Ocean Drive Magazine

Gimme a brreak!” huffs Thomas Kramer, the controversial, 50-year-old developer in his German-inflected English. It is a Friday morning in his one-story, five-room business headquarters, which feels like a small contemporary house. Adjacent to it—across a cobblestone courtyard that has a life-size sculpture of a man on a bench by the front door, a fountain in the middle, and a 10-foot-tall tyrannosaurus on the other side—is his reddish Star Island mansion. He could be talking about his most recent bouts of negative publicity, but for now the subject is an older clash, involving his rather grandiose vision for the southern tip of South Beach.

Thomas Kramer, here on a bull sculpture outside his Star Island home, lives by his own rules and apologizes to few, the same approach that also fuels his successes in real estate and other businesses.

A minute earlier he had sprung from his black desk in a spacious room that serves as his office and rushed through two doorways into another workspace. He stopped in front of aerial photographs of two peninsulas: One shows the southern tip of Manhattan, the other Miami Beach. “Look at how similah,” he says. Of course, the tops of skyscrapers and other buildings fill the Manhattan image; a lone high-rise is in the South Beach shot. “This is when I first came in ’92. The area was a complete dump then. There was one failed development, Osborn Towers, which was in bankruptcy, and that was actually the first thing that I bought.” In all, he purchased properties encompassing about 35 acres south of Fifth Street, for about $30 million. (He also was an investor in this magazine many years ago.)

Suddenly, he is over at the opposite wall, gesturing at a montage of photos. Two young men and one young woman busy themselves at sleek computer workstations with large screens like the ones graphic designers use, pretending not to notice their boss. He points at another aerial of SoBe, one corner of which is superimposed with a headshot of Kramer and streams of red arrows coming out of his eyes. One series of arrows goes to the image of South Beach, the other to a colorful photograph of a quaint harbor village. It is Portofino, Italy. The idea was to re-create the village south of Fifth Street.


Kramer with Craig Robins

“When I came around with a boat [I saw] the bay of Portofino with its little harbor, with its frame of three- to four-story buildings that are shops, apartments, restaurants and so on. And then behind, mountains,” Kramer reminisces about his first glimpse of the town in northern Italy. “So my vision has beautiful shops, the same harbor, the same idea, and instead of mountains, skyscrapers. It had the big advantage of having the city behind. When you enter it, you don’t see the skyscrapers because they are set back. When you walk on the street level you feel like you’re in a Mediterranean village. And you don’t have this overwhelming grouping, like this concrete canyon on Collins Avenue and so on.” He notes that his vision included hidden parking garages inside the framework of buildings. That came out of a design charrette Kramer organized in 1992, when he invited some of Miami’s most prominent architects to come up with plans for the new Portofino village.

I make the mistake of asking, “But why Portofino?”—as opposed to some other harbor town on the globe.

“Why? I just explained to you!” Kramer erupts, impatiently. “Because that was the solution to the problem facing Florida, especially Miami Beach, of these horrible skyscrapers. Because of this crap, stupid discussion of height limitation. You look at ugly garages, and they are the first five floors! So who cares whether the thing is 50 floors high or 10 floors high when the first five are ugly? Gimme a brreak! It looks horrible, whether it’s 50 or 100 or 10 stories high. And the solution was Portofino. When you go to Portofino, do you remember that mountains are behind? And why aren’t there restrictions for the mountains? Why are there high mountains? Who gives a…?” He stops short of swearing.


	Kramer with Paris and Nicky Hilton

His point is that someone walking the streets of Portofino does not see the mountains because all the quaint Mediterranean buildings are in the way. “When you walk there all you see is a beautiful harbor, you have the beautiful restaurants, you have the beautiful ambienda of this Italian city. And that’s exactly what I did with my charrette planning.”

Anyway, you don’t ask Kramer, “Why Portofino?” just like you don’t ask Mötley Crüe, “Why Dr. Feelgood?” It just came to him. Indeed, had he not chosen the path of a Wall Street stock trader and then real-estate mogul he just might have plunged into rock. “I live like a rock star,” he observes with a big grin, his longish white hair flaring. In his faded slit-thigh jeans and unbuttoned button-down shirt over a T-shirt with a big hammer and sickle on it, he cuts a semblance of an aging one.

