-Dade Beacon Council.
