There are just three atmospheric theaters left in Florida and in an effort to save the one in Miami, officials approved the sale of the city’s historic downtown theater for just $10 to a charter school founded by Grammy Award-winning artist Pitbull.
The city commission approved transferring the ownership of the Olympia Theater and adjoining 10-story office building on Flagler Street to Sports Leadership and Management, a nonprofit group known as Slam, during a meeting Thursday. The atmospheric theaters are often painted with outdoor themes aimed at transporting the audience to another place.
Miami-born Pitbull, whose real name is Armando Christian Pérez, opened the first K-12 Slam charter school in Miami in 2012. The organization currently serves almost 7,000 students across 14 schools in Florida, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona, according to the nonprofit group's website.
Under terms of the deal, the charter school is expected to foot $77 million for repairs and conclude a lawsuit between the city and the theater’s former owner, according to the publicly available purchase agreement.
Slam must complete the repairs within five years of ownership as part of the agreement and partner with Miami-Dade College to create educational programming and cultural activation for the venue, which is expected to be open to the public for 180 days per year. The school itself will be hosted in the adjoining 10-story office building.
If Slam fails to complete repairs within five years or doesn't provide an educational or civic use for the property, ownership will revert back to the city of Miami, the agreement said.
While the city may not be making any money on the transaction, it will no longer have to foot the costly maintenance required for the 99-year-old building, said District 3 Commissioner Joe Carollo at the meeting.
“Frankly, the more I look at it, the more I’m convinced government is not capable of running it like the private sector," Carollo said.
The Olympia Theater opened in 1926 and was designed by Austrian-American architect John Eberson to evoke the atmosphere of a Spanish garden, with Mediterranean and Moorish Revival-style elements. Eberson, who is credited with developing the atmospheric theater concept, also designed the Tampa Theatre, which also opened in 2026. The only other remaining atmospheric theater in Florida is Jacksonville's Florida Theatre, which opened in 1927.
Since it opened, the Olympia Theater has been used as a silent movie house, a theater and concert venue that hosted 15 consecutive sold-out shows by Elvis Presley in the 1950s. During the 1960s, the building was slated for demolition until late businessman Maurice Gusman bought the property in 1971.
Gusman commissioned Morris Lapidus — the architect behind much of Miami Beach's art deco look — to renovate the theater, and the building became the home of the Greater Miami Philharmonic, a former symphony orchestra, the following year. The building was donated to the city in 1975 on the condition it be properly maintained and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
But a lack of maintenance and rising costs following the COVID-19 pandemic led the local nonprofit group, Olympia Center Inc., that had managed the theater since 2011 to turn management back to the city in 2020. The year before, Gusman's heirs filed a lawsuit to take back control of the theater, alleging that the lack of upkeep and changing management violated terms of Gusman's original donation.
"Because the city of Miami was not keeping up this property, ultimately [the Gusman family] had to sue us to try to continue its upkeep," said District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo at the meeting.
With the sale to Slam, however, the Gusman family will voluntarily dismiss the claim "with prejudice," preventing any future lawsuit and drawing an end to the decades-long saga, according to the purchase agreement.
Representatives for Miami-based Slam didn't immediately respond to an emailed request from CoStar News for more information about its plans for the school.
Commissioners at the meeting late last week hailed plans for the Slam school as the "ideal" use for the downtown building, said District 4 Commissioner Ralph Rosado. Slam will use the school during the day, with performances at the theater scheduled for the evenings.
"This is now a venue that will have activity 14 hours a day, and that's exactly the kind of thing you want in your downtown," Rosado said.