The Producers

The gist of "The Producers" plot is as follows - New York, 1959. Max Bialystock was once the king of Broadway, but now all his shows close on opening night. Things turn around when he's visited by the neurotic accountant Leo Bloom, who proposes a scheme tailor-made for producers who can only make flops: raise far more money than you need, then make sure the show is despised. No one will be interested in it, so you can pocket the surplus investor money.

If one examines the many "closing nights" for commercial developments on Longboat Key, compared to the overwhelming success of dozens and dozens of high-end residential homes, one wonders why investors would ever choose to put their money into commercial speculations on this island.

The reality of commercial development includes "the developer", quite similar to the producers, in that both use other people's money and have no "skin in the game", to use a Warren Buffett term. Other than maintaining a track record, neither the developer or the producer suffers any real lose if his/her efforts turn out to be failures.

The following is a list of commercial developments that are no longer here: Avenue of the Flowers, Mattison's Restaurant, Whitney Plaza, Holiday Inn, Buccaneer, Far Horizon, numerous small tourist facilities, 2 gas stations, bank building at north end, the commercial property adjoining the Center Shoppes property, and L'Auberge Restaurant.

Fortunately, for every failed commercial venture on Longboat Key, five to ten luxury homes have been constructed. No one can deny that a new mansion increases surrounding property values, whereas failing small retail shops in poorly maintained strip malls do little, if anything, to improve our community's image or property values.

Avenue of the Flowers and Whitney Plaza cast a pall over the entire community. They have for years. For the past few years the commission has been guilty of benign neglect in these areas. It's time to do something that should have been managed years ago, instead of treating these eyesores as cherished locations for commercial tourism expansion. We are all getting older and poorer while we wait for the commissioner's "vision" to come true, if ever.

Publix has begun a revitalization of what was Avenue of the Flowers. The town needs to aggregate other social amenities around the Publix project. We don't need more doomed retail experiments and wasted years. We need to have more fun.

It's time to stop coddling developers, and follow a more proven direction for revitalizing our community, by attracting residents who want to build mansions instead of motels and busloads of tourists.

The town needs to be active in resolving the visual blight at Whitney Plaza that is pulling down property values in the surrounding neighborhood. Too many years have passed where the town has allowed a developer to hold the north end property owners hostage, while he waits, hoping for a financial miracle. Job one for the commission is to preserve and improve property values on Longboat Key. For the past few years the commission has done nothing to resolve the Whitney Plaza blight. Has the commission bothered to find out what is really happening at Whitney Plaza? North end residents are tired of hearing "check's in the mail", "Mercedes is in the shop", "Whitney Plaza will be booming next month".

If one examines what has actually been occurring on Longboat Key since the referendum permitting 250 replacement tourists units was passed 7 or 8 years ago, the answer is absolutely nothing in the commercial sector of the island's economy, and a robust proliferation of high-end single family homes up and down the island. As Al Green said in a previous article, the "market" is driving our economy, and that market has been exclusively private residential up-sizing. The commissioners would do well to support this process, rather than fighting it, as they are doing at present.

Commercial developers have had a poor track record on Longboat Key. Perhaps so many commercial developments have failed due to the strong market trending towards Longboat Key becoming an exclusive seasonal retirement community. The commissioners need to promote this trend rather than talk about commercial development that is years away at best, and a probable failed blight a few years later, if one looks at the history of commercial development on our island for the past 20 years.

If the commissioners insisted that a commercial developer have a large financial stake in a proposed project, as recommended by Warren Buffett, I doubt we would ever see an expansion of tourism on Longboat Key. Perhaps then the developers would put their money into exclusive residential development where the odds of financial success are far greater.

Moral Compass

Florida Circuit Court Judge Charles Roberts called the entire effort by the Longboat Key town commission, including ignoring existing building codes and the town's Comprehensive Plan, "a miscarriage of justice".  He is right.  The commission did this in order to grant Loeb Partners the right to expand onto protected PUD land (Planned Unit Development), and thus abridge the property rights of Islandside property owners for Loeb Partners' exclusive profit.

I predict that this judicial chastisement will have little affect on the zeal of the current commission to vindicate their actions, and continue to work to fulfil their pledge to make more millions for British retirement funds and Mr. Lesser, who does not even live here.

These commissioners do not seem to understand that while aiding and abetting Loeb Partners to compromise the covenant that exists between Islandside property owners and their shared PUD for Loeb's profit, they may, at the same time, be financially harming hundreds of taxpayers. It is a risky zero-sum game they play.

Have we as a community lost our moral compass? Are we willing to condone the commission harming someone to help someone else make a buck? Have we reached a place where we are willing to believe that someone needs to suffer for all the rest of us to get ahead financially?

