The EconomistNovember 9th 2019 United States 33A
round a century ago, a furniture mag-
nate from Rochester, New York named
Harvey Baker Graves spent a day boating
through the estuarine wilds of upper Bis-
cayne Bay, along the southern Atlantic
coast of Florida. What today is beach-front
property was then a verdant, claustral jun-
gle; in photographs the dinosaurs seem to
be lurking just outside the frame. Graves
was so enamoured of this landscape and its
potential that he bought a large swathe of
mangrove forest and tortuous waterways
dotted with uninhabitable little islands.
That swamp is now Sunny Isles Beach, a
town on a barrier island, just across the In-
tracoastal Waterway from North Miami
Beach. For much of the 20th century it was
a modest redoubt far from Miami’s glam-
our and hustle, with larger hotels on the
ocean and longer, lower ones on the inland
blocks. Rundown by the 1980s, developers
began snapping up properties. In 2001 the
city’s first new hotel in more than 30 years
opened. Today hotels and condominiums
line Sunny Isles’ two-mile beach-front, in-
cluding three Trump-branded high-rises.
And while the previous incarnation of
Sunny Isles attracted American snowbirds
and the odd ageing celebrity, in its current
form it is a magnet for Russians.
They began arriving—according to Lar-
isa Svechin, the town’s vice-mayor, who
was born in Gomel, Belarus—in the late
1980s. Most of them were Jewish, and had
left the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s.
“Russians,” explains Ms Svechin, “especial-
ly Russian Jews, like to congregate by the
water.” Some came directly from Russia,
while others—like so many other retirees—
moved south from New York (perhaps the
only neighbourhood on the East Coast as
deeply Russian as Sunny Isles Beach is
Brighton Beach, on Brooklyn’s southern
coast). Florida has no income tax, which
makes it popular among seniors—includ-
ing Mr Trump himself, who has recently
changed his official residency from New
York to Florida.
Another wave came after the Soviet Un-
ion disintegrated; it included Russians,
Moldovans, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Ka-
zakhs, Tajiks, Azeris—and another wave of
Ukrainians after protests ousted their pro-
Russian president in 2014. Now many of
the people coming are Russian second- (or
third-, or fourth-) home owners rather than
immigrants intending to settle.
Birth tourism is also popular. A com-
pany called Miami Mama in Hallandale
Beach charged expectant Russian women
thousands of dollars for south Florida birth
packages, though it was raided by the fbia
couple of years ago. These days, says Ms
Svechin, “birth tourism is not as open,
[but] you’ll see a lot of young ladies with
strollers...they think this is prestige” to
have a child with an American passport.
Today, Ms Svechin estimates that more
than 20% of Sunny Isles Beach’s popula-
tion of roughly 20,000 is Russian or Rus-
sian-speaking. The nearby towns of Aven-
tura, Bal Harbour, Hallandale Beach and
Hollywood—all between Miami and Fort
Lauderdale—also have sizeable Russiancommunities, though none of those is as
prestigious as Sunny Isles. Igor Fruman,
one of two associates of Rudy Giuliani’s re-
cently arrested on campaign-finance char-
ges, owns two units in a Sunny Isles high-
rise. Lev Parnas, with whom he was arrest-
ed, is a longtime Florida resident.
“Russians love brand names,” explains
Ms Svechin. And Sunny Isles offers plenty:
not just multiple Trump properties but
also, just down the beach, the 60-storey
Porsche Design Tower, with its car elevator
that lets residents park outside their up-
per-floor units. There are Armani-branded
apartments and a Karl Lagerfeld-designed
lobby at the Acqualina. The town’s reputa-
tion is so well-known in Russia that many
arrive knowing precisely which unit in
which building they want to buy.
Across from Mr Trump’s three towers
sits the most Russian strip-mall in south
Florida. Among its shops are a Russian
café, a grocery store with an attached res-
taurant offering reassuringly and authenti-
cally mediocre cuisine, a bookstore, an in-
surance firm, a couple of beauty salons, a
few cafés, a Russian restaurant/nightclub,
a Kosher Azeri restaurant/nightclub, an Ar-
gentine steakhouse with a trellised awning
that looks like something directly trans-
planted from Odessa, and a travel agent.
Residents boast about their schools
(florists know to stock up in late August,
because so many students follow the Rus-
sian tradition of presenting flowers to the
teacher on the first day). The streets are rea-
sonably safe, though domestic violence re-
mains a persistent problem. Russia has no
domestic-violence law, and in 2017 decri-
minalised domestic violence that does not
result in a hospital visit.
Ms Svechin sighs that “a lot of people
here, the older Americans especially, feel
this has been a place for Russians to wash
money. I don’t know how true that is.” A
Reuters investigation in 2017 found that 63
people with Russian passports or address-
es spent more than $98m buying apart-
ments in Trump-branded properties in
south Florida, and around one-third of all
the owners of properties in Mr Trump’s
branded towers were limited-liability
companies that can conceal the owner’s
identity (Reuters found no wrongdoing by
Mr Trump or his organisation).
Sanctions against Russia have slowed
the high-end market. Many of the Ukrai-
nians who arrived after the Maidan de-
monstrations in early 2014 have more mod-
est means; they have flocked to more
affordable inland cities such as Hallandale
Beach. But south Florida generally—and
Trump-branded properties specifically—
remain popular with Russians. Your corre-
spondent stayed at one of Mr Trump’s
Sunny Isles properties for three days, and
heard just one guest speaking any language
other than Russian. 7SUNNY ISLES BEACH
Russians have flocked to Donald Trump’s Florida
Russians in America
Odessa on the Intracoastal
Tower of Isaac Babel