"Raise a glass to our past. Celebrate the present. Imagine what comes next." That is how Bal Harbour Village worded its invitation to the 80th Anniversary Celebration on Sunday, November 1. The three lines fit this year better than an anniversary slogan usually would. Over the past twelve months the Village rebuilt the streets around the monument that carries its founders' names. Its oldest structure, the jetty, is being rebuilt now. The anniversary week moves between those two projects, starting at Waterfront Park and ending at Founders Circle four days later.
Two Evenings, Four Days Apart
Both events are open to Bal Harbour residents, and both listings give the same Village events phone number, 305.993.7444.
- 80th Anniversary Celebration. Sunday, November 1, 6 to 9 p.m., at Bal Harbour Waterfront Park, 18 Bal Bay Drive. The Village describes the evening as history, entertainment and celebration. Cocktail attire is encouraged, the evening is for adult guests, and RSVPs go to 305.993.7444 or [email protected].
- Founders Circle Re-Dedication Ceremony. Thursday, November 5, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., at Founders Circle, 9650 Collins Avenue. The renewed site will be unveiled. Rabbi Sholom D. Lipskar will be added to the people recognized there for their contributions to Bal Harbour, and an 80th-anniversary time capsule will be sealed and buried, to be opened in 2046 for the Village's centennial.
The gala is the bigger evening. The Thursday ceremony matters more over time, because it adds a name to a plaque that has carried only three since 1990.
The Three Names on the 1990 Plaque
The Village Council memo from May 19, 2026 says Founders Circle was dedicated on January 7, 1990, to honor people who made a significant contribution to the Village. The original plaque names Robert C. Graham, Sol M. Taplin and Stanley F. Whitman. Each of the three left something behind that a resident runs into on an ordinary day.
Robert C. Graham's company commissioned the plan. According to the Village's own history, Miami Beach Heights was a Detroit-based corporation headed by Robert Graham, with Carl Fisher and Walter O. Briggs. It bought the land in 1929 and hired Harland Bartholomew & Associates to plan it. Development stopped during World War II, and the land was leased to the U.S. military for $1 a year. The settlement was first called Bay Harbour. The final name was meant to evoke both the bay and the coast, taking letters from "bay" and "Atlantic." Older county planning documents spell the company and partner names a little differently, but the Village's account is the one it tells about itself.
Sol M. Taplin held the seat. The Village's election records list Taplin as first elected on April 6, 1965, and last elected on April 4, 1995. That adds up to 32 years of Council service. His first election came the same year Bal Harbour Shops opened. For three decades he helped govern a village whose identity was being shaped by the business across 96th Street.
Stanley F. Whitman built the reason the world knows the name. The Village history says Whitman bought 16 acres in 1957 for a luxury open-air shopping center, and that Bal Harbour Shops opened in 1965 with 30 upscale tenants. Bal Harbour Shops' own history calls that opening Florida's first exclusive high-fashion shopping center.
The Village was incorporated in August 1946. A Miami-Dade MPO background report, archived by FIU, gives the exact date as August 14. Set beside the other dates the Village keeps, the 80 years look like this:
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1927 | Army Corps of Engineers builds the Bal Harbour Jetty to protect Haulover Inlet |
| 1929 | Miami Beach Heights buys the land and commissions the town plan |
| 1941 | Development halts for World War II |
| 1946 | Village incorporates in August; Kenilworth-by-the-Sea opens in December |
| 1953 | Arthur Godfrey broadcasts nationally from the Kenilworth |
| 1957 | Stanley Whitman buys 16 acres for a shopping center |
| 1965 | Bal Harbour Shops opens; Sol M. Taplin first elected |
| 1990 | Founders Circle dedicated on January 7 |
| 2026 | Founders Circle rededicated on November 5 |
| 2046 | Time capsule opens for the centennial |
The Kenilworth-by-the-Sea was the Village's first hotel, a ten-story, 160-room building. The Village history lists the Sea View, Bal Harbour, Balmoral, Ivanhoe, Colony, Singapore, Beau Rivage and Americana among the beachfront resorts that followed, and names Count Basie, Guy Lombardo, Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack among the hotels' well-known guests.
Why the Circle Looks New This Fall
The Village's event listing calls it a "newly renewed monument." The Council's paperwork shows the actual work was at ground level. The May memo notes the Circle needed sidewalk renovations and landscape improvements. It approved $71,000, contingency included, to Homestead Concrete and Drainage to demolish and rebuild the Circle's decorative sidewalk so it matches the sidewalks next to it.
Those neighboring sidewalks came from the Harding Avenue Realignment. The memo says that project started in July 2025 under Whiting-Turner and was scheduled to finish in June 2026. Homestead Concrete was already installing matching sidewalk for it, and the Village timed the Circle work to the realignment's completion to avoid more traffic disruption. The Village's Harding Avenue Realignment page now shows all four stages as complete: the west side, the median, the east side and final resurfacing. The project covered roadway widening, stormwater drainage, sidewalks, signals and landscaping.
So the November 5 ceremony takes place on pavement poured this year, next to a road that was rebuilt this year. Eighty years on, the Village is still maintaining the streets laid out under the 1929 plan.
The 1927 Piece Is Next
The jetty is older than the Village. The Village history dates it to 1927 and says the Army Corps of Engineers built it as a breakwater to protect Haulover Inlet. It is now part of the Village's Harbourfront Park plan, which joins a linear waterfront park to a reconstructed historic jetty. The plan raises the cutwalk toward the hook and adds guardrails, turtle-friendly lighting and ADA-compliant features. It also explores a living shoreline. The project page set construction to begin in 2025 and finish in 2027, with work phased to keep public access and emergency routes open.
Put the dates side by side. The structure built two decades before incorporation is scheduled to be finished the year after the anniversary. The founders' corner got its renewal in time for the 80th, and the oldest piece of the place is the last one in line.
Anniversary Pieces Already Out in the Village
Two parts of the 80th program were underway well before November, and both continue past it.
12 Pentagons, a sculpture by Jon-Paul Wheatley from his "Badly Drawn Ball" series, was shown first at Bal Harbour Shops and now stands at Bal Harbour Beach. The Village says the move celebrates its 80th anniversary. The same program partners with the Museum of Art and Design for complimentary resident access to the FIFA Museum's "Unidad – The World's Game" exhibition at the Freedom Tower.
Portraits of Bal Harbour is the Village's 80th-anniversary storytelling series. Residents can nominate current or longtime residents, and the people selected are featured in an upcoming Village newsletter. In April, the Council recognized Raj Singh, general manager of the Sea View Hotel, as part of the series for his decades of service and leadership in local hospitality. The Sea View appears on the Village's list of its early beachfront resorts. One of the first honorees of the anniversary year works at a hotel from the Village's first chapter.
Portraits and Founders Circle do the same job at different scales. In 1990 the Village recognized the people who planned, governed and built it. In 2026 it adds a fourth name to the plaque and opens a newsletter series to longtime neighbors. Then, on the evening of November 5, it buries a capsule at 9650 Collins Avenue to be opened when Bal Harbour turns 100.
If the anniversary has you thinking about your own home's place in the Village's next twenty years, Nancy Jimenez would be glad to share what she's seeing along Collins Avenue and around the Bay. Let's Connect.
