The Last to Know

150 room hotel from Google search

Why were the residents of the village and the north end of Longboat Key the last to know about the "150-room boutique hotel" that Michael Drake revealed is being proposed at the north end of Longboat Key at last week's village association meeting?

Why is a south end resident, Randall Clair, who was voted out of office by the electorate, on Spoll's, commission mandated, Chamber of Commerce sponsored, stealth revitalization committee, telling north end residents what will be done with their property, when the long-standing  president of a north end condominium association was not invited to join the committee or the planning group at the art center last Saturday? For that matter, since I was elected by the people to replace Clair, why wasn't I asked to be on Spoll's secretive group, that meets on town property without advertising, virtually closed to the public, and attended by town staff at taxpayer expense?

What is being allowed to occur at town hall may be in violation of town government rules and may even be in violation of state law. We don't need a new community center if the commission is willing to allow private, business sponsored, groups to use town property and town resources, staff and utilities for private functions.

It is interesting to note that several members of Spoll's committee are, or have recently been, on the boards of PIC, the Garden Club and, of course, the Chamber of Commerce. Please note that the town staff has no official list of exactly who is on the committee, even though the committee meets on town property, and is allowed to schedule space as a private exofficio group that has access to town employees.  This group, which seems to want to have a lot of say, and arguably has some clout about development on the key, is not subject to the sunshine laws.

Back to the 150-room hotel proposal that no one at the north end knew was happening for the past 6 - 8 months. Why did the Planning and Zoning Board gratuitously offer to add an additional floor to any development at Whitney Plaza at one of their meetings some months ago, after a developer had already discussed a hotel project with the then town planning director? Did the town staff relay what should have been private information to members of the PZB? The timing and coincidence of the hotel proposal and the PZB discussion need to be explained satisfactorily to the residents. I believe the north end residents have a right to know what went on during this entire process spanning at least seven months.

Spoll's committee concocted an amateurish narrative north end development survey, which Michael Drake then asked a few of the residents to complete. Interestingly, Mr. Drake did not offer to inform those residents about the hotel project being put forward by some developers. Commission Brenner has been asked about development on the north end also.  He has twice assured constituents that nothing is happening.  It could be assumed Spoll's committee will find that his survey demonstrates that no one at the north end objects to a tall hotel at the north end. Of course, that is because no one knew about it. This entire process is ready-made for the lawyers. To save our community still more legal strife and probable stalled movement at the north end, as we have with the Key Club,  I am requesting the Spoll's phony survey be nullified and that a new survey be created by credible professionals, not undergraduates, after the community has been adequately informed about the possibility of a 150-room hotel on the property north of Whitney Plaza.

The village association has a history of political bias where Mr. Brenner has been repeatedly granted  opportunities to campaign, while political  opponents do not appear for some reason, no matter who is the opponent. Mr. Welly appeared before the village association for a lengthy presentation, and the village association held another discussion about the Key Club led by the then president. I am not aware that IPOC was ever invited by the association to make a presentation to the village residents. I am sad that the village association has such a recent unattractive political history. It was not that way a few years ago. Many villagers have quit the association in the past four years.

Who knew what when? Until this question has been fully vetted, there will probably be a lot of resistance from north end residents who will object to 18 year-old undergraduates telling 80 year-old PhD's, CEO's, etc. what they can and cannot do with their property.

The town, by allowing, and condoning, a private, commercially sponsored, group to repeatedly use town resources, meeting rooms and staff, may be placing the community in jeopardy. This group may have overstepped their mandated authority concerning what has happened at the north end. No resident deserves to be misled. The residents at the north end should have been informed about what people at town hall, and others associated with town government and exofficio committees, may have been aware of, before any survey was distributed. The entire survey process is unscientific and therefore invalid.

