Watermark gets a raspberry for design
Although Key West's
housing stock is small — a mere 13,300 units in total — 2,580 of those
houses are listed as historic buildings.
Most of them are in
Old
Town, one of the
largest collections of old wooden edifices in the state — and to a
lesser degree, the nation — and second only to Jacksonville's Riverside
Avondale preservation district.
The downtown neighborhood
that includes the Key West Bight has been on the National Register of
Historic Places since 1971; other residential neighborhoods in Old Town
were added with the Historic District Extension in 1983.
A couple of years ago, a
golden opportunity opened up at the Bight when a one-and-a-half acre
site known as Jabour's campground was sold to a group of locally based
developers.
A camping and RV site in
the heart of the Historic Seaport had become an anomaly, hearkening to a
less combed time in the city's post-war history. The neighborhood held
its breath to see what would replace it.
The neighborhood exhaled
in a long raspberry of disgust as the Watermark story unfolded. First it
was going to be a 101-room hotel with a restaurant, the number of rooms
representing former camp sites. The Key West City Commission approved
this idea but the state Department of Community Affairs did not,
limiting the units to 80.
So the developers scaled
back Watermark, getting rid of the restaurant and finally proposing 26
luxury, transient-rental condominiums in four buildings.
The subsequent approval
by the Key West Historic Architecture Review Commission (HARC) led to a
debate, within the commission itself and in the city Planning
Department, over the definitions of story, half-story, mansard roofs and
floor-area ratios.
The HARC approval was
appealed by two neighbors, who then withdrew their case when the
developers offered to buy their properties. Yet the essential quarrel
remains. However much the developers argue the merits of their
definitions — that the project is two-and-a-half stories when it will
look, from the street, like four stories; or that the roof is sloped
when it will look, from the street, like it's flat — the real problem
has always been the project's sheer mass.
A 35-foot to 40-foot-high
development like Watermark might look good in Boca Raton, but in the
historic district of Old Town Key West it will look like something for
the visitor to avoid, a whole city block diminished by a design that
favors thoroughfare over architecture, the automobile at the expense of
the pedestrian.
At a Planning Board
meeting held earlier this month and attended by 150 protesting
neighbors, attorney Bob Goldman pointed out to the board, to the
developers and to anyone living east of Watermark: Should it be built,
"sunset is going to start at
3:30
in the afternoon." The board's president was absent and a vote to
approve Watermark was tied.
The Planning Department
hopes the developers will respond to these criticisms of scale by
eliminating a parking floor on the building behind Lazy Way, which
fronts onto Harbor Walk; the developers can afford to do this, since the
parking requirements of the project are already met without that space.
The Citizen urges the
developers, Caroline Street Partners, before the next planning board and
city commission meetings, to count the votes and rework their Watermark
plans.
Public disfavor is the
big elephant in the room right now and it cannot be ignored.
— The Citizen
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