The controversial demolition of the home at 42 Star Island could see approval as soon as today, but that doesn’t mean the fight to preserve the 88-year-old house will be over, the Miami Herald reported.
The owners, Leonard and Lisa Hochstein, a “Real Housewives of Miami”star and her plastic surgeon husband, want to bulldoze the home and replace it with a new 14,000 square-foot mansion with a five-car garage.
The Miami Beach Design Review Board will review the couple’s application, which is strongly opposed by the Miami Design Preservation League, today, the paper said.
But Kent Harrison Robbins, an attorney working pro bono for the preservationists, doesn’t think that Miami Beach’s Design Review Board approval means that the house is necessarily coming down.
“We don’t think the applicant has done their job to establish a basis for them to be able to demolish the architecturally-significant building,” Robbins told the Herald. [Miami Herald] —Christopher Cameron