Out of this World Motel was doing business at 21440 Biscayne Blvd. when this photo was shot Aug. 8, 1958. The period architecture is gone and today the site is vacant, ready for a new use.

Seth Bramson's Aventura book will be his 10th on Miami-Dade communities.

History, like so much of life, is a game of inches.

If tiny Ojus, that little strip of shops on the west side of the train tracks, hadn’t been so conflicted about whether it wanted to be a city itself, Aventura Mall could be known as Ojus Mall.  

And if Aventura’s founding fathers hadn’t been so concerned about the potential problems – rather than the potential opportunities -- raised by the deteriorating strip of motels along Collins Avenue, they might have been more receptive to overtures and included what is now Sunny Isles Beach when they formed Aventura. 

Those are just of the intriguing bits of history that will tumble this fall from the pages of ‘Aventura Florida: Marshes and mangroves to the City of Excellence.”

It’s the 10^th and latest in a string of Miami-Dade County histories written by Seth Bramson, an adjunct professor of history at Florida International University.  It’s being published by HistoryPress.net of Charleston, SC, thanks in part to a $3,500 payment to the author from the City of Aventura. 

The 65-year-old railroad buff has lived through much of the history he’s chronicling. He arrived on Miami Beach as a 2-year-old grew up on Miami Beach. He was contemplating a project on North Miami Beach, Ojus and Aventura, he recalls, when he bumped into Bob Diamond, former Aventura commissioner. Aventura deserves it’s own book, Diamond argued, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Bramson says communities are universally supportive of his efforts but Aventura’s cooperation was a cut above. He spent time with Don Soffer, the developer whose vision became Aventura, and had access to the Soffer family’s collection of documents and pictures. He also singled out Debbie Lazar, assistant to the late George Berlin, Soffer’s top lieutenant who worked behind the scenes with engineers and county officials to make it all happen.  

The result is a book heavy on historic photos showing what was here and what had to be done to make the transition from ‘Marshes and mangroves to the City of Excellence.”

Along the way, readers will be treated to a chapter on ‘Beautiful Downtown Ojus.” At one time, Ojus had extended all the way to the Intracoastal Waterway, including most of what is now Aventura. But residents were conflicted, voting to incorporate, then reversing course. It was during a period of unincorporation that Aventura was born. 

Similarly, his research shows Aventura could have had its own beaches. Some residents of the unincorporated area that is now Sunny Isles Beach had approached Aventura about the possibility of creating one city spanning both areas. The idea died when Aventura’s founding fathers considered the potential problems along Collins Avenue.