Miami Beach's first cultural master plan would make the Byron Carlyle North Beach's arts hub

Miami Beach’s first citywide cultural master plan would make the Byron Carlyle Theater the cultural hub of North Beach and spread arts money and programs beyond South Beach, according to a draft going to the commission’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Quality of Life Committee on Monday, Nov. 9.

The draft, called “Cultural Currents” and dated Nov. 2, was written by the consulting firm Cultural Planning Group, which a city panel selected in July 2025. City staff are asking the committee to recommend it to the City Commission for adoption. It would guide the city’s arts spending through 2031.

What residents said

The plan rests on five public events in South, Mid- and North Beach, a bilingual survey with 453 responses, 29 interviews and six discussion groups held from February to July, the city memo says. The recurring message, according to the memo: the city’s cultural life is concentrated in South Beach, and redeveloping the Byron Carlyle is the biggest chance to fix that. Survey respondents named scheduling conflicts (31%), transportation and parking (30%), lack of information (27%) and cost (22%) as the leading barriers to going to more arts events, the draft says.

What the plan proposes

The draft lists five goals carried out through 48 strategies. Among them:

• Finish the Byron Carlyle project and map cultural spending by neighborhood to find gaps; make venues easier to reach; protect Art Deco buildings and historic theaters; and look at branding Collins Park as a cultural district.
• Match artists and arts groups with vacant storefronts, starting on Lincoln Road; take stock of space citywide; and explore shared artist housing, a creative fellowship and a city artist-in-residence.
• Make small-event permits and grant applications simpler.
• Seek public art or cultural amenities from private developers, and raise and protect the maintenance budget for the city’s Art in Public Places collection.
• Formally protect the share of resort tax money set aside for the arts, look at a dedicated local arts funding source, move major institutions to multi-year operating grants, and report results to the public every year.

The draft notes that the 2022 general obligation bond set aside $30.6 million for the Byron Carlyle and $29 million for the Fillmore, among other cultural projects.

The committee meets at 9 a.m. in the City Hall commission chambers and on Zoom (webinar ID 878 3335 2956). If it recommends the plan, staff will bring it to the full commission ahead of final adoption, the memo says.