What the commission did was illegal, and many property owners may have been financially harmed as a result. The Longboat Key real estate market has been stalled because many Islandside buyers do not want to invest in an unstable community. Discriminating private property investors will avoid a community that is on a fast-track to expand commercial tourism.

Sure the commission can further erode the protections afforded our residents under our current codes and charter to favor commercial developers. That does not make it morally right. If there are those that are more interested in winning; if there are those that do not care about what means are used to achieve some political or financial goal, and if we refuse to hold our commissioners accountable, then we are probably in for a long period of constant court battles, law suites and community divisiveness. We all lose.

The commission and the town lawyers would have been able to commit "a miscarriage of justice", possibly damaging the home values of hundreds of residents, had it not been for the members of IPOC.

Legally wrong is legally wrong and the commission was willfully so. To take actions that are known to be unjust, and hope no one notices, further diminishes peoples' trust in their government.

If you are tired of watching your commission take the side of developers over the interests of the taxpaying residents, then speak up. Otherwise do not complain when some developer is legally able build a nuclear reactor next door to you as a result of your commission removing all the protections that once insured that Longboat Key would remain a low density exclusive community.

There are those, including several commissioners and business people, who cast people who do not agree with the commission's all or nothing KC expansion stance as "against the Key Club". One could argue that every Longboat resident wants the Key Club to thrive, just not at taxpayers' and property-owners' expense. Why not work within our time-proven codes and avoid further litigious delays.

From the beginning I have advocated a process that produces results in the shortest time and with the least adverse impact. For as long as it takes our commission to come up with a "legal" and community friendly agreement with Loed Partners, that is how long that our real estate market is going to be held hostage. The ill-advised actions of the majority of the current commission have delayed this process by years. If the commission continues to operate outside the confines of the law, then we will see more years wasted and a continuation of a crippled real estate market.

The residents of Islandside have been demonized for buying already existing high-rise condominiums that were created by previous town commissions and Arvida decades ago. All the current residents did was to purchase part of  a PUD with all its supposed stability. Judge Roberts pointed out that the composition of  PUD cannot be altered by one party in just the same way that changes to condominium association property cannot be changed without legal consent of at least a majority of the stakeholders.

Does Longboat Key still have a moral compass? Does Might Make Right?

Let Them Eat Cake

What will life be like on Longboat Key when Publix demolishes all the existing buildings at Avenue of the Flowers and replaces them with a new shopping center? A process that may take the better part of a year.

I hope our commissioners are going to tell us that they went to Lakeland and persuaded Publix to somehow maintain a food market and drug store on the island while the old structures are being replaced.

If the commissioners think that tourism, retail and restaurant businesses are suffering now, imagine Longboat Key with neither a food market nor a drug store for an extended period of time.

Ask yourself if you would recommend Longboat Key to friends if they have to travel over ten miles into Sarasota or Bradenton to obtain the basic necessities for vacationing on our island in a rental condominium unit or house. I suspect both Publix and CVS do a lot of business even with day visitors to our beaches.

I am told that there will soon be an anchor business in the Whitney Plaza market space, after two years of being unoccupied. If the commission had foreseen the problems that will arise when Avenue of the Flowers is torn down, perhaps they might have negotiated some sort of arrangement, where both Publix and CVS would renovate the Whitney Plaza buildings and open temporary services at the north end of the island. Such an arrangement could have gone a long way to alleviate the quality of life issues that will most likely result from not having basic services on Longboat Key for months and months. Of course, sales profits would be the motivation for Publix and CVS and would end up costing the chains little to nothing to make the temporary move.

Perhaps the town might have donated both legal and staff resources to assist Publix/CVS to make repairs to the Whitney Plaza buildings, which are somewhat in disrepair. The town is already donating legal and staff services in Mr. Loeb's efforts at the Key Club. If such an arrangement had been negotiated between Publix/CVS and Whitney Plaza, the island residents and tourists would have somewhere to buy food and medicines while Avenue of the Flowers is being rebuilt. Additionally, the owners of Whitney Plaza would at least have had some income for a year and be left with greatly repaired structures.  A win-win solution.

The commission has committee after committee and meeting after meeting presumably working on how to help developers expand their efforts on Longboat Key. It is unfortunate that the commissioners appear to have forgotten about we the people and our basic needs.

The commission's failure to help find an alternative solution to shopping for basic needs on Longboat while Publix is out of service may have a major impact on the reputation of Longboat Key, at a critical time in our community's efforts to improve property sales. Maintaining basic services is job one for any government.