USA: discover the history of the island with the highest income in the country – 05/29/2023 – Market

Fisher Island, a small island south of Miami Beach, covers 90 hectares and is one of the most exclusive places in the United States.

Access can only be done by ferry or helicopter, but once inside, there’s no need to leave: there’s a supermarket, school up to 8th grade, a nine-hole golf course, swimming pools and everything a rich family could want.

The 561 people who—according to the 2020 US Census—call Fisher Island home have the highest per capita incomes of any US zip code: $2.2 million a year. .

To live on the island, you have to be a millionaire. Property prices range from US$3.5 million (R$17.5 million) to US$40 million (R$200 million), and a project under development expects to charge US$90 million (R$450 million) for a cover.

The area is so exclusive that celebrities such as television host Oprah Winfrey and actress Julia Roberts have owned homes there.

However, as is often the case, this island of luxury was not always the center of exclusivity that it is today.

The beginning

“Fisher Island was part of Miami Beach, but it was separated in the early 1900s when the government dredged a deep-water channel — known as the Government Cut — into the Biscayne Canal,” said Paul George, resident historian at the Museum of Miami Beach. Miami, to BBC News Mundo (BBC Spanish service).

The channel opened the way to the port of the city of Miami, known today as the “cruise capital of the world”, and left a small accumulation of sand on which the island developed.

“It was much smaller than it is today,” adds George, “about 16 hectares. Now they’ve added a lot, it’s getting to about 90.”

One of its first notable owners was Dana A. Dorsey, Florida’s first black millionaire, who made his fortune building affordable housing for African Americans in what was then known as Colored Town, now Overtown, in northwest Miami.

“His dream was to develop it as a black resort for black visitors,” explains George. “Miami was very segregated and what he wanted was for black people to have their own beaches and infrastructure and avoid all kinds of problems with the authorities.”

However, the project would never get off the ground. Not by the rules of the time.

In an interview with the US public broadcaster NPR, Timothy Barber, executive director of the Black Archives (an NGO dedicated to the preservation of African American historical memory), explained that, for Dorsey, it was impossible to move the necessary resources, including materials and staff, to The island.

“It is known that he got into trouble because the island was on the east side of the railroad tracks [que marcam a separação entre leste e oeste em Miami] and Henry Flagler [considerado o fundador de Miami] had designated the east side for whites and the west for blacks,” said Barber.

Ultimately, Dorsey had to sell Fisher Island to the builder who would give it its current name, Carl Fisher.

the island of speed

Fisher became a millionaire thanks to his obsession with speed.

Born into poverty, he began to make his fortune by helping his brothers sell motorcycles by racing them: he was a racing champion and, with his earnings, he was one of the first to buy a car in the capital of American motorsport, Indianapolis.

His love for engines was so great that he was able to envision the role that the automobile would play in the development of the United States during the 20th century. He was involved in the construction of titanic works such as the Lincoln Highway, the first intercontinental highway in the United States, which connected New York and San Francisco, the Dixie Highway —which would connect Miami Beach, in the south of the United States, to Chicago— and the Indianapolis race track, considered the temple of motor racing in the Americas.

Fisher purchased the Isle of Dorsey in 1919 with the intention of building a seaport to service cruise ships. But his plans changed when, out of love for engines, he met William K. Vanderbilt II, a member of the richest family in the United States in the second half of the 19th century.

In an agreement signed in 1927, Fisher surrendered 2.8 of the island’s 8.5 hectares that belonged to Vanderbilt, in exchange for a 265-foot yacht known as the “Eagle”.

History books say that Fisher proposed the deal to Vanderbilt with the line: “My island for your boat.”

The Vanderbilts built their mansion on the island until the end of World War II, when they sold it to another eccentric millionaire and speed aficionado, “The King of Speedboats,” Garfield Wood, who used it to work on electric car designs and military boats. until 1963.

From that moment on, until the 1980s, Fisher Island served as a quarantine center, home to the University of Miami School of Marine Biology, and storage site for an oil company.

The Miami Boom in the 80’s

“By the mid-1980s, the island was on its way to becoming one of the most luxurious communities in the United States,” explains historian George to BBC Mundo.

A consortium purchased the land and, reflecting the interest in luxury and exclusivity that characterized the era of President Ronald Reagan, opened the Fisher Island Club in 1987.

“It’s almost the first announcement that Miami was going to become a place of luxury, and it was obvious that it was going to start attracting the rich and famous,” says George.

The development that Fisher Island has seen since then has made it one of the ten most exclusive zip codes in the country (zip code is 33109): according to Bloomberg data, in 2015, the median income of island residents was $2.5 million ( BRL 12.5 million) per year.

The island has its own market, a school up to eighth grade, a medical center, a fire and rescue station, a nine-hole golf course, seven restaurants, a marina for yachts over 76 meters in length, its own security agents and a fleet of of four ferries that transport passengers and cars 24 hours a day.

“The average age of residents on the island decreased after the Covid pandemic, with the large influx of people who came from New York”, told BBC Mundo a professional seller of real estate on the island, who preferred not to be identified to maintain privacy.

“These are well-connected people, younger generations, families with children. They love security, that they have everything they need and want.”

“You don’t have to leave the island for anything,” he says.

“As things stand today, you can order Instacart [serviço de entrega de mercado a domicílio] and they deliver it on the ferry,” he adds, assuring that with the rise of people working remotely, it’s easier to live on an island, especially if you’re a ferry ride away from one of the fastest-growing urban centers in the US.

While projects have been considered in the past to integrate Fisher Island with the city via a bridge, the passage of huge freighters and cruise ships leaving the harbor has made the task difficult.

It is a task that, at the moment, does not seem to be necessary.

“The island has had so many guardians for over a century and they all had their own wonderful vision of real estate,” concludes the realtor. “It just made her better and more and more beautiful for people who enjoy that lifestyle.”

This text was published here.