(Miami, FL) – Chairman Joe Sanchez introduced legislation that was passed unanimously by the Miami City Commission today to name S.W. 25th Avenue, between S.W. 8th and 7th streets, as Manolo Capó Way.

The street codesignation is in honor of Capó, founder and CEO of El Dorado Furniture, the largest Hispanic-owned retail store in the United States. Mr. Capó passed away on July 10 at age 83.

A celebration in Mr. Capó’s honor will be held at 11 a.m. August 29, when the street signs will be unveiled at the Calle Ocho and SW 25th Avenue site – where Capó started El Dorado in Little Havana.

“Manolo Capó truly was an example of the American Dream,” said Sanchez. “He fled Cuba and with a small business loan, created a business that has created thousands of jobs and supported tens of thousands of Miami families over more than four decades. He was a great entrepreneur in every sense, but he measured success by strength of family, not size of bank account. That made him a truly great man.”

Mr. Capó was born in 1925 in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, and began working in his father’s furniture shop at a young age. In 1966, he and two of his sons, Luis and Carlos, fled Castro’s communist Cuba in a fishing boat. The boat, named El Dorado, came to symbolize freedom to the family, and its legacy is El Dorado Furniture, the largest Hispanic-owned furniture company in the country.

Mr. Capó founded the furniture company in 1967 with the help of a loan from the Small Business Administration. He opened his first El Dorado store in the heart of little Havana on Calle Ocho. Today, El Dorado has eleven stores in the South Florida market. With over 700 employees, it is among the top fifty U.S. furniture retailers in the country.