How Gramps Getaway became the war room in the fight over ‘the soul of Miami’

If you wanted a cold drink and a meal by the water in Miami a decade or so ago, you had options. There was Scotty’s Landing in the Grove, Shuckers over in North Bay Village and, before that, Jimbo’s out on Virginia Key. A lot of those old-school waterfront spots are gone now, and the list of places where you can still grab a drink, order some food and sit by the water without much fuss has gotten pretty short. These days, Gramps Getaway on Virginia Key is one of the few places left.

But over the last month, Gramps Getaway has taken on a new role: something of a campaign headquarters, with Adam Gersten — the bar’s owner — emerging as a prominent face of the opposition to city of Miami Referendum 3.

The ballot item, if approved, would allow Virginia Key LLC — a joint venture between Texas-based Suntex Marinas and Miami Beach-based RCI Marine Group — to lease and redevelop about 28 acres of city-owned land in Virginia Key, including the city-operated Marine Stadium Marina and the Rickenbacker Marina, where the bar is located. The stretch of land starts just south of Rusty Pelican, which is not part of the planned redevelopment.

Gersten, a fourth-generation Miamian, has become one of the leading voices in the effort against the referendum. Signs propped up on tables throughout the restaurant and bar read, “PROTECT GRAMPS Getaway. VOTE NO! ON CITY OF MIAMI REFERENDUM 3.” Waiters and bartenders are ready with answers when patrons have questions about the referendum.

Public discourse has widely been about whether Gersten and Gramps Getaway could stay if the redevelopment plan advances. But Gersten says the fight is about something bigger: “Can Miamians save the soul of Miami?”

With the influx of affluent New York and California transplants to Miami during the COVID-19 pandemic came rapid gentrification, the displacement of many locals, new restaurants popping up while longtime restaurants closed their doors. Gersten, who has also served on the city’s urban planning and zoning board for almost 10 years and is now chair, says residents feel they’re losing their sense of place and the city is losing its character, and he wants to stop that.

The referendum up for a vote in November includes a 45-year initial lease term, with two additional 15-year renewal options. The new operators would pay the city a minimum base rent of $2.2 million a year, plus a percentage of revenues, and spend an estimated $80 million to redevelop the marinas.

The deal was first proposed in 2016, and many critics — including some city commissioners, Miami-Dade’s property appraiser and the city’s own mayor — consider it a bad, outdated one. Although Virginia Key LLC points to two appraisals from earlier this year that call the deal “above fair-market value,” the opposition has critiqued the substance of those appraisals and challenged their validity in court.

Virginia Key LLC is pitching the transformation as a positive step forward for the city, even using the slogan “Save Virginia Key.” Its website shows renderings of what the marina would look like after redevelopment — similar architecture to the development in Coconut Grove’s Dinner Key, where Regatta Grove and Bayshore Club now sit on the site of the former Scotty’s Landing, albeit on a much larger scale.

Their website says it would be a more accessible “waterfront for all” rather than a “marina to some” and promises adding a connected baywalk, new waterfront restaurants and retail, more public parking and public restrooms. They also advertise upgraded marina infrastructure, new boat slips and improvements to existing restaurants, including Gramps Getaway, which they say would be welcome to stay and be part of the new transformation.

Gernsten calls their campaign “a little desperate” but “well run” and “well funded.”

“So they’re saying, ‘Look at these giant numbers. We’re saving Virginia Key,’ and really, it’s about preserving,” Gersten said during an interview with the Miami Herald. “They are preserving a wonderful deal for themselves that is very, very old.” He’s not optimistic about the future of Gramps Getaway if the referendum passes. Ultimately, he’d like to save the restaurant in its current state.

The Herald requested an interview with Suntex Chief Development Officer David Filler and President of RCI Group Robert Christoph, but neither were available over the course of several days. They instead answered questions via email.

“Suntex Marinas and RCI Group will save Virginia Key by opening the waterfront to the public, cleaning up the existing environmental hazards, achieving ‘Clean Marina Designation’ from the State of Florida, and maximizing the financial return to the City so that more dollars can be invested in priorities like parks, public safety, housing, and more. That’s why voters should vote ‘yes’ on Referendum 3,” Filler and Christoph said in a joint statement.

How a 2017 bid ended up on a 2026 ballot

The question on the November ballot stems from a yearslong saga that has involved the city being sued over and over. In 2017, when the city was looking for a new operator to lease and redevelop the Marine Stadium and Rickenbacker marinas, Virginia Key LLC was ranked highest by a selection committee, as it had in a previous 2015 bidding process.

