The contractor commissioners picked for the Art Cinema now has a convicted president

Demolition wrapped in July, and excavation is now underway at 3000 Ponce de Leon Boulevard for Ponce Park, an 11-story Allen Morris Co. building with 58 condominiums and about 22,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, built by KAST Construction. The ground floor is slated to include Quintín Ultramarinos, a restaurant from Madrid's Grupo Paraguas, and the building is anticipated to finish in early 2028. The adjacent Fred B. Hartnett Ponce Circle Park redesign, a roughly $11.2 million public space project with the city, is anticipated to start in January 2027 and finish in the first quarter of 2028, according to Allen Morris Co. Construction on the building and the park beside it is scheduled to continue into early 2028.

Pinstripes leased 30,000 square feet at The Plaza in 2019, planning bowling lanes, bocce courts and a wine cellar, then went bankrupt last year without opening, which Coral Gables Magazine calls one of the slowdowns in activating The Plaza. Five Iron Golf took the space and opened this past summer at 3009 Ponce de Leon Blvd., keeping 12 bowling lanes and adding a dozen Trackman golf simulator bays, pool tables, a full bar and pub food. Lanes and simulators are charged by the hour; the pool tables are free. Instructors from the Biltmore's Jim McLean Golf School use the simulators. Wrap-around F-1 racing simulators went in recently.

Residents need proof of residency, and vehicles enter from Coral Way; no line is allowed before 9, and nothing is taken after noon. Anything with a plug or batteries qualifies, along with paint, pool chemicals, fire extinguishers and pesticides, in their original labeled containers when possible. Shredding is capped at five office boxes or one 13-gallon bag per vehicle. Gently used clothing goes to Camillus House; organizers say the greatest need is men's shirts, pants and shorts. Car batteries, appliances, tires and Styrofoam are turned away. The city says a decade of these drives has kept more than 736,000 pounds out of landfills.

Bolton was born June 3, 1926, in Duck Hill, Mississippi, and settled in Coral Gables in 1964. She was among the first Florida women to join the National Organization for Women, founded the state chapter in 1968 and led the Miami-Dade chapter. She drove the designation of Aug. 26 as Women's Equality Day, founded what the profile calls the nation's first rape treatment center, at Jackson Memorial, and held meetings in her Coral Gables home in 1974 that it credits with organizing the nation's first neighborhood crime watch. She never ran for office but attended commission meetings so regularly that then-Mayor Raúl Valdés-Fauli quipped that "a budget hearing without Roxcy Bolton is like a garden without flowers." She died here in 2017, the year she received the Key to the City.

Schwartz remakes cassettes, boomboxes and hearts in crystal, resin and acrylic, drawing on music and nostalgia. Select sculptures will be on display while he discusses the work, with hors d'oeuvres and drinks. Admission is free and the evening runs to 9:30.