Coconut Grove Laundry & Cleaners has been open since 1961. Its storefront at 3634 Grand Avenue sits just east of Douglas Road and across from Gibson Plaza, and the business has only been there since late March. The Espinosa family took drop-offs at the corner of Grand Avenue and Matilda Street for decades. This spring they packed up so the building could come down for the Ziggurat mixed-use project and reopened a few blocks west, the Coconut Grove Spotlight reported.
That new address puts the laundry inside Little Bahamas Grand Avenue Main Street, the state-backed district that launched in September. The program's stated job is filling vacant storefronts. Walk the district this week, though, and some of its storefronts are already filled by businesses that only recently arrived. One café opened in a storefront that had been empty for almost a year. Two businesses moved west because the blocks to the east are being rebuilt. The slow pieces are the district's two landmarks, the Ace Theater and the Esther Mae Armbrister Park community center.
The Blocks the Program Covers
The district runs along Grand Avenue from Margaret Street, a block west of the U.S. Post Office, to Brooker Street, a block east of Armbrister Park. It is part of Florida Main Street, a program of the Florida Division of Historical Resources that supports economic development and preservation in historic downtowns. Coconut Grove is one of 58 designated Main Streets statewide and Miami's third, after Allapattah and Overtown.
During segregation, this stretch was a center of Black commerce, with restaurants, bars, grocery stores and shops. It also had the Ace Theater, a 1930s movie house that later hosted graduations, proms and concerts. Many of those businesses have since closed. Katherine Beck, Florida Main Street's coordinator, gave the Spotlight a short assessment of what's left.
"You've got good bones there. You've got some good structures, but we got vacant buildings."
Miami Dade College's Gibson Center on Grand Avenue anchors the program. The college provides meeting space, coordinates community meetings and handles administration while the program gets started.
What Is Open, Block by Block
Heading west from just east of Douglas Road toward Armbrister Park, these are the storefronts with current addresses on the strip:
- Fookem's Fabulous, 3606 Grand Ave. A bakery with weekday and weekend hours and online ordering.
- Coconut Grove Laundry & Cleaners, 3634 Grand Ave. Drop-off and pickup only. Alterations are still done in-house, but dry cleaning is now sent out, and the family told customers to expect cleaning to take an extra day.
- ARRAE Gallery, 3680 Grand Ave. A gallery showing work by local artists, with regular visiting hours.
- Dogtown, 3686 Grand Ave. Grooming, daycare and boarding, open seven days.
- The UPS Store, 3692 Grand Ave. At the corner of Grand and Douglas, with seven-day hours.
- Garin Art Caffé, 3870 Grand Ave. Coffee, matcha, tapas, burgers, wine and mojitos, served in art-lined rooms and on a shaded patio under mature oaks.
Three of these six storefronts are new to the strip. The laundry and the UPS Store both moved here after the Ziggurat site at Matilda Street, two blocks east, replaced a row of low-rise commercial buildings. Garin Art Caffé opened in January in a storefront that had been empty for nearly a year.
Pushed West, and Still on the Avenue
The district has been gaining tenants partly because redevelopment to the east pushed them out. The Spotlight's October report listed the laundry and the UPS Store as businesses that moved "farther west along the boulevard" into what is now the district.
For the laundry, 3634 Grand is a stopover. The Espinosa family plans a permanent location at Douglas Road and Frow Avenue, a block north of Ike's Food Center, but has not yet set exact plans or a timeline. In other words, a business that has been in the Grove since 1961 is moving west a second time and staying close.
Garin Art Caffé came to the strip by choice. Its owners, Carlos Garin and Clara Garcia, have lived in Coconut Grove for 25 years. They told the Spotlight that the café is the first step in a plan to make the south side of Grand Avenue, between Douglas Road and Armbrister Park, a small hub for local businesses and the arts rooted in the Grove's Bahamian heritage. They described that plan in January, eight months before the state program gave the same blocks a formal name.
