Surfside weighs dropping its $110,000 Snow Moon Soiree and buying travel magazine ads

Surfside’s Resort Tax Board will decide Monday whether to bring back the Snow Moon Soiree, the two-day winter event that had a $110,000 budget in 2025, now that the producer that created it is unavailable this season, according to the board’s agenda packet.

The board meets at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, in the Town Commission Chambers at Town Hall, 9293 Harding Ave. The meeting is open to the public.

A cold first year

The town’s tourism director, Frank Trigueros, wrote in a memo that the 2025 event at the Surfside Community Center, produced by ReLeaf Designs, had an adults-only white party on Saturday and family activities on Sunday, including surfing lessons, a sand sculpture workshop and a picnic-style barbecue. It landed on one of the coldest weekends South Florida had seen in about 30 years, with temperatures in the low 30s, which the memo says hurt attendance.

The memo asks the board to keep the event with a new producer, change its format or drop it. Its $110,000 budget is still in the town’s event budget, and the memo says the money available for other unbudgeted ideas ranges from $54,000 to $164,000 depending on what the board decides.

Other items

• Travel magazine ads. The town hasn’t bought traditional travel advertising since it worked with a marketing agency from 2016 to 2020, the staff memo says. A sample proposal from Afar offers two packages, $25,000 and $60,000, with custom articles, a spot in the magazine’s spring 2027 Visit Florida section, a full-page ad and online ads, including ads aimed at New York City readers. The memo also names Condé Nast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler and Travel + Leisure as options.
• Seagrape art. Resident artist Gabriel Matarazzo has proposed a temporary exhibition along the town’s beach walking path built around seagrape leaves. Its cost will be presented at the meeting.
• Plastic-recycling machine. The board is asked to put $2,000, about half the price, toward a machine that turns discarded plastic into objects, for the three Plastic Fisherman events it approved for 2027 last month.
• Walking tours. Historian Paul George of HistoryMiami Museum would lead one-hour history walks in town again in 2027, at $1,700 a tour.

Downtown vacancies

Draft minutes from the board’s Oct. 12 meeting, up for approval Monday, record Trigueros reporting that Cafe Rigatsi and Morelia Paletas had closed, that a new business would open in the former AT&T store at 9545 Harding Ave. and that a Pilates studio had opened on 95th Street. The acting chair, Fred Landsman, raised concern about the downtown’s rising vacancy rate and high rents.

The board’s next meeting is set for Dec. 7.