A fledgling building boom is under way on Clearwater Beach, and already the Clearwater City Council is getting blasted by some members of the public for "selling off the beach."
That didn't take long.
Perhaps the critics making that accusation don't understand that the properties being developed are privately owned, not city-owned. Therefore, the city has no role in "selling" them.
Perhaps they don't know that the projects aren't being built on the sand where the public sunbathes and builds sand castles, or that the beach and the gulf will remain open and accessible to the public in front of any of the proposed waterfront projects.
Some critics have wanted the city to prevent the razing of old properties to which they were emotionally attached, such as the Yacht Basin Apartments or the Clearwater Beach Hotel, forgetting, apparently, that the owners of those private properties can tear down and build whatever they want on their land as long as they abide by city codes.
Ah, abide by city codes. Perhaps people are aware that the Clearwater City Council has amended its much-touted Beach by Design plan to allow some of the projects to proceed. Could that be what gives rise to the accusation that the city is "selling off the beach"?
Beach by Design, a formal, written plan to guide the redevelopment of Clearwater Beach, was approved by the city three years ago after many months of work and numerous meetings to gather input from the public. It was created because city officials - indeed, anyone who visited the island - could see that the beach was in decline, had been for years, and that nothing was on the horizon to turn it around. Clearwater Beach - long Clearwater's primary economic engine - was sputtering.
Land prices were sky-high because of the proximity to one of the nation's best beaches, yet the buildings on the land were run down. The owners often had invested so much in the land that they had nothing left for upkeep or reconstruction of the buildings.
The rates that owners could charge for a room fell, compounding the problem. Another difficulty was that many of the older properties lacked space for parking. Customers parked on the street - something that new codes would not allow if the properties were redeveloped.
Beach by Design spelled out potential solutions to some of the island's many problems, but the keystone was a "bonus density pool." The city believed that if it could get a developer to build a high-end destination resort on the island, that would go a long way toward reversing the trend toward decline and falling room rates. It would be like putting premium gas in the engine.
Yet land prices were so high and city codes so restrictive on how many units could be built that any developer would be hard-pressed to get a project financed.
So the city created a bonus pool of 600 extra units that would be parceled out to developers who came forward with an acceptable plan for a resort hotel in specific tourist areas of the island.
Now, finally, the city's plan appears to be working just as designed.
Beach hotelier Tony Markopoulos has proposed a $100-million condominium and hotel resort on property he owns across S Gulfview Boulevard from South Beach. He wants units from the density pool to make his project work.
Another development group led by attorney Bill Kimpton wants to build a resort on S Gulfview and use some density units, though that proposal had been tied up in lawsuits until recently, and its status is uncertain.
And two of Clearwater Beach's most successful developers of high-end properties, Mike Cheezem and David Mack, have linked up for a proposed $140-million condominium and hotel resort with shops and a restaurant on Mandalay Avenue between Baymont and Rockaway streets. They, too, needed units from the density pool to make their project work, but their site was not entirely in the zone that qualified for the bonus units.
On June 17, Clearwater City Council members heard the details of the Cheezem-Mack proposal and decided they could be flexible in exchange for what promises to be what they wanted in a resort. The council agreed to expand the boundaries of the area that qualifies for the density pool and make a few other changes to allow the developers to go ahead with designing their project. The state still must approve the changes.
Some critics might say that a plan is a plan and that Beach by Design should not have been amended for the sake of one development group. Perhaps they would call that "selling off the beach."
But in avoiding slavish devotion to a plan written in 2001 - before the war on terror, before the economy began to dip and dive, before a boom in condominium construction began gobbling up old motel properties along the Pinellas coastline - the City Council just may accomplish its top goal: to obtain for Clearwater Beach the kind of plush waterfront resort we see advertised on television and in travel magazines. The kind that attracts visitors with enough money to stoke Clearwater's tourism engine.
