The clock on Iglesias runs out in October
Plus Bondi Sushi is coming, the state will refund tax on impact windows, and a broken shark takes the stage.
City Manager Peter Iglesias announced his resignation on May 20. He gave the city more than four months to find his replacement before he leaves on Oct. 2. Roughly two months and one week later, there is still no public succession plan. The Gazette's editorial board says the commission keeps treating an interim manager as a contingency instead of a plan. This matters more than it sounds. The city manager runs daily operations: budgets, permits, hiring, and the calls that land on your street. Whoever holds that job in October shapes all of it. Nobody has said who that will be.
Florida will refund the sales tax on impact windows
The state has a new refund for storm-hardening your house. Impact-resistant windows, doors, and garage doors qualify if you buy them between July 1, 2026 and June 30, 2029. You do not get the break at the register. You pay the sales tax, then file for a refund with your receipts and the required forms. The home must be site-built, carry a homestead exemption, and have a just value of $700,000 or less. One property per owner, and the refund caps at $500. Claims are accepted through Sept. 30, 2029, so keep the paperwork.
Bondi Sushi is headed to the Gables
Add another sushi option to the neighborhood. Bondi Sushi is coming to Coral Gables, known for pairing high-quality fish with an approachable, energetic room. That middle ground is harder to find here than it should be. Sushi in this city tends to arrive either as a hushed counter with a reservation you made two weeks ago, or as an afterthought next to a food court. Bondi is pitching itself as neither. Details on the address and opening timing are still thin, so the concept is the news for now. It is a good sign for the dining stretch here.
The downtown BID died quietly
Remember the Downtown Coral Gables Partnership? The city spent four months exploring a new business improvement district under that banner, split between the end of last year and the start of this one. It has now quietly decided not to move forward. Business improvement districts generally work by assessing property owners inside set boundaries, then spending that money on extra marketing, cleaning, and events. Downtown landlords will not see that assessment on their bills. Tenants who would have absorbed it are off the hook too. Nobody gets the added services either. The city promoted this idea last fall and never announced its end.
A psychic mystery lands at Books & Books tonight
Charles Salzberg is at Books & Books on Tuesday to discuss his newest novel, The Beginning of Everything. The premise: a man has spent most of his life hiding an ability he never asked for. He can see into other people's pasts. Then a young woman disappears, and hiding stops being an option. Psychic mystery sounds like a gimmick on paper. In practice, crime writers use the impossible to get at very ordinary human damage, which is usually the good part. If you want a weeknight that is not a restaurant, this is the one on the calendar.
The shark still doesn't work, and it's funny now
Actors' Playhouse is running The Shark Is Broken, a comedy built from the troubled production of Jaws. The play puts you on the boat with the actors, stuck waiting on a mechanical shark that refuses to cooperate. Coral Gables Magazine called it an amusing summer comedy with first-rate performances. Iain Batchelor's turn as Robert Shaw is the standout, which is the right thing to get right. It is a smart August pick. Air conditioning, a boat going nowhere, and grown men slowly getting on each other's nerves while the ocean sits there doing nothing.
A film and an argument at the museum Wednesday
Midweek plans, handled. The Coral Gables Museum screens Estamos conectados on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., with a discussion afterward. The film centers on artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. The conversation is the part worth staying for. A screening with people in the room lands differently than watching something alone on the couch. You leave with somebody else's reading of it, which is the whole point. These museum evenings are the low-effort version of a night out. An hour or two, a subject you had not thought about all week, and you are still home early.