The owner of the last house in a Beach neighborhood finally sells out

By Keyvan Antonio Heydari

Just days before Conni Gordon moved out, her home was still crammed with her possessions, including the 87 boxes sitting in the back vestibule, ready to go out the back door. The door had peeling paint and holes. Wood chips of bark fallen from a nearby tree lay on the roof. Inside, water dripped and holes exposed the underside of the roof.

Gordon occupied the last house in the Collins Park neighborhood, an eight-block strip of Miami Beach that is home to numerous arts institutions such as the Bass Museum, the SoBe Music Institute and the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.

That is, until she moved out Jan. 24.

Now, the neighborhood is part of the city of Miami Beach’s newly minted Cultural Arts Neighborhood District Overlay, which is designed to encourage the establishment of cultural institutions within its boundaries. But while the Collins Park neighborhood is on its way toward becoming an arts community, the woman who arguably started it all had to leave it.

“I’ve been an icon on the Beach and I hate to go, but times do change,” Gordon said.

“It leaves a void,” said Ray Breslin, president of the Collins Park Neighborhood Association, which honored Gordon with an award in January. “It’s a great neighborhood that’s undergoing a resurrection. The building is historic and [Gordon’s school] was the first thing in that neighborhood that had to do with arts and culture.”

In an area once rich with strip joints, Gordon’s house was formerly a dance and supper club, gay cabaret and tea house.

According to Manny Meland, a Miami Beach historian, the house, built in 1923, has “a lot of stories to tell” in its incarnations. “The house has had some illustrious tenants,” Meland said. “Conni was a remarkable lady. It’s probably the end of an era.”

After teaching in a studio on Lincoln Road, Gordon bought the 10,000-square-foot house — which has few interior divisions and a cellar — in 1979 for $80,000 and used it as a headquarters for her art classes and a depot for her books and inventory.

“I couldn’t call it a house,” Gordon said. “It’s certainly not the way most people live. This building has helped me continue my creativity. This is so important to me. The building itself has helped keep me going. That’s why I don’t want to leave. Location, people … the cultural atmosphere of the neighborhood has contributed to my creativity. Even though I’m 85, most people want to check out. Not me. I want to continue. Bigger and better.”

Gordon sold the house, the façade of which must be preserved because it is a historic structure, to the developers of Arte City, a project that will span from 20th to 22nd streets and promises to provide its dwellers with rich cultural lifestyles. She’s not sure what the plans are for her house, but believes they want to use it as a coffeehouse and gallery space.

The art teacher received numerous offers for her property through the years. Proposals included merging it into a larger project, turning it into a tea house and building a parking garage on top of it. “That turned me off,” she said. One potential buyer offered her $100,000, she said, and the Setai offered her $3 million for the property — $500,000 more than she finally accepted.

“There wasn't a week I didn’t get an offer,” she boasted. “Everybody wanted a piece of this rock.”

Marjorie Weber, a business counselor affiliated with the nonprofit small business assistance group known as SCORE, finally convinced Gordon that it would be more productive to sell the land and move her art school elsewhere.

“After two or three years, she finally listened,” said Weber. “We sold it in three weeks.”

Gordon’s decision was influenced by Hurricane Wilma, which reduced her “Connie Gordon Art School” sign to a mere “Go.” Gordon believes that was the sign.

“I don't want to run a school,” she said. “The building is falling apart. My insurance was canceled. Marjorie [Weber] made me decide to go.... I'm totally alone. I gotta feel free. People say, ‘Take the money and run.’ Where am I going to go? I’ve taken more cruises than you've got hairs on your head.”

Then, the offer from Mo Zarif, president of Build Tech Group Inc., to preserve the arts school touched a chord inside Gordon. The opportunity to maintain the building, in whatever reincarnation, as a structure devoted to the arts appeals to her need to leave a legacy. The new owners of the building even offered to display some of her paintings.

Inside the house, Gordon’s assistant Joel helped her sort through 60 years of clutter, including stacks of documents and vintage painting books that filled several rooms of the house from floor to ceiling.

“There’s $1 million worth of books,” Gordon lamented. “What to do with them?”

She pulled out faded newspaper clippings and brochures from seminars she held around the world to help cultivate creativity for executives of such companies as IBM.

Gordon spoke humorously about her former students, including such artists as Leonard Horowitz (he created the colors for Art Deco), and celebrities and friends such as Art Deco pioneer Barbara Capitman, Sammy Davis Jr. and Johnny Carson.

Gordon, the daughter of theatrical agents from Connecticut, has a performer’s showmanship and need for attention.

While serving in the Marine Corps, Gordon was in charge of organizing shows to entertain troops. Then a no-show performer left her alone in front of an audience. She improvised and told them to pull out a piece of paper and put a line on it — and, instantly, her method and mission of teaching art to the masses was born.

The Marine Corps saw her sketching lessons as a morale builder, and before she knew it, she was teaching audiences of 50,000 at a time, with the help of projectors and large screens.

In 1989, Gordon made the Guinness Book of World Records as “most prolific arts teacher” for having taught more than 3 million students with her method. However, Gordon said her most rewarding tribute was the letters she received from Marines who said her art methods and lessons helped them keep their sanity in foxholes.

“I believe people have creative ability that should be developed,” Gordon explained. “Be more creative in what you do. Don't rely on the computer. Use your hands and brain.”

While teaching in Australia in the mid-1980s, entrepreneur Kim Aunger saw potential in marketing her painting kits and offered her $1 million a year in royalties for the rights. Gordon saw a commercial opportunity, but Aunger died in a helicopter crash in 1991 after starting the venture. Gordon spent years recovering the rights to her signature painting kits.

As she sorted through the materials she’d collected over time, she talked about her impending move to an apartment at the Palm Bay Club on the mainland.

An ocean breeze blew a pile of papers off her desk. Then a gust knocked a vase of roses to the ground.

“It will be changed,” she said, her blue eyes looking out of the door. “I’m going with the changes.”

Source: http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2008/02-21/022108gordonslaststand.htm

Posted: Thursday, Feb. 21, 08

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