The team that was ranked second, Biscayne Marine Partners LLC — formed by the current operator of the Rickenbacker Marina, led by Aabad Melwani — then sued the city over the bidding process, ultimately losing. Melwani’s team has been operating the Rickenbacker Marina on a month-to-month basis as a “holdover tenant” since 2015.

The legal battle caused more delays to the planned redevelopment.

In November 2020, the City Commission agreed to reject all the procurement proposals and declined to award the contract to Virginia Key LLC. Commissioners cited various concerns, including environmental issues and questions about the other proposals. Virginia Key LLC challenged the decision in court.

In 2021, the commission pursued a competing proposal by Biscayne Marine Partners and sent a referendum to voters that would have authorized a no-bid 45-year lease with the option to renew with Melwani’s team. That prompted Virginia Key LLC to sue the city.

Voters rejected the referendum in November 2021. That version of the redevelopment deal would have had the operator spending even more on marina improvements than the deal on this November’s ballot — $115 million, compared to the $80 million promised by Virginia Key LLC — and more owed to the city in base annual rent, too — $2.75 million, compared to $2.2 million.

Then, in 2023, a judge ruled that the city had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” by rejecting all bids and then favoring a lower-ranked bidder. The city appealed, but the ruling was upheld in 2025.

“Our team, Suntex Marinas and RCI Group, was selected by an independent committee as the top-ranked participant in two public RFPs held a decade ago,” Filler and Christoph wrote in their joint statement. “Unfortunately, the hold-over tenant whose family has controlled the Rickenbacker Marina since 1983, Aabad Melwani, resorted to weaponizing the courts for personal gain by mounting a series of unsuccessful legal challenges which delayed progress.”

During a City Commission meeting this summer, city commissioners reluctantly voted to put the matter on the ballot, following City Attorney George Wysong’s advice. Wysong suggested that commissioners could be individually held in contempt if they did not follow the judge’s orders to put the deal out to voters.

Gersten and the current Rickenbacker Marina operator, led by Melwani, sued the city and the elections department soon after, alleging that the language on the ballot was misleading, among other things. They sought an injunction to prevent the question from getting printed, but the judge denied the request, allowing the referendum to appear on the ballot while the legal battle continues.

While Virginia Key LLC notes that there are two appraisals from early 2026 that determined the deal on the ballot goes “above fair-market value,” Gersten and Melwani’s coalition takes issue with the methodology and the independence of those appraisals, something that’s part of their lawsuit’s argument.

Gramps Getaway has also posted an Instagram video of former Miami mayor and current Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser Tomás Regalado calling the ballot item “a bad deal.”

How Gersten’s campaign started

Gersten says he started his campaign after the City Commission voted to put the referendum on the ballot in June.

“They said something publicly, but then they voted a different way,” Gersten said, referring to several of the commissioners saying it was a bad deal for the city.

But he held off on commenting publicly until the judge’s ruling that allowed the ballot item to move forward.

In late August, Gersten posted his first Instagram video urging people to vote no on the referendum. It got over 380,000 views.

“The deal on your ballot is a crooked deal,” he says in the video. “It’s a bad deal for the city and for you. Don’t be fooled by the big numbers that these guys throw around in their ballots. … This is a below-market giveaway of public waterfront land again, cooked up in back rooms in 2016 and 2017, which was 10 years ago. It was a horrible deal then, and it’s a worse deal now.”

Right around the time of the video, he reached out to Justin Mendoza-Routt, a Democrat who had just lost a primary for a Florida House seat and a city of Miami resident, to help with the campaign.

The more Mendoza-Routt heard from Gersten about what was going on, he says, the more he wanted to be involved in helping the community “fight back against” the same things he was running for as a candidate.

“The overdevelopment of Miami, pushing out of the people that made Miami what it is, the businesses, what makes it feel like Miami,” Mendoza-Routt said. “I think we’ve all seen, particularly in the last five or so years since the pandemic, a huge cultural shift away from I think what most of us, you know, what brought us here, made us love this city, grow up here and stay here.”

Since then, Gersten has partnered with local bars, including Over Under in downtown and Las Rosas in Allapattah, to host rally sessions where volunteers can sign up to help with the campaign.

Mendoza-Routt says over 300 volunteers have signed up from different sides of the aisle: Republicans, Democrats, NPAs.

“People understand that it isn’t just about a marina deal; it is a long-term change to this property that they don’t get to undo,” Gersten said.

