![]() ![]() Losing that ability to have outdoor entertainment events would be a huge loss to the city.”ĭuring Art Basel week, town officials in Miami Springs two miles away say booming bass emanating from Factory Town rattled windows and prompted dozens of noise complaints to local police. It’s culture and entertainment that put Miami on the map. “The same people who make neighborhoods are the people who get displaced out of those neighborhoods. “Where can we be in Miami where we can still make some noise?” Jain asked. Outdoor electronic dance music festivals and live music are getting pushed out of Miami Beach and even Wynwood and restricted sharply in downtown Miami, as their residential populations grow and people want a quiet night’s sleep. In fact, the original impetus behind Factory Town arose from the need to find new venues for loud, outdoor music events that Miami has become famed for. The walls and materials and the warehouses on the site that remain sound enough to be saved and repurposed, she said, have much to tell about the history of Hialeah and the people who made it. Unlike the dynamic in Wynwood, another industrial district turned entertainment zone, where warehouses are rapidly giving way to sleek new apartment buildings, Jain intends to retain much of the raw, rundown magic of distressed concrete and industrial verve that defines Factory Town. It’s part of Miami Art Week, the umbrella for a series of electronic, hip-hop and other pop music events centered around the three-day Ultra festival, which is returning to downtown Miami after a COVID-19 pandemic absence and years of battles over noise with local residents that now have been settled. The 24-hour Get Lost electronic music fest, previously held in other locations during its 15-year history, will set up shop at the venue with a roster loaded with star DJs. On March 26, Factory Town will hold perhaps its most high-profile date. Among the reported visitors during the latter: Tesla CEO and world’s richest person Elon Musk. ![]() The events comprised a Halloween bash and several nights of music, food and exhibits of NFTs, the art world’s hottest craze, during Art Basel week in early December. Since Jain and her partners quietly took over the property last year, after paying $10.5 million for it, Factory Town has, with minimal promotion, hosted thousands of people for limited music events. Ideas will spring up as they move forward, Jain and her partners say. There also could soon be a boutique hotel and an outdoor wellness spa. All are already on the table or in the works, backed by deep-pocketed investors and the seasoned music promoters behind Club Space and the III Points festival. ![]() There is no blueprint, no master plan for Factory Town.īut think DJs and electronic dance music, bands, art installations, artists’ studios, cafes and bars, inexpensive working space for food startups, a spirits distillery, an ecological garden sprouting amid Hialeah’s concrete jungle. The city’s eastern boundary line is just outside the gate, running down the middle of Northwest 37th Avenue. But city officials, who created a special zoning district to allow live outdoor entertainment on the site, think it can provide sufficient critical mass to draw crowds of young people and new investment to the neighborhood, a long-overlooked corner of Hialeah that happens to sit geographically at the heart of Miami-Dade. No blueprint for redevelopmentįactory Town, to be sure, is a different animal, self-contained and hemmed in by working warehouses and active industrial businesses. Once a haunt for prostitutes and the street drug trade, the corridor is today a vibrant strip of restaurants, shops and offices in historic and new buildings alike that draws people from across Miami. She’s best known for rescuing the jazzy, iconic Vagabond Motel on Biscayne Boulevard and helping remake the Miami Modern historic district that surrounds it by renovating a half-dozen other historic mid-20th century motels and converting them to other uses, like offices and cafes. ![]()
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