If you could single out one thing that has held up the working waterfronts legislation in Monroe County it would have to be the greed that has been exhibited by some of the developers of the deep port harbor at Stock Island. The developers of the harbor area have latched on to the fact that the public and county is willing to make concessions to developers to preserve working waterfronts. Early in the process of crafting this legislation, the developers of deep port harbor, in an attempt to circumvent the rate-of-growth ordinance, decided to "sell" the idea that a large hotel at Stock Island would be emergency housing so there was no need to "count" the hotel under the rate-of-growth ordinance.

Finally, that idea was abandoned and in its place there were various calculations that would have given the developers considerable windfalls in the area of density. Just like the old adage about trying to get 10 pounds of •••• in a five-pound bag, not that the hotel would be ••••, there would just be a ••••load of hotel rooms in one area.

Let me give you an example of how they proposed to accomplish this increased density. Normally if you have 10 acres and the density allowed for that district is one house per acre, you get to build 10 homes. You have now used up your density for that 10 acres. The developers of deep port harbor also wanted to put a hotel on the same theoretical 10 acres. They also wanted to use bay bottom to count buildable area, so more density [would be allowed] on the land.

The idea of the hotel as an emergency shelter was probably more realistic than the over-density scam. Also "public lodging units" were innocently proposed by the developers, but the state definition of this term turned out to be a little suspicious because that would have allowed conversion from hotel to residential.

When we are talking about why the county still hasn't accomplished its goal of protecting working waterfronts, it would be reasonable to lay some of the blame where it belongs.

Ron Miller

Key Largo