I'm suggesting the 5am opening is basically a first step in the long process towards grove rehabilitation. There are a number of other issues they need to address anyway, crime being one of them.

The south florida nightlife is something like this (This is a gross generalization but just some stuff that immediately comes to mind):

Brickell / SoBe = Mainstream, Top40, Hip Hop, Dance, House, big money, big entertainment, pretentious facade
Downtown NE 11 St = Club Space, bunch of people on drugs, Electronic music and DJs
North Downtown / Midtown = Indie Rock Scene, Electro, Hipster, Vagabond! hehe
Grove = Laid Back, Bar Crawl, Juke Boxes

I'm not against the grove being open til' 5am, hell, I wish everything was just 24/7 regardless of what the business is, like a Walmart, hehe. But I think that keeping the grove open til 5am, won't do much unless a bunch of other changes occur. Without all the other changes, you'll just end up with 2 more hours of immature college kids throwing up after drinking too much beer…

@roder I like the coffeeshop idea for sure, and that would at least bring in the intellectuals. I've recently visited DC several times in the past few months and they have an awesome coffeshop scene that's open til the weeee hours, that brings in a great crowd. Come to think of it, the grove should do something different like that rather than trying to compete with other existing forms of nightlife that are clearly dominated by areas like SoBe.

What would interest me is to see what kind of statistics there were for DUIs and accidents in the OLD days of the grove when it had 5am last calls, or south miami since adding the number of pubs and bars they've put in over the last 5 years.

I don't really think 5am-6am cyclists/runners contribute much at all to the local breakfast economy, as most of the stores aren't open until several hours later. As for sports stores, it seems to me that the lone sports store in cocowalk is doing poorly with the current traffic & we don't have any actionable data on the 2 bike shops nearby either.

I would posit that evening alcohol/drinks revenue is far more profitable to a store than morning breakfast revenue. Food margins are typically much lower than alcohol/beverage margins from what I've heard

I'd prefer the 5am close time, but I'd also prefer some more neighborhoody bars & coffee shops.

Which brings me to point about tourists – I love meeting them, drinking with them, I'm glad they bring their business here, but I'd like to have a more communal neighborhood and something less transient. I can feel the community here, but it's not like busting at the seams.

It was a community of hippies, artists, and generally creative people that made this neighborhood cool to begin with… Once corporate america found out it could sell it to tourists because it was cool – it became a tourist destination.

I know we've begun assembling a crew of techie/hipsters/designers and new creatives who *should* be the face of the grove. We need to get behind those people, give them an outlet to express themselves and make this their (read “our”) neighborhood.

And I think bringing more/better live music (think austin, portland, seattle, pittsburgh, lawrence kansas, etc), bringing grassroots arts like the playhouse (revitalized or not (think some warehouse in brooklyn for performing arts), and a diversity of hole-in-the-wall/non-tourist-destination restaurants of various ethnic varieties ……. IS EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED!!!

Oh and a coffeeshop I can sit on a couch and hack all day with my friends.