Spoll should be embarrassed. If I am not mistaken, Spoll was on the commission that denied Bob Dawson access to town hall to hold community meetings, saying it was against the town rules. Perhaps the commission needs to remove Spoll's ommittee from town hall. Perhaps they can find somewhere to meet like the rest of us. The village association has been reduced to meeting in peoples' garages since the art center was acquired by a private concern, introducing legitimate staff and insurance problems.

Look at previous article about an hotel at Whitney Plaza -

http://lbk-folk.blogspot.com/2011/05/newspeak-and-town-commission.html

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.

A tale of two towns

Contrary to the constant incantations coming from the commission and the chamber of commerce, the residents residing in the northern reaches of our community really would rather not rely on commercial developers or academics to tell us what we will or will not do with our real estate. When I read that the town does not have the money to include the residents in any north end development study, I think of the half million the town just spent for a lot adjacent to Bayfront Park. The current commissioners seldom use the word resident, preferring instead to dwell on commercial interests. Who pays the taxes?

In 1998 or 1999, the then commission commissioned a community overlay project at the north end of Longboat Key. The express purpose of the project was to have the residents in the area decide their own destiny. The then town planner, Marty Black, did a masterful job of including a large segment of the community in a lengthy and democratic process of defining an overlay for the future development at the north end. The current commission could dust-off that community overlay plan and use it as their template for any future efforts to redevelop the north end. There is no need for an undergraduate exercise. The residents have already spoken. It is the duty of the commissioners to adhere to public policy.

It seems we now have two towns. The one that exists and is doing well as an exclusive, low density seasonal retirement community, and the one envisioned by the current developer-friendly commission that calls for vague but sweeping changes to our building codes and comprehensive plan. If the current commission did not have big plans for commercial development on Longboat Key, there would be little or no need to gut density and height restrictions. It is a typical tactic of developers to first takeover the local government, and then quietly destroy the resident's property protections. The north end overlay plan was created expressly to prevent unwanted over-development and to protect a way of life that attracts hundreds of homeowners. The north-end residents have already created a development overlay and they expect our town government to honor their wishes.

The current commission has falsely traded on the global economic downturn as a rational for reshaping our codes and comprehensive plan so as to allow unimpeded development in the near future. If you are looking for an analogous situation, one has only to look at the tragedy of Panama City Beach or Atlantic City, where residential property values plummeted after a wall of high rise hotels and condo-tels were constructed for miles along the beach. The flavor of the communities were destroyed so that a few could make millions.

Promoting a schizophrenic community atmosphere, where perspective home buyers are uncertain if they are buying into what they see or what is threatened by a developer-activist town government. This schism is undoubtedly affecting home sales. Stable communities surrounding us are experiencing much more robust property sales.

The direction we take as a community, in the next year or two, could very well be decisive in the future values of our homes. Most everybody already knows that the Loeb Partners are actively trying to sell the Key Club; there are apparently several interested buyers. As usual the asking price is unrealistic. I wonder how long the British retirement funds can hold out before they will have to sell. What happens to the proposed Key Club development when the property is sold without any definite court ruling on the legality of the proposed expansion. Since the Key Club is mostly comprised of raw land, its greatest value lies in high-density high-rise development on both sides of GMD. It seems likely that the residents of Bay Isles will be presented with a similar, if not larger, scenario for their community as now confronts the property owners at Islandside.

It seems that it would be more advantageous to head in the other direction, towards a low density completely residential community. Let's face it, the mom-and-pop resorts are slowly being sold. Tourism is declining. The Key Cub doesn't even have a hotel and they are too penurious to have wifi in the rooms at the Inn on the Beach. Wouldn't it be better for our community, as a whole, to see these properties turned into exclusive homes, similar to what is happening along GMD right now. If more land was available for residential development, I am sure more large homes would be built. Casey Key is an example of a thriving completely residential island community. Instead of electing and supporting commissioners that seem to want to make way for high-density high-rise condo-tels, that do nothing to increase residential land values, we might do better electing commissioners that use the word "resident" more often than the word "development".

