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Workshop solved nothing about lease
I attended [the Nov.
12] workshop [about 908 Caroline St.] and I was astounded by the lack of
control and dysfunction of the city's communication in the planning and
development of this project. The right hand doesn't know what the left
hand is doing.
Example: Key West
Bight Board lease with Ed Swift. If you knew about it, it would never
even have come up for approval during Fantasy Fest week, when Ed Swift
thought that no one was paying attention. I do not have a problem with
Ed Swift developing the site. I do have a problem with a $1,000 per
month lease for 20 years.
Someone please explain
to me where in the bight board bylaws is it permissible for anyone to
sublet, which is what Swift plans to do. He will pay you $1,000, and
earn at least $25,000 per month, $300,000 per year, and $6 million over
20 years.
My other problems are:
We don't need another restaurant within 500 feet of five other
restaurants; we don't need eight affordable housing units at $1,500 per
month -- that is affordable according to Ed Swift; we don't need more
retail space, Ed Swift has vacant stores all over the city.
If you level the
building, don't pave it, but put in ground coral: This can be used as
parking by PT's and Monty's or both for a price -- $4,000 a month.
Suggestion: You need
to figure out a way to cut to the chase in these meetings. You guys are
the Supreme Court. The issue was the lease and you wasted an hour on
stuff that no one cared about. The city manager or the mayor should have
stated the issue, and then the citizens should have spoken their
opinions with no questions. After this, the developers should have had
their say.
Mind you, the city
planner and the bight board have yet to speak. Now the commissioners can
ask their questions of the parties without wasting time on dumb stuff.
After all this is done, you can vote based on all of the information
that has been aired.
Having attended the
meeting, I must tell you that I was ready to jump up and disrupt the
meeting just so that we could get to the pertinent issue. It is the city
attorney's job to go over the background for the property and determine
the legality.
A lot of people,
including Mr. Swift, took the time to be present and were never given
the opportunity to speak. If Commissioner Bethel really believes in
brainstorming, we should have done it [during the workshop], but because
of your ritual, we did not hear all of the opinions and thoughts. A new
format is needed.
While I am at it, your
sound system stinks. Turn it up or get a new one. This is the 21st
century. Portable mikes like you see on TV talk shows would work. ...
Other suggestion: City
commissioners, or at least one city commissioner, should attend every
bight board meeting to be aware of what is going on. This lease should
have never seen the light of day. There should be a channel of
communication between the mayor and the city manager and the city
planner as to what is going on.
It is amazing how
these projects get derailed by something as simple as The Key West
Citizen and the people that bother to read and care, like me. I wrote
the letter to Mayor Jimmy Weekley (e-mail) and copied all of the
commissioners and the editor at [keysnews.com, The Citizen's Web site],
who printed my letter.
We are in a new world.
This is not 1994, when Mallory Square, the Hilton, and Hyatt Sunset
Resorts were a dust bowl. Remember when there were one-third the cruise
ships and the big ones anchored offshore? It is time to do an accounting
of the change in the landscape or seascape, if you will, and address the
real issue of the fact that the city is being short-changed. We now have
17 cruise ships a week coming into Key West, and the only beneficiary is
Ed Swift.
Lee Konovalov
Key West |
