On February 8, 2017, the Administration, in response to the Florida Legislature’s decision to pull funding from the State of Florida’s Film & Entertainment Incentive Program, provided the Miami Beach City Commission with an overview on the status of the Film & Print Industry, and ways to continue the viability of these industries in Miami Beach.
The Administration coordinated meetings with production industry figures, the City’s Production Industry Council and reviewed processes and local incentive options provided by other communities to evaluate the City’s internal mechanisms.
The City reviewed its key constraints towards improving the approval process and developed options that would potentially bring more production work to Miami Beach.
On April 26, 2017 the Mayor and City Commission discussed the following options for encouraging more film and print production in Miami Beach:
- Eliminate the signed consent requirement for reservation of metered parking, requiring merely notification with all details.
- Reduce signed consent for road or lane closures to 75% of directly affected properties, instead of the current 100%.
- Reduce the residential signature consent area to 200’ from the production use, where it currently requires 500’.
- Reduce permitted production crew parking to $10 per vehicle (a 50% reduction from the usual $20 per vehicle) in all municipal lots and garages, where/ when capacity permits.
- Extending the number of free vehicle access passes to productions which demonstrate Miami Beach room nights, to a scale of 5 passes for 50 room nights; 10 passes for 100 room nights; and 20 passes for 200 room nights.
- Reinstate the PCRV pass for motorhome parking allowance in metered spaces and taxi/ ride share spaces.
- Implementation of a cash incentive of $10,000 and an ordinance streamlining the film and photography guidelines – to encourage and facilitate even more film and print production in Miami Beach
On January 11th, 2018, the Production Industry Council ("PIC") passed the motion to adopt the above guidelines.
On November 8th, 2018, the PIC met and passed a motion to direct the City of Miami Beach lobbyists to include film production incentives as part of the Miami Beach lobbying agenda for the next legislative session to the State. And to work with Miami-Dade lobbyists to restore the vibrancy of film production and tourism thereby resulting in positive economic impact to the Miami Beach and Miami Dade communities.
At the December 13, 2018, PIC meeting, Sandy Lighterman representing the Miami Dade County Office of Film & Entertainment, presented a series of final proposed changes to the PIC, regarding the Miami Beach Film Incentive grant program. These suggestions were reviewed by PIC and the following changes were recommended:
On February 14, 2019 the Tourism and Culture department held a final meeting with the PIC to review the final changes to the Miami Beach Film Incentive Guidelines. At this meeting, the guidelines were approved.
On February 22, 2019, the FCWPC accepted the proposed changes, with the expectation that the Adminsitration provide an LTC with details pertaining to the marketing and advertising on the new initiatives and guidelines. Following the approval of the Mayor and Commission, an LTC will be produced outlining all Marketing and Communications initiatives surrounding the Film Incentive Guidelines.
Please see attachment "FILM INCENTIVE GUIDELINES - PROPOSED CHANGES" to see a line by line proposal of changes, with comments from the Production Industry Council.
Please see attachment "FILM INCENTIVE GUIDELINES - CLEAN VERSION" to see a clean copy of what a final copy of the guidelines will include, should these recommendations be accepted by the Commission.
These changes made are meant to make the guidelines less restrictive so that more productions can take more advantage of them. This includes removing the requirement that a percentage of crew be Florida residents and removing requested deliverables such as marketing materials, behind the scenes clips and b-roll, contact sheets and payroll details as studios are reluctant to share proprietary information. Productions will still be required to submit an accounting with receipts of how much they spent in Miami Beach inclusive of hotels, props, catering, location fees, city services fees, etc. while filming here a minimum of three (3) days Productions will also be required to have a “Thank you to the City of Miami Beach” line in their end credits as applicable.