I wasn’t a stranger to big projects, but the idea that awaited me as I started work as city manager of North Miami, Florida, was unlike anything else I’d been involved in. Building a Chinatown? In North Miami? I had worked on the development of the new Miami Marlins stadium (retractable roof and all) in my previous post, so I had a good sense for the complexity of projects in urban areas. But that was the city of Miami. I’d just become manager of North Miami, a suburban community of some 60,000 in the much larger Miami metro area of more than 5 million. Councilman Alix Desulme, who had been approached by local business leaders, had done some initial research. He was passionate and persistent; I listened. He had an idea to revitalize a 90-acre corridor in his district. My predecessor and now deputy manager Arthur Sorey, had made a significant time investment, flying to China, to get the basics of what is now a Chinatown community redevelopment project. And slowly, what seemed like a crazy concept, started to materialize as an exciting and viable project.
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