MIAMI BEACH — In this decadent, hard-partying playground, Kirsty Bertarelli’s 40th birthday celebration rivaled the best of them. More than 200 guests flew in from Europe. A caravan of limousines ferried them to the site, a flashy waterfront home. The party rocked until 4:30 a.m. It cost $3 million.
But the fact that it almost did not happen — that a judge had to decide on the very day of the event whether to allow it— has reignited an increasingly familiar debate here: When does someone’s really good time become the bane of someone else’s existence? Or, in the case at hand, did one billionaire homeowner rent out his mansion for another billionaire’s party in violation of a local ordinance?
“Kirsty’s Fabulous 40th Birthday Party,” as it was billed, was given last month by Ernesto Bertarelli, a Swiss billionaire ranked No. 64 on Forbes’s most-wealthy list, for his wife, a singer and a onetime British beauty pageant winner.
It was held on Star Island, a spot of land on Biscayne Bay beautified two decades ago by the developer Thomas Kramer, a lover of late-night bacchanals and no stranger to controversy. Mr. Kramer rented his estate, Five Star Island, to the Bertarellis for $40,000, a sum that barely covered his expenses, he said. The day before the party, a routine request to the Fire Department to have paramedics on hand caused the city to review the rental agreement, and then threaten to shut down the affair with a police roadblock.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/us/05party.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23
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