A 62-story condo building will tower over the Freedom Tower, which will become college classrooms. (Miami Dade College)

Miami's equivalent of Ellis Island, a 17-story tower built in 1925 that laster served as an immigration station for Cubans, will be donated to Miami Dade College, its owner announced last week.

On Dec. 1, a day after a Cuban-American-owned developer revealed its plans to donate the Freedom Tower to the college, the city commission voted 4-1 to approve its plans to build a 62-story condo behind the National Historic Landmark.

"There's still some paperwork, but it's pretty much a done deal," says Juan Mendieta, spokesman for Miami Dade College, which plans to use the building as classroom space.

For some, last week brought good news and bad news. "We're glad that the tower eventually will be deeded to Miami Dade College," says Becky Roper Matkov, executive director of the Dade Heritage Trust, which tried to buy the building in the late 1990s. "But we are still very concerned that the 62-story condo is still going to be there, dwarfing the Freedom Tower. This is the defining landmark for Miami and has been for 80 years."

The Freedom Tower housed the headquarters of the Miami Daily News and Metropolis until 1957 and later became an immigration station for refugees fleeing Castro's Cuba from 1962 and 1974. Terra Group paid $26 million for the derelict building in February.

Preservationists won a small victory when the developer backed off on plans to demolish a 75-foot-long section on the back of the tower. In July, the city's planning advisory board rejected the partial demolition.

"I wasn't going to allow them to demolish one foot of that building," says Armando Gutierrez Jr., vice-chairman of the Miami Dade County Historic Preservation Board, who organized a campaign to save the tower. "We don't have that many historic structures in Miami."

Gutierrez's Cuban family has had a long history with the building. "My parents and my grandparents all went there when they first came from Cuba to pick up cheese, milk, and money, and they waited in line for hours," he says. "I've heard stories from my grandparents that he'd get there and there would be 20,000 people there."

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