Of course, Kramer ended up doing plenty of head-banging with the government and citizenry of Miami Beach. In the end he was unable to convince enough people to share his radical Weltanschauung—the low-rises, the high-rises, a pedestrian mall from ocean to bay, an expanded marina from Monty’s to the Murano at Portofino’s shoreline, the demolition of the historic Leonard Beach Hotel after its remodeling for Kramer’s ephemeral nightclub, Hell. After winning a long court battle, Kramer was free to proceed with the development of Portofino Tower, the first of several luxury condo high-rises that now ring the peninsula south of Fifth Street. But the idyllic village never appeared.

Kramer can give the impression he is a vain, self-obsessed man, like a mad scientist who sees little beyond his own grandiose visions. But if pressed, he will give props to his predecessors when props are due. “Pioneers like Tony Goldman got the international fashion and jet-set circuit into town years before I saw the potential of the South of Fifth area,” Kramer acknowledges. Developers had avoided South Pointe because they expected it would entail costly litigation to push through zoning changes and costly environmental cleanup operations on sites that once housed an oil refinery, a gasoline-storage facility, a dog track, dry-cleaning operations and a meat factory.


	Kramer with Jorge Perez

He is seated behind his own big-frame computer screen again, at his large rectangular desk, which is covered with photos in frames, figurines, small stuffed animals and other knickknacks. He finally stops talking about South Pointe, with a conclusive “Aghh!” and a dismissive flap of his hands. Because Kramer wants to talk about a new blitzkrieg he is preparing for another target.

“Now I’m taking on—in a complete swing of fortunes—the Internet,” he declares. “You saw these pictures on the wall that are not related to construction or architecture designs? I have a programmer and designer team working on the ultimate web page. Competition to MySpace, YouTube, name them all, I’m going to beat them. I bet you.”

When I inquire about the name, I hear him say, “SoBeefUp dot-com.” But no. It’s sobefab.com. Kramer offers a cryptic hint of the concept that will inform the graphics. “It’s going to be a play of words, so that you see a star coming at you in all kinds of different commotions,” he says.

One reason for this venture, he says, is that all existing social-networking sites are lacking because they do not follow six rules. He hands me an eight-by-11-inch piece of paper with the following list:

Everything clickable must be a button.
All spacing must be consistent.
Don’t make me think. [“Think” is represented as a button.]
Fewer words are better.
Never, ever put anything not active on a page.
Always use the same font. Don’t use bold.

“I feel like a railroad baron of the Internet,” he offers, grinning again. The modest goal: an IPO worth $1 billion in 22 months.

Kramer with Shareef Malnik, Yahima Giro, Pauly Shore and Antonio Misuraca

No article about Kramer is complete without some discussion of the latest lawsuits and public altercations involving him. 1992: A model tells Miami Beach police that Kramer ‘’grabbed and squeezed her breasts’’ at Hell on Halloween. No charges filed. 1995: A pregnant woman tells Swiss police that Kramer jumped her in a Zurich nightclub restroom, Kramer claims she hit on him, judges acquit. 1998: Police in Miami Beach arrest Kramer for battery, a judge acquits him a year later. 1999: London police charge Kramer with raping his secretary, Kramer claims consensual sex, she decides not to testify, case closed. He has been busted four times in recent years for speeding in manatee zones.

And at about 11:30 p.m. this past March 31st, police arrested Kramer at The Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. They took him to jail and charged him with three misdemeanors, including endangering the welfare of a child, abusive sexual contact and forcible touching of a minor.

Kramer with Venus and Serena Williams

Kramer says there was nothing sexual about it. “I was in the bathroom with my friend from Miami,” he says, calmly. “We were peeing. And four or five youngsters were smoking and drinking and horsing around in the toilet. Pushing people into the bathroom. And they pushed me and I peed all over my black-tie jacket—I mean, pants. I pushed back. And because of where I pushed the little mothahfuckah went to Momma and screamed that he got molested, and the police came, arrested me, I spent 36 hours in jail. It was really funny, with my black-tie suit...and every guy in there wanted to steal my watch and my studs and stuff.”

Press reports quoted police as saying Kramer shouted, “High five!” when he went for the kid’s groin.

“There was no high five,” he replies. “That’s their statement.”

So they made that up?

“Of course they made it up! You think I’d grab some 13- or 14-year-old guy’s balls? What insanity is there,” he says.