The Parcel Most Likely to Change Next
Across from the laundry, the north side of Grand is where the street's next change is already underway. In early July, crews demolished the Believers of Authority church, a 1935 building at 3655 Grand Avenue. The church and two development partners plan an affordable housing project with 56 condominium units and a new church on three parcels between Gibson Plaza and the former Tikki Club. The City of Miami agreed last year to invest $4.2 million in the project, according to the Spotlight. As of the July report, the timing was unclear.
Foodie Park Miami sits on one of those three parcels, at 3659 Grand. Stirrup Properties sold that parcel last year for $2.2 million to Grove Prosperity Partners. In late September, Miami on the Cheap listed the food park's vendors, among them One Pot, Annisa Nomada, Oh My Wok, T&F Coffee Co., Le Frommage, Spoons BBQ and Tropical Social Club. It also listed Wednesday karaoke and Thursday jazz, both at 8 p.m. Foodie Park's own homepage is promoting a "bigger" new Miami location with "lots of parking" and lists its status as "Under Construction."
The Landmarks Still in Progress
The district's two landmarks are on a slower schedule than its shops. So are the new buildings rising near its east end. The status of each comes from Spotlight reports on the Ace Theater grant, the Armbrister delays and Silver Bluff's West Grove projects.
| Project | Location | Status as of latest report |
|---|---|---|
| Ace Theater restoration | Grand Avenue | Under renovation; a $200,000 city grant approved in April covers new plumbing and an elevator |
| Armbrister Park community center | 4000 Grand Ave. | New two-story center of about 10,000 sq. ft. with an outdoor pavilion; old center still standing as of early October, with the city targeting an early-November construction start |
| Elemi Phase 2 by Silver Bluff | Grand and Elizabeth | Five stories, 27 apartments; under construction as of March |
| Silver Bluff office building | 3443 Grand | 80,000 sq. ft. Class A office; lots cleared by March |
The Ace Theater's owners hope to reopen it as an entertainment venue. The Miami City Commission voted unanimously in April to approve the grant. Of the four, the Armbrister center has the longest record of delays. It was proposed in 2020, shown to residents in 2021 and funded for construction in November 2024. A contractor's schedule called for demolition on April 14 and a construction start on May 27, with completion projected for July 2027. Neither start date held. By July the city had pushed demolition to the end of September and the construction start to early November. As of the Spotlight's October 5 report, the old center was still standing. The City of Miami's project page has the design plans presented at a March 26 community meeting.
Where Residents Fit In
The program hasn't yet settled what the district will become, and that is deliberate. Miami Dade College had held two community meetings by October, both focused on recruiting a board, an advisory council and committees for a new community nonprofit that will run the program. No plans have been finalized. A community-led work plan is targeted for fall 2027, and early ideas include entrepreneur training and a possible storefront incubator. Gener Romeo directs the Gibson Center and helped secure the designation. He told the Spotlight that the college's role is limited.
"We're just the anchoring institution. We're here to make sure that things are happening, but we need you all to be a part of it to do the work."
The program also has support from the city's Department of Human Services, Miami District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo, Miami-Dade District 7 Commissioner Raquel Regalado and the Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce.
Grand Avenue is also getting more light at night this season. The Coconut Grove BID is installing new year-round streetscape lighting along Commodore Plaza, Main Highway and parts of Grand Avenue and Fuller Street, timed for the holidays, according to a BID update. The Grove's free Christmas Tree Lighting & Block Party takes over Main Highway on Sunday, November 29, from 6 to 9 p.m., with Santa photos, a decorated golf-cart parade and live entertainment. The King Mango Strut returns to the Grove's streets on Sunday, January 3, from 2 to 6 p.m., according to the Spotlight's events listing.
If you own on or near Grand Avenue and want to know how the Main Street district, the Armbrister Park construction and the new projects along the corridor relate to your property, Green Group Realty can go through it with you, in English or Spanish, directly with managing broker Javier Portal. Schedule a Personal Market Consultation.