The coming election gives the residents an opportunity to tell the town government they want a low-density exclusive residential community.. Contrary to their claims, I believe the current commission has not been positive for home sales and home values. People do not move to a community like Longboat Key for the tourism and the conventions. Longboat Key needs to redefine itself in the 21st century. Our strong points are are low density and our exclusivity. Let's not spoil it.

Don't Get Cute

Excuse me if I profess to being a little confused about what it is that the commission and the Key Club are doing these days.

For the past eighteen months we have been told repeatedly by the commissioners that they are hard at work developing tourism and retail business on Longboat Key. So far their efforts have not produced a single improvement in either sector of the island's economy. To the contrary, the commissioners have been unable to have a positive affect on declining home sales and prices, as well as more and more shuttered businesses. I am reminded of a billboard along the freeway in Seattle in the early 70's that read "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights". I am sure that the commissioners are as aware as anyone else of the passing months and years of economic decline on the island. I do not believe that long-range plans and projections will have a positive impact on our current dilemma.

Perhaps their efforts might be better spent promoting Longboat Key today and not some commercial Shangri-La that might or might not materialize in a decade or two. I am afraid that most of us will not be here to see any possible benefits from their tourism expansion plans.

I have read one commissioner's comments that the commission is merely trying to restore tourism to the level that existed on Longboat twenty years ago. I am afraid that will be insufficient in today's tourism market. Building a dozen ten story hotels on the north end of the island, with retail shops on the ground floor, will not transform our elite residential retirement-home community into any sort of viable tourism destination for more than a few months a year. And that is if anyone in this country still has any money. I believe many taxpayers need to sell their homes now, not fifteen years from now.

For the past twenty-two months the commission has dedicated itself to transforming our comprehensive plan and building codes to conform to a blueprint submitted by the Key Club in the form of ordinances 2009-25 and 2010-16 . One commissioner has stated that the Key Club application illuminated the inability of our comprehensive plan and codes to accommodate increased density, and that is why it has become the duty of the commission to change the town's regulations. The commissioner failed to mention that caps on density were put there intentionally by the wise architects of a community development plan that has created one of the premier second-home retirement communities in the world. At the same time the commission and town attorney contend that all the time and money being spent by the town and taxpayers has nothing to do with the Key Club, and therefore the Key Club does not have to reimburse the town for costs associated with altering and litigating numerous alterations to the comp plan and codes, that in fact were first defined by the Key Club as being required to make the club expansion street legal. I am confused when public officials say two things at the same time that are exclusionary.

The Key Club management and their legal minions represent another enigma for me. I was on the original commission that initially listened to many paid lobbyists for the Key Club expansion proposal, including Mr. Lesser, who assured us that the Loeb Group was a friendly neighbor in our community. Reading the most recent Key Club forum article in the LBK News, the Loeb Group and their lawyers now sound like shrill petulant three-year-olds in a candy store, who have just been told they will just have to wait until all the court suits have been completed before they may be able to increase their raw land value, with the willing help of a professed developer-friendly commission. I am saddened by the harsh hard-line legal threats currently being used by the Key Club. Whatever became of the warm and friendly Key Club? I wonder if Mr. Lesser realizes the folks he is threatening can easily purchase the Key Club, but are smart enough to avoid investments with diminishing returns. Perhaps the Loeb Group is experiencing cash-flow problems and needs to speed up the whole process of gutting our land use codes. Unfortunately the Loeb Group chose to use politics instead of government to try to achieve unwarranted density increases at Island Side. Now they are reaping their own rewards. To his credit the town attorney tried to persuade Mr. Lesser to use a less problematic approach.

More and more of those people in favor of turning our idyllic tropical paradise into Reddington Beach are using insults and intimidation to try to achieve their ends. Perhaps the time has come for the silent majority to come forward and become part of the democratic process. If you are not willing to participate then you have no right to complain no matter how you feel about tourism on Longboat Key.