By TIMOTHY O'HARA Citizen Staff
Building a hotel on Stock Island has been a touchy subject since it was first proposed last year.
Despite months of legal wrangling and brokering with the state, the hotel once again is one of the issues keeping Monroe County from approving rules for redeveloping working waterfronts.
New Stock Island Properties, a group of developers, has proposed building a 300-unit hotel on the former Alex's junkyard site on Shrimp Road. On its face, replacing a junkyard with a hotel would seem an enhancement with which the County Commission and state would go along.
The hotel project hit its first stumbling block earlier this year, however, when the developers billed it as an emergency shelter for workers in a hurricane, in exchange for not having to acquire state-issued Rate of Growth Ordinance permits for the rooms. The state rejected the plan and the developers agreed to purchase the units, which can cost anywhere from $70,000 to about $100,000 a piece.
Then there were, and still are, concerns that the hotel could exceed the county's 35-foot height restriction, depending on what developers use as a baseline for measuring the height -- the crown of the road or the base flood elevation defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The previous County Commission had approved a rule using the latter, along with a host of other rules that would allow Safe Harbor and other working waterfronts to be redeveloped. The state Department of Community Affairs, which regulates development in Monroe County, rejected them in April, saying they didn't do enough to preserve working waterfronts.
Since then, the state, county, Navy and Stock Island property owners -- including the New Stock Island Properties developers -- have worked on a compromise they hope will keep the issue from being decided in a state administrative hearing.
An agreement was reached last month, but the County Commission, with two new members since the Nov. 4 election, has found its own problems with the rules -- and hotel rooms are back at the center of it.
The commissioners have questioned the creation of a new zoning district on Safe Harbor that allows three-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot hotel suites, condominiums and apartments on working waterfronts. A loophole also could allow the rooms to be rented for longer than 30 days, the cutoff that defines a "hotel room," Growth Management Director Andrew Trivette said.
The commissioners also have resurrected concerns about building heights.
"A settlement agreement is going to have things in it that not all parties are happy with," Trivette said of the compromise rules in a public meeting Wednesday. "I am not sure I am happy with it. ... The settlement agreement is much more palatable to staff than the initial amendments."
The County Commission on Wednesday balked at approving the new rules, allowable densities and the Deep Port Harbor zoning category on Stock Island, as it could place as many as 800 hotel rooms and three-bedroom suites, apartments and restaurants on the 54 acres of working waterfront on Safe Harbor.
At the meeting, Trivette cited a study from several years ago that said 60 percent of Stock Island residents opposed more tourism there. However, the study went to 2,500 homes and only 141 people responded, Trivette said, adding that more public input on the issue probably was necessary.
The commission has asked the state for more time to tweak the rules, and the state on Thursday approved that request.
Both County Mayor George Neugent and a New Stock Island Properties attorney held out hope that the rules could be salvaged, not scrapped.
"Not one commissioner thinks it's a bad project," attorney David Paul Horan said, conceding that the rules, as written, are "dead" because of the new makeup of the commission.
Horan argued that while the rules allow for a maximum-density number of shops and hotel rooms, the developers do not plan to build that much.
Their project also calls for public access, boat dockage in front of restaurants and a boardwalk that would wrap around Safe Harbor, Horan said, adding that his clients always have pushed for no net loss of working waterfront.
"We have to give these guys incentives in order to redevelop this area," Neugent said. "There are elements that are attractive. I would hate for these to die, especially in light of current economic woes. But what we don't want to do is create unintended consequences."
In lieu of approving the rules or an alternate track, the developers could request the county approve a special set of rules, called development agreements, just for Safe Harbor, Trivette said. Horan and the state agree that is not feasible. As designed, the project violates the county's current set of development rules, called the comprehensive plan, and would require too many amendments to the comprehensive plan to make it legal. Development agreements cannot violate comprehensive plans.
The commission will meet again on Monday at the Marathon Government Center to decide whether to rewrite the rules from scratch or keep some and rework others.
