Neighborhood and rules win in Bight decision
Residents of the Key West
Bight neighborhood are still celebrating last week's decision by the
Third District Court of Appeals that effectively handed them victory in
their two-year fight against a massive condominium complex planned for
the old Jabour's
Trailer Court
property in the heart of the seaport district.
There will still be a
Watermark condominium complex, and it will bear little resemblance to
the funky trailer park that occupied the site for decades.
But residents won on a
very important point — that the city has rules about what can be built
in the historic district, and that those rules must be followed.
The issue at the heart of
the case was a guideline of the city's Historic Architectural Review
Commission, the panel that must approval all projects in the city's
world-famous historic district.
That guideline says
projects "must not exceed 2.5 stories." The extra half-story is intended
to be an attic-like space, like those in the island's thousands of
Classic Revival, shotgun and eyebrow houses.
Watermark's developers
enterprisingly interpreted the rule to mean 2.5 stories over a
ground-level parking area and they persuaded HARC and the City
Commission to go along with their interpretation.
And they argued that a
mere guideline for an advisory board did not count when the City
Commission had approved the plan.
But neighbors opposed to
the project, which they said was too large in mass and scale for the
surrounding community, took their case to court. Last August, Monroe
Circuit Judge Richard Payne ruled in their favor. This week, the appeals
court upheld his decision. The developers say they are now redesigning
the project.
Payne made a similar
ruling in a similar case recently, this one regarding the proposed
redevelopment of the Atlantic Shores resort. In that ruling, he
displayed refreshing common sense and everyday logic in simply reading
the rules.
"This court is firmly of
the opinion that resort[ing] to expert opinion and agency interpretation
to interpret the meaning of the phrase 'Height — must not exceed 2.5
stories' is unwarranted and unnecessary," Payne wrote in the Atlantic
Shores case.
We agree. There is a lot
of money at stake in Key West development these days, and for far too
long high-priced attorneys have had their way with public processes.
This time, they ran into
determined and organized opposition, a group of neighbors who believed
in the city's rules and believed in the legal system to do the right
thing.
They were right.
Congratulations to them and best wishes to the developers in coming up
with a project that will be a welcome new neighbor, not a resented
intruder, in one of Key West's most important historic areas.
— The Citizen |
