Colony judgment day moves to January

The resort keeps its grandfathered units for now, but several dilapidated structures are going down soon.

By Alex Mahadevan
| 11:00 a.m. June 7, 2016

Longboat Key
News

A hearing about the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort’s tourism units Monday, turned into a three-and-a-half-hour negotiation between the town and a developer seeking to revive the shuttered property.

Unicorp National Development had asked the Town Commission to extend 129 of its grandfathered tourism units to maintain a total 237 allowable tourism units on the 18-acre parcel until Feb. 15, 2018. Chuck Whittall, president of the Orlando-based Unicorp, offered to pay more than $60,000 demolish five crumbling structures and some tiki huts on the property after acquiring them from Colony Lender LLC this month.

But Mayor Jack Duncan expressed frustration about not having enough time to consider the request, kicking off a barrage of criticism about the parties involved in the Colony redevelopment process.

Due Process

Mayor Jack Duncan was clearly upset with the lack of discussion leading up to Monday’s quasi-judicial meeting about tourism units at the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort. Specifically, he wanted time to workshop the proposal.

But, as Town Attorney Maggie Mooney-Portale repeatedly explained to commissioners during the hearing, that’s not possible when considering land-use decisions for specific properties because the hearings are quasi-judicial, meaning commissioners are required to act as judges and make decisions by weighing evidence, rather than voting based on their personal feelings.

Commissioners spent more than an hour deliberating about the application to extend those grandfathered units into 2018, before representatives from Unicorp, Colony Lender or the association spoke.

“That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to give it a couple more months,” said Younger before the applicants spoke. “But if we just vote strictly on this right now, I will go home perfectly happy voting this over — I’m done.”

That prompted Mooney-Portale to warn commissioners about violating the quasi-judicial process.

“I just want to be very careful, because it’s getting very close to sounding like we’re making decisions here before we’ve afforded everybody their due process right to be heard,” Mooney-Portale said. “So, I respectfully request we re-adjust this proceeding.”

Then, commissioners took a break.

“Let’s start with a 10 minute break for re-adjustment, and hopefully cooler heads will prevail,” Duncan said.

“If I thought I could get the vote, I would table the entire thing and we would come back and discuss it after we have had a workshop, but it doesn’t appear as though legally I can do that,” Duncan said.

Ultimately, both parties agreed to extend the timeframe to Jan. 9, 2017.

“I’ll tell you I’m tired of this,” said Commissioner Phill Younger. “I’m absolutely tired of this — it’s time to fish or cut bait.”

Other commissioners expressed similar frustrations about what they see as a lack of progress on redeveloping the resort, which closed in 2010.

But Whittall, who remained at the commission meeting until after 11 p.m., insisted that real progress is happening behind the scenes, and said his firm was close to signing a development agreement with the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort Association. Jeff Warren, the association’s legal counsel since 2008, said he thought Feb. 18, 2018 was a realistic timeframe for bankruptcy cases to be settled, Unicorp to acquire units and construction to begin.

“I represent to you that Mr. Whittall in the last few months has done everything he told the association board he would do,” Warren said.

The association needs at least 80% of the resort’s unit owners to approve the development proposal, which also allows unit owners to dissolve the condominium association and move forward with a development.

Whittall told commissioners he plans to meet with an architect to draw up plans for a 180-unit hotel, plus 180 condominiums. But he will seek approval for up to 417 units — 237 tourism units in the unlikely event that owners of every unit opted to keep a unit with a 30-day stay option.

“You may have heard that there are people on this island who are very concerned about traffic issues,” said Commissioner Armando Linde during discussion of that unit allotment. But Whittall said he has discussed traffic mitigation with town staff and had a plan to deal with such issues.

Whittall aims to work with staff toward a neighborhood workshop this winter, a referendum next spring and groundbreaking December 2017.

“I will not support a two-year plan at this time,” said Commissioner Phill Younger. “And I will barely, barely, barely support six months.”

Whittall said after the meeting he would consider delaying those plans after the Town Commission’s decision.

“For me to start designing a building then all of a sudden six months from now, say, I come up here and you say, ‘You know what, we’re not going to extend it and you’re down to this many units,’” Whittall said. “I just pissed away a million and half to two million dollars in plans.”

Because the Colony’s 237 units were built on 18 acres before the town created its tourism resort commercial classification that allows for just six units per acre, 129 of the resort’s 237 units are considered grandfathered. If that nonconforming use disappears, only 108 units would be permitted on the site.

An ongoing dispute between Colony owner Murray “Murf” Klauber and unit owners over resort repairs that began in 2004 and a series of bankruptcy filings led to the resort’s closure in 2010.