FORT LAUDERDALE — A little bit of paint can cause a fury.
Just ask the people of River Oaks.
The forest of mangrove trees that provided shade and beauty to this flood-prone Fort Lauderdale neighborhood are long gone, cut down to make way for better drainage.
In their place sit two short and stocky walls amid the barren landscape that now greets all who pass by the intersection of Coconut Drive and Southwest 20th Street.
To residents, the two unadorned walls that went up in late January were “ugly” concrete eyesores just begging for paint.
In mid-February, a local artist showed up and set to work at the invitation of neighborhood association leader Ted Inserra.
First, Inserra asked Linkie Marais to paint both walls white. Then, in three days, she transformed the northern wall into a mural of a forest with vivid greens and lush reds.
There’s just one problem.
The mural was done without the city’s permission.
There was no customary call to artists. No weigh-in from the Public Art and Placement Advisory Board. No required commission approval.
The two walls are not quite 5 feet high and nearly 12 feet wide — just long enough to cross the canal that cuts through River Oaks.
“I wanted to put color that blended into the neighborhood,” Marais said. “I just wanted to make the neighborhood a happy environment.”
The artist planned to dress up the second wall with a mural, too, but the day after she finished the first wall, Inserra got a warning from the city not to paint anything else without following the proper process.
Inserra now says he figured the city had rules in place, but he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he was worried getting through the months-long process would take too long.
So he forged ahead, paying for the paint and finding an artist on his own to transform the “ugly” walls into a thing of beauty.
Inserra has since been summoned to appear before the public art advisory board at its next meeting on March 18 and plead his case. He will also need to seek the commission’s retroactive approval.
Inserra, who expects to make a second run for commission in November, took his fight to social media, broadcasting fears that the city might paint over the wall.
“I am now in Hot Water about having this Beautiful Mural painted in OUR neighborhood,” he said on Facebook. “The city was going to leave this just a slab of concrete, so I took action, paying for everything myself. They are IRATE and ready to paint it over.”
Susannah Bryan/South Florida Sun Sentinel
This mural, shown on Sunday, has kicked up controversy in the River Oaks neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale. City officials say it was done without their OK, but residents want it to stay. (Susannah Bryan/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Mural defenders answered Inserra’s call, showing up at a rally on Sunday and blitzing the city with angry emails demanding the mural be left standing.
To them, this is not just a fight over a mural. It’s a fight to make the neighborhood beautiful again after a record-breaking rainstorm last year and 26 months of messy drainage work and torn-up streets.
One lifelong resident chided City Hall for not being kinder to one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city.
“The new mural that was painted on that ugly wall needs to be left alone,” George Campbell wrote. “It was painted beautifully by a local artist and is delightfully better than that ugly wall that was forced upon the neighborhood. Please let the residents decide what’s best for our neighborhood, not the city.”
Before Inserra lit up an email campaign, the city’s Cultural Affairs Officer informed the public art advisory board on Feb. 6 that Inserra would be given three options: Paint over the mural; allow the city to issue a call to artists; or have the original artist paint the second wall to match the first.
Inserra could also face a fine if anyone were to file a complaint with code enforcement, Cultural Affairs Officer Joshua Carden told the board.
On Monday night, Carden said the mural might look pretty now, but it won’t in six months without sealant paint to protect it from the sun and salt of Fort Lauderdale.
But there’s a chance the mural can stay, Carden says. City commissioners will have the final say.
“Because of the community support, the board will likely make a recommendation to the City Commission to retroactively approve the mural, along with words of wisdom that there is a process to be followed,” Carden told the Sun Sentinel. “In an ideal world, we could have prepped the wall to accept the current paint. And we could have opened up the call to artists. It takes a little longer, but it would have at least allowed us to remedy the situation from the start.”
Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com. Follow me @Susannah_Bryan