Our story begins in 1939. Senator Claude Pepper backed a proposition to build a permanent "World's Fair" style exposition in South Florida to showcase the culture, industry, and innovations of the western hemisphere. The project really picked up steam in 1950, when the government of the United States and of several South and Central American nations lend their support to the project.

With their financial backing and practical know-how secured, the developers set out to begin construction of "Interama" on land currently occupied by Oleta River State Park and  Florida International University Biscayne Campus.

Only, construction never actually got much further than preliminary steps.
 
The Interama project languished over several decades. With each passing year, backers withdrew, and budget constraints forced the project managers to rethink their plans. The grandiosity of the project fluctuated with each revision -- pie-in-the-sky revision three featured an underwater pavilion under a clear plastic dome, accessible via a submersed airtight walkway.

The 1970's saw the final nail hammered into Interama's coffin. Out of money and with nothing to show for it but an undeveloped site, the project's backers sought to repurpose the land for the U.S.'s upcoming bicentennial celebration in 1976. That plan was halted in its tracks by 1974, when the federal government cut funding to the Interama project.

Plans B and C

Shortly before Interama went bust, the City of North Miami purchased a sizeable tract of the project land. The purchase was financed through $12,000,000 in municipal bonds. Then, in 1972, the city leased the land to
Munisport, Inc., with the purpose that Munisport develop a golf course on the land. For reasons not entirely clear, Munisport instead turned the premises into a landfill -- a landfill located on prime oceanfront property, and on wetlands that provide the county's source of fresh water to this day.

In 1976-77, county investigators discovered several leaky fifty-five gallon drums on the Munisport Landfill. These drums were labeled as containing toxins. The EPA stepped in. During the course of its investigation, the Agency declared it a superfund site. The land was placed on the EPA's "National Priorities List", which the Agencydefines as its list of the most polluted sites in the nation.

The property sat idle for decades, owing to the land's then-precarious physical condition and legal status. By 2005 its status had been upgraded to a brownfield, by which time Boca Developers commenced construction of the $1 billion, 5,000-unit condominium known as Biscayne Landing, located on the selfsame land. The project was completed in 2007.

One Of The Biggest Bond Busts In History

During construction of the condominium towers, the State was in the throes of a real estate crisis. The bottom had all but fallen out of the market by the time the towers were opened to residents. The full 100% of the Biscayne Landing investment was written off, making it one of the biggest mortgage securitization failures in history.

In order to understand the magnitude of the failure, here's a quick primer on how the bond market works: homebuyers solicit mortgage loans from lenders, such as banks and thrifts. Since most home purchase loans have long maturities (20 to 30 years), the lenders typically don't hold the loans through repayment. Instead, they sell them off to Wall Street firms, who bundle them according to their size and risk. The Wall Street Firms then package the bundles into bonds, which they sell on the stock market as mortgage-backed securities.

The bonds themselves are divided into tranches, and each tranche is priced according to several factors: the amount of interest it pays, its riskiness, and its stability, among others. Junior tranches tend to be cheaper because they involve greater risk, but they pay higher interest rates. Senior tranches are safer, but are more expensive and the interest paid on them is less.

When a bond fails, sometimes it gets written down. This credit risk is inherent in the investment. If there is any recovery, senior tranches get paid first, while junior tranches take the losses first. If there is any money left over after all the senior tranches are paid, then the junior tranches may receive some of what's left over, otherwise, they get nothing.

In the case of Biscayne Landing, the entire bond structure was written down. That means not even the most-protected senior tranches got any money out of it. Everyone who invested in the project lost every last cent.

Castles In The Sky

When you buy a car, you kick the tires. When you buy a house, you do a walk-through. These are steps you take to protect yourself by making sure you're getting what you're being sold. Banks do this too, when you request a loan from them. The first thing they do is check to see if you're creditworthy. The next thing they do is ensure they're protected if you default on your loan. In the event of a foreclosure, they need to be sure they can take ownership of the land underlying your loan.

You'd think a bank would be extra careful when extending $200 million of loans on a condominium project, right?

