Miami: One Of The Hottest U.S. Cities

From South Beach To Overtown, Miami Is Constantly Changing

(CBS)  For more than 15 years Miami — and especially the art deco district in South Beach — has developed an image that everyone wants to be a part of. It's an international destination, influenced by everyone from the Cuban community to the performing artists of all shapes, sizes and talents that can be found here.

Miami, the host of this year's Super Bowl, seems to be in a constant state of make-over.

Each art deco building on Miami Beach has a story of its own, and Jacquelyn Powers of Ocean Drive magazine knows most of them. She showed The Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith the Cardozo Hotel where the Frank Sinatra movie "A Hole in the Head" was filmed the 1950s and where the "Scarface" chainsaw scene was filmed.

In the early 1960s, CBS brought Jackie Gleason to the nation from Miami Beach, marking a peak for the area before a long decline.

"South Beach had gotten dangerous in the '80s," she said. "Miami Beach was a little seedy."

Another TV program, "Miami Vice," helped change the image of South Beach for the better.

"Even though they were talking about drugs every time you saw the shot of like the hot girl rollerblading in the bikini, it kind of took away the sting," Powers said.

It's unthinkable now, but the art deco face of South Beach was endangered until the area was declared a national historic landmark in the early '90s. Fashion photographers flocked to the unique setting and Miami turned into an international modeling hub. Miami became a place where anyone could be hotter or at least feel hot.

"I think that the attitude of anything goes, of sexiness," Powers said. "I think you start to dress differently."

Powers also showed Smith some of Miami's most famous mansions like the Mega Club on South Beach, which is a former movie theater. She also showed off Axelrod, the most famous mansion in Miami. It's was home to designer Gianni Versace, who was shot on the front steps in 1997. Communications mogul Peter Loftin bought it and turned it into a hotel and club called Casa Casuarina, where members can revel in luxury as defined by Versace.

"This is a lonely place if you don't have a lot of people here all the time," Lofton said. "(Versace) was just as great of an architect as a designer. An interior designer and homes as he was a designer of clothes. He was an artist."

There is also a new development where some would least expect it — across the bay in the city of Miami in a neighborhood called Overtown, which was ransacked by riots in 1989.

When Elliott Monter saw condos going up, he put his money down. He opened part restaurant-part lounge, Karu & Y — a $25 million investment.

"We're the first major restaurant project, but we're also not gonna be the last," Monter said.

Even though no one looks it, they do like to eat in Miami. The latest hot restaurant is Prime 112. But the real meat of Miami nightlife are the clubs. The club of the moment is Mokai.

It helps to have celebrity owners. Former NBA star Rony Seikaly and his team opened Mokai as a smaller, intimate space, but it attracts a big-name crowd.

"All the stars that are from out of town," Seikaly said. "All the people that are somebody. And the people that think they're somebody."

And in Miami, where old is new, hot is cool and people change colors daily, anybody can be somebody at least for a little while.

"There's definitely a sense of playfulness that you might not get in other cities," Powers said.