Unfortunately, Kramer stands accused of transgressing other intimate boundaries of late. On April 5th, Abigail Brzezinski, a 29-year-old ultrasound technician, filed a lawsuit against him in Miami-Dade civil court in connection with an incident at Quattro restaurant on Lincoln Road about 20 minutes past midnight last Halloween. Brzezinski was reportedly dressed as Tinker Bell. The complaint charges Kramer with “shoving his hand down her shirt, past her brassiere and grabbing her breast” while they posed for a photo. After Brzezinski “voiced her verbal shock and surprise [Kramer] pushed her and she was forced to stumble two steps backwards,” the complaint alleges.

Kramer, here in his Star Island home, was one of the first Miami Beach developers to see the value in the South of Fifth neighborhood and implored the city to allow him to implement his grand vision, which included a replica of the village of Portofino in Italy. But city officials demurred, and his plans never completely took root.

Kramer angrily denies it. “The Quattro thing is $575,000 to make it go away. That’s a nice ticket. So I said, ‘Fuck you, go to the newspaper.’ So now it’s in the newspapers. Think I’d pay a cent? I’d go to the court, I go to any jury, I fight this out if this the last thing I fight out. This woman, in front of my mom, in front of all my friends, asks me to pose with her friends for a photo, and five months later she comes and claims I grabbed her on Halloveen! Which jury in this country is going to find me guilty? Please. She asked me to pose with her girlfriends in front of my table! My mother, my father, 10 of my friends who are my witnesses! Going to testify. Their statements are already taken. What do you think my response was? Yeah, take the check now, and can I mail it?”

Brzezinksi’s Boca Raton-based lawyer, Brian Glick, calls Kramer’s assertion “absolutely untrue.” According to Glick, Kramer’s lawyer, Richard Sharpstein, initiated discussions about a settlement amount and offered $5,000. Glick remembers countering with a request for “substantially more” money, but says he cannot recall the exact number he mentioned to Sharpstein. “But frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with [$575,000] if that was the number,” he adds. The filed complaint doesn’t specify any dollar amount; Glick notes that jurors set monetary penalties. “He should be a gentleman and step up to the plate,” Glick says of Kramer.

Now Kramer is laughing, having just joked that Brzezinski refused to allow police to photograph the allegedly groped evidence. Litigation, he maintains, just comes with the territory of a wealthy high-rise developer. “I have this 100 times in my life. Other people who are famous have it 200 times, 300 times,” Kramer says. “Everybody who has money gets nailed. And because they are religious leaders or politicians who can’t get their white vest dirty they have to pay them off. I don’t. I don’t pay people off. I go and fight. I’m a double Taurus. I’m meant to fight. I love it.”

He would even have you believe he adores the mother of all anti-Kramer lawsuits, the one his former father-in-law, Siegfried Otto, filed against him to get his $145 million back. Kramer maintains it was a gift. When Otto died in 1996, while the case was under appeal, his heirs, Verena von Mitschke-Collande and Claudia Miller-Otto, became the plaintiffs. So far, Swiss and Florida courts have ruled against Kramer. This past April a state circuit-court judge in Miami-Dade ruled that Kramer owes the daughters $108 million. The case is under appeal.

Kramer, here with models in the pool of his Miami home, continues to persevere in business, and marches on blithely in the face of occasional legal scuffles. “I may have lost a couple of battles, but not the war!” he declares.

But Kramer insists he will win eventually and promises revenge. “We make history building buildings, we make history in changing laws, we make history in changing building standards. And we’re making history in international law,” he submits. “There’s going to be even more publicity, and then when the backlash comes—and it’s going to come, I’m 100-percent certain—can you imagine the damages that I’m going to claim from these people? You think I’m going to sit there and not fight back more?”

A little sign next to the doorway of his office says, “Next Mood Swing: 5 Minutes.” He has just had one. It’s all good, as long as he has his health and his head.

“You know, it’s really fun,” he says of the lawsuit, in which he currently stands to lose $108 million. “I’m writing a book about it. I have a whole book. I have already 400 pages. I have a TV show. Did you see my TV show in Germany? I’m having a weekly TV show on RTL, Europe’s biggest channel. It’s a reality-based show. It’s like, is he making it or losing it? And you know, it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re healthy and you’re good. Nobody takes my head away.”

But what if he doesn’t win and has to scrounge $100 million? Then what? Kramer only responds with bravado, as if such a swing of fortunes just isn’t possible. “I may have lost a couple of battles, but not the war!” he declares. Gimme a brreak, as he likes to say. He may need a couple of big ones.