Mayor says Miami-Dade beaches will not reopen on Monday
Miami-Dade will not allow beaches to reopen as planned on Monday, Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced Sunday after a night of vandalism, theft and damaged storefronts in downtown Miami.
Monday’s planned reopening of the coast in South Beach and beyond was designed to be the kickoff to reviving the county’s tourism industry and restore a favorite diversion after 10 weeks of closure under COVID-19 orders. While beaches won’t be reopening, Gimenez said he’ll move forward with lifting closure orders on community pools. He also will allow booking restrictions to expire on hotels, allowing them to sell rooms to tourists again after weeks of being restricted to essential workers and other limited categories of customers.
Even before Gimenez’s beach announcement, hotels weren’t seeing much demand for stays. Many planned to remain closed Monday.
“We had about 58,000 hotel rooms pre-pandemic,” said Rolando Aedo, chief marketing officer for the county’s tourism bureau, the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. “I wish I could tell you how many of those hotel rooms will be open June 1. I think the majority.”
As hotels in Miami prepare to reopen in the face of overlapping emergency rules from coronavirus and unrest, they’ll do so with a city curfew starting at 8 p.m. Outside of Miami, the countywide curfew begins at 9 p.m.
With Broward beaches already reopened, MiamiDade will remain the lone South Florida county with a coast still waiting to be clear of visitor restrictions. The Florida Keys also will once again be open to visitors, with checkpoints on U.S. 1 ending Monday.
While hotels in Monroe County remained open, local authorities took the extraordinary step of closing the island chain to all non-residents. Those rules are lifted Monday.
Gimenez said Sunday he would keep Miami-Dade beaches closed until a countywide curfew is lifted.
“If everything is calm today, then we can take a respite for tomorrow and then hopefully open up on Tuesday,” Gimenez said on WPLG’s “This Week in
South Florida” show. “It really all depends on what happens today, what happens tonight. My hope is, and I believe, that today and tonight will be calm and peaceful”
The strategy for reopening beaches included a significant police deployment to enforce socialdistancing rules imposed under an Gimenez emergency order that would have allowed beaches to reopen.