The City of North Miami owned the land when construction began in 2005. It granted Boca Developers a 200-year lease of the property. Boca Developers, in turn, obtained construction loans with its leasehold as collateral.  When the lenders prevailed in their foreclosure action against Boca Developers, they were in for a rude awakening. Instead of actually holding title to the land free and clear, all the lenders had to show for their trouble was a leasehold -- they weren't owners but tenants, with the city as landlord. And the city wanted its money. When the lender/tenants failed to pay, the city sued to terminate the lease and prevailed.

All That Glitters...

Biscayne Landing's towers as serve home to the families who live there, but several units are still vacant. In the midst of the nationwide economic conditions, the community can be a tough sell.

When you look upon this land today, it's hard to imagine the world-class magnificence that was practically its birthright back in the early twentieth century. Throughout its history it's been a land of frustrated dreams, broken promises, bureaucratic ignominy, and crushing ruin.

Not all that glitters is golden, but when all one has is dreams, even yellow stones can be gold and shiny rocks can be diamonds, if only in dreams.

When I was a kid, I went to a parochial school run by nuns. Now, don't get me wrong, nuns are great as far as people go, but the ones in charge of schools can be as tough as drill sergeants.

By sixth grade my classmates and I had developed a nasty habit. Every morning before the homeroom teacher arrived, we would play dodgeball. Our classrooms were long and narrow, like boxcars, so we'd get on either side of the classroom and hurl rubber balls at each other until the teacher showed up. Sometimes, when we felt like upping the ante, we'd throw compasses -- not the mapping tool but the type you use to draw perfect circles -- at each other. We were twelve and liked to live dangerously.

So one morning, in the midst of a heated classroom dodgeball fight, the biggest kid in the grade hurls the ball with all his arm behind it. The ball goes ovular with the force of the throw. For all his effort, this gets him nothing more than a narrow miss.

Then something happened that no one had counted on. The ball flew within inches of the porcelain statuette of the Virgin Mary the teacher kept on her desk. The force of its passing wobbled the statuette the tiniest bit. That's when everything went into slow-motion. Everyone held his breath as the statue looked like it was going to tip into a headfirst dive for the floor. It rocked back onto its base and stood erect, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the dodgeball hit the chalkboard just behind the desk and careened back into the statuette. It was a solid full-body impact that swept the statuette clear off the desktop and onto the linoleum floor. The statuette shattered. Everyone in the classroom took a collective gasp of horror. With the teacher due to arrive in less than five minutes, we were screwed. 

The big kid and I bounded across the classroom to the teacher's desk and gathered up all the pieces we could find, then reassembled the statuette with project glue. To our credit, we did a heroic job in under a minute. The statuette was mostly intact. We set it back onto the desk, and when its head drooped ever so slightly, we gave it a gentle nudge back into place.

Our teacher -- a take-no-prisoners sort of nun -- arrived to find us all seated and quiet. This immediately sparked her ire because for the entire year she had been teaching us, we never were this well-behaved.

"What happened?" she asked the class, arms crossed and foot tapping.

Her question was met with silence.

"You... you did something," she said, rounding the desk to her chair. "And you're going to tell me."

A fine sweat broke on my brow as her hand went for the desk drawer. You see, in sixth grade our teacher had this big metal desk that the U.S. army had surplussed back in the '60's. When it came time for the army to get new desks, they sold all their old ones to our school. Any time you opened or shut the desk drawer it made a sound like a marching band brass section tossed down several flights of stairs. But it wasn't the noise so much that had me nervous -- our teacher had a penchant for slamming the drawer hard whenever she was upset.

Nuns are creatures of habit. Sure enough, she yanked the drawer and slammed it into the desk with tremendous force, the clatter reverberating off the classroom walls. At the moment of impact, the statuette imploded, collapsing into itself and scattering bits of porcelain everywhere.

Our teacher's eyes got huge. She clutched at her breast, staggered backward and braced against the chalkboard for support.

"Who!" she demanded. "Who did this?"

