Below is a heartfelt speech about Miami that Charles Kropke gave to one of our corporate groups.  You can really sense the passion he has for this beautiful city.  Please enjoy and pass along:

The sight of modern Miami rising from a moonlit shoreline on the Biscayne Bay can steal your breath away.  Colorful, confident, the city nearly sparkles with vitality and the possibilities.  Bordered by the brilliant multi-hued waters of the Atlantic Ocean and a legendary inland bay on one side and the vast, world-treasured Florida Everglades on another, Miami is long and narrow.  The city’s latitude introduces a sub-tropical languor that coupled with plentiful rainfall encourages palms, flowering plants, trees, and fruits of every imaginable variety.  These favorable conditions also make wildlife and abundance in the seas a fact of life.

Soaked in the nostalgia of a place born to adventure, Miami has known piracy, treasure wrecks, hurricanes, graceful sailing vessels and the advent of far-away travel by seaplane.  She still hints of these possibilities and attracts people the globe-over who harbor wild and daring dreams.  Such is the allure of this city perched on the front steps of the Caribbean.

In fact, when Havana, the reigning queen of the Caribbean sank to communist decay, Miami not only inherited her brightest citizens but her mantle as the shining star of the Caribbean Basin; the hot, passionate center of night life and music spilling into the streets.  Miami’s Cubans, in turn, paved the way for the most talented and beautiful sons and daughters of Latin America, who continue to pour into the city today.

These immigrants have transformed  Miami into a gateway, a strategic place to do business, a center of arts and culture, capital of the Americas, a film-maker’s paradise, a vacationer’s Mecca.

South Beach is the desired playground for the world’s young and trendy. Shopping is many visitors’ happy past-time.  The sporting life offers endless possibilities, especially when the northern hemisphere is locked in a cold embrace.  The wilderness beckons to the eco-traveler.

Miami’s architecture is inspiring, eclectic, diverse and original.   The City’s neighborhoods pulse with life, and children: children of America, of Europe, of the Caribbean and Latin America.  And it is this youth that is propelling Miami forward.  You can feel the energy.  You can sense the pace, the intensity.  This is Miami era.  Miami, city in the sun; mi ciudad de sueño. Miami, the Magic City!