Grove agency’s departure leaves questions, concerns, calls for audit

An empty lot stands on 3695 Grand Ave. The lot was purchased in 1994 for $160,000 and sold in 2008 for $750,000. Photo by Brittney Bomnin

A neighborhood organization created 30 years ago to boost economic development in the West Grove has been missing in action in the community and is no longer receiving funding from its major contributor, the city of Miami.

According to public records provided by the city, the Urban Empowerment Corporation, whose mission was to create jobs and provide affordable housing in the community, has been without funding since September.

“The services that they were providing were not up to par,” said Lillian Blondet, assistant director of the city’s Department of Community Development.

More than a year ago, the city began receiving complaints from residents that the UEC office at 3672 Grand Ave. was closed. City officials called some of the businesses that were created by the UEC and housed at the organization’s headquarters, but many were no longer in operation, said George Mensah, the department’s director. By June of last year, the UEC office had closed completely, he said.

In September, former City Manager Pedro G. Hernandez formally wrote the UEC’s executive director, Cecilia Holloman, to clear up issues the city had with the organization, which received more than $500,000 from the city from 1998 to 2001 and 2007 to 2009.

“The city understands the need to support small businesses and to provide technical assistance through local agencies such as UEC,” Hernandez wrote. But in the letter, he itemized the city’s concerns, which ranged from the agency’s closed doors to discrepancies the city had noted with the UEC’s monthly budget figures.

However, it was a lack of UEC’s productivity that led to the city’s decision, Mensah said.

“We didn’t think it was appropriate to provide funding to an agency that was winding down,” he said.

Holloman, who had been a consultant to the city of Miami and a consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Training and Technical Assistance Center, took over in January 2007, said she did not want to comment about the status of the organization

“I don’t have anything to say about it,” she said in a brief telephone interview in May. “UEC is not in Coconut Grove.”

Some community leaders are asking why.

The Coconut Grove Village West Homeowners and Tenants Association passed a resolution at its March meeting calling for an audit of the UEC, said Jihad Rashid, the association’s second vice president and former interim director of the UEC. The group sent its request to Mensah, Blondet and several commissioners including Marc Sarnoff, Rashid said.

David Alexander, the UEC’s first executive director, and community activist Thelma Gibson, back the tenants association’s call for an audit.

“I really don’t know who the group is anymore,” said Gibson, a former UEC consultant when Alexander headed the group.

The organization, originally known as the Coconut Grove Local Development Corporation, formed in 1980 as a nonprofit set up by the Miami City Commission.  Alexander served as executive director for 15 years, followed by Rashid as an interim director, then by the late Yvonne McDonald, who took over in 1999 through the end of 2006.

UEC board chairman and developer Manuel Alonso-Poch said he was outraged that Rashid and Alexander were questioning the agency’s integrity.

“It’s galling for them to be asking for account,” Alonso-Poch said. “They were not part of the solution but part of the problem.”

The organization often has been plagued by internal squabbles and has come under city scrutiny.

When McDonald took over from Alexander and Rashid in 1999, the group had a net operating loss of $259,000 in 1998 and $148,000 in 1999, according to a September 1999 audit.

In 2000, the Miami Commission turned down the group’s request for $750,000 after learning the agency sold a building it owned at 3671 Grand Ave. for $16,000 – one-fifth of the $90,000 it paid in 1994 to buy it. And in 2002, Miami Commissioner Johnny Winton said he could no longer support city funding of the organization, citing the group’s lack of productivity in building affordable housing.

The only large-scale accomplishment by the nonprofit has been a single-family development, the Grovepoint project, said Coconut Grove Village Council member Renita Samuels-Dixon. Grovepoint’s 32 single-family homes were built along U.S. 1 under Alexander’s direction.

City officials say they did their best to monitor the UEC and won’t be investigating funds already given to the organization, with the exception of the 3659 property the UEC purchased for $160,000 in 1994, possibly with the help of a $120,000 city grant, Mensah said.

The project, which was slated for a mix of commercial and residential units, did not materialize. Instead the UEC sold it in 2008 for $750,000.

“If the city gives them the money to secure the property, then that comes back to the city,” Mensah said.

For her part, Village Councilwoman Samuels-Dixon does not fault the UEC if it was not able to make progress in the Grove.

“In recent years, it’s probably been struggling to identify its market,” Samuels-Dixon said.

“You look on Grand Avenue and it’s blighted,” she added, “but you can’t blame that on the UEC.

Still, accountability is called for, Samuels-Dixon said.

“What’s important to me as a person from the community is that we at least know how much public money was provided and from that how much was used.”