Silence. Then, a single hand went up. A quiet voice from the center aisle said, "You did."

Those two words got us recess detention for a month.

I know what you're thinking but you're wrong. The reason I spent a whole day at  the bar was to conduct an anthropology experiment. Yeah. All in the name of science, and all that.

The bar, the pub, the watering hole -- whatever you want to call it -- is the great equalizer. It's where paupers and playwrights rub elbows with princes and plutocrats, because, after all, who doesn't like a drink and a good time?

It's this same reason that makes a pub an excellent place to people-watch. Sit back, get yourself some food and a beer, and see what happens.

 The Academics

It was 10:30 a.m., and I hadn't been at the bar for an hour when a group dressed in medical scrubs strolled in. Stress weighed heavily on their haggard faces. There were three of them, two men and a woman. They eased themselves onto the stools and leaned over the bar, their elbows on the counter and their heads propped up on their hands. They looked exhausted.

Never have you seen more despair than in the eyes of a first-year med student. They acted on their miseries by drowning their worries in alcohol. Where their miseries persisted, they chased the alcohol with several chain-smoked cigarettes. I lost count of the number these three had smoked after the bartender had emptied the ashtray for the fourth time.

It got me into thinking: that's some example these three were setting. Weren't doctors the people who told you not to do what they were doing?

Another group pushed through the pub door. Dressed in sandals and sweatshirts with fraternity letters on them, they looked like college kids except they were too old -- and looked too worn out -- to be seniors. They sat at the bar next to the med school group, lugging their state bar exam cram books with them. Ah, law students.

Things took a surprising turn when the students of both disciplines started fraternizing. It was a friendship that would not survive their entry into their professions. If anybody hated doctors, it was lawyers; and if anybody hated lawyers more than anybody else, it was doctors.

The Musicians

Shortly afterward, a gaggle of early twenty-somethings sauntered in. By the look of them -- tattered jean pants, long hair, calf-high boots, eyeliner -- they were a local rock group. They'd just hit the drinking age and were ready to drink the pub dry. My guess was they had put on a rock concert the night before and had only just rolled out of bed.

"Man, I got the baddest idea!" said the white guy with blond cornrows. "We've got to write a concept album -- you know, where all the songs together tell a larger story." He paused to let the idea sink in. "Except, and here's the crazy part, it's gonna be a book."

The band members gave him high-fives and slaps on the back.

"Oh sweet, man! Nobody's ever done that before!" said the tattooed guy.

I shook my head at this. I didn't want to break their hearts, so I kept it to myself that what they had in mind had been done before, and many times, at that. It's called a novel.

The Rabbis

I thought I'd seen it all by the time these two showed up, but they proved me wrong. Two Hasidic rabbis walked into the bar (this is not the start of a joke, I swear), dressed to the nines in their orthodox garb. These guys were full-on black robes, big hats, big beards, and sideburns that hung practically at their knees. They guy next to me sprang ramrod erect when he saw them come in, his addled mind probably thinking he'd drunk himself into the dark ages and that the rabbis were medieval wizards.

The rabbis were locked in an intense argument that had carried into the bar from the sidewalk. Limbs flailing, aspersions flying, they looked like two angry cats locked in a clothes dryer on spin-cycle.

"I give better eulogies than you!" said the first in a thick Eastern European accent. "Everyone cries at my eulogies!"

"Because you bore them to tears!" said the other with an accent that was decidedly New York. "It's bad enough somebody died, and you put them through torture!"

These two seated themselves in a corner booth, flailing their arms and shouting all the while. The waitress, with understandable trepidation, was slow in taking their order -- you couldn't pay me to jump into that verbal crossfire.

They argued the whole time they were in the bar, even through dinner, somehow finding a way to simultaneously use their mouths for shouting and for putting food in their stomachs. Then, once the meal was through, they left their money on the table and stood up, both at once, in a choreographed rage that blustered out the door again.

Feeling like I'd had enough excitement for one day, I paid my tab and left, but not before giving those last two plenty of lead time so I could make a quiet (and safe) getaway.