Viral videos and accusations

But the viral videos urging people to vote no have prompted opposition. A small group of young conservatives on social media have uploaded videos accusing Gersten of being a communist, calling Gramps Getaway an “antifa headquarters” based on a 2019 Democratic Socialists of America of Miami post inviting people to a happy hour at Gersten’s now-closed Wynwood establishment, Gramps.

When asked about the accusations, Gersten said he’s had all kinds of groups get together at Gramps and Gramps Getaway.

“We’ve got MAGA hats and Gulf of America hats and the beautiful boaters,” he said. “This is a very diverse group, and everybody’s welcome to come buy a beer and a cheeseburger.”

“This waterfront is everyone’s waterfront. It is a public space,” he added. “When this place opened, I understood that this is city property. We just want people to respect each other, respect the people that work here, respect the people that dine here, and we’re good. And maybe wear shoes and shirts sometimes, you know.”

The conservative content creators have also made personal and sometimes racially charged jabs at Gersten, Melwani and Gramps Getaway employees. They’ve called Gersten and Melwani “squatters,” claiming that Gersten doesn’t pay enough rent and that Melwani has refused to leave. Gersten is on a month-to-month contract with Melwani, who is also currently month-to-month with the city.

Melwani took over the lease in 2006 from his father, who originally leased the marina in 1983. While the lease technically expired in 2016, Melwani has been the holdover tenant until the legal cases are sorted out and the public gets the opportunity to vote on a new deal.

Gersten is on what’s called a triple net lease with Melwani, which basically means Melwani has the lease on the building, but Gersten pays the cost of property insurance for the building, property taxes and common-area maintenance, plus a base monthly rent of $2,500. He says that amounts to about $15,000 a month that he pays Melwani. Aside from that, Gersten says he’s invested “well into six figures” to upgrade the property, including adding a new kitchen.

“And if you add additional improvements, even from the early iterations, plus the cost of borrowing, we’re into seven [figures],” Gersten said.

Melwani said he currently pays the city 15% of his gross revenues, which includes dockage and dry storage, the main components of the business. He also pays 5% of his fuel sales and 40% of his sublease income, which includes the base rent that Gersten pays, Melwani told the Herald.

“What all these influencers are reporting is not the rent that [Gersten] pays the city, because he doesn’t pay the city rent,” Melwani said. “He pays me rent, and then I apportion the rent that he pays me.”

“Given that I am on a month-to-month, so is Adam,” Melwani added. “And notwithstanding his month-to-month tenancy with me, I mean, he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in what is called tenant improvement. So, in order to have a successful business here that’s beneficial both to us and to the city, I mean, I can’t — I can’t bleed him out and then have a failing operation here, right? Especially when he’s invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the building.”

What happens next

If the referendum fails, the City Commission would be expected to start the whole process over again, since city-owned waterfront leases or sales need to be approved by voters through a referendum. New bids would be drafted, and a new deal would eventually be passed along to the voters, like what happened in 2021 and again this year.

The city could also consider running the Rickenbacker Marina itself, like it runs the Marine Stadium Marina. (The actual Marine Stadium will be operated by a private venue-management company after Miami voters passed a separate referendum on the August ballot.)

Regardless of the outcome, Gersten said he and Gramps will be OK. Filler, the principal of Suntex Marinas, sent a letter to Gersten in late August, saying Gramps could have a place in the new development and offering to have a sit-down with the bar owner.

“The existing Rickenbacker Marina and Marine Stadium Marina facilities are in need of substantial investment, but that investment can be made without eliminating the aspects of the current operation that benefit the public — including Gramps. We operate marinas throughout the country and always try to work with and retain successful tenants while modernizing and renovating properties to reach their potential,” reads.

But Gersten said he isn’t sure he can trust the offer. The developers have also said they’d bring a new Monty’s location to the marina, like they did at the Miami Beach marina, and Gersten doesn’t know if Gramps Getaway could survive with a Monty’s next door.

If the referendum passes, the litigation is sure to continue. While a judge recently ruled that the question had to stay on the ballot, the court has not ruled on whether the deal violates the city’s own charter, which requires a fair market-value proposal.

“We’ll be OK,” Gersten said during last week’s panel at Las Rosas. “I would love to save it as it is, and when I say save it, I mean saving what it feels like in the context of the place. It’s not just like, I’ll save my restaurant. It’s like, this place will look different around us, and then what does this place become?”

This story was originally published October 14, 2026 at 4:46 PM.