Town seeks keys to gated Bay Isles Beach Club

A $10,983,192 dump truck sand haul project will start next year with or without the use of the Bay Isles Beach Club beach access.

But access to the private beach club would be good for the public, according to Town Manager Dave Bullock and Public Works Director Juan Florensa.

The Bay Isles Association Board allowed Bullock and Florensa to make a pitch Monday to board members and residents for temporary access to their beach. Bay Isles residents have deeded gated access to the beach access.

The town wants a temporary easement to use the property to bring approximately 2,000 dump-truck loads of sand to the access over a period of 30 days depending on weather and traffic.

Before the board adjourned for the summer, it voted to reject the town’s request to use the beach access and declined an offer from the town to make a presentation for the use of the access.

But a plea from Vice Mayor Tarry Gans, a Bay Isles resident, to Bay Isles President William Levine prompted the board to schedule the town presentation.

In total, the large project beginning in April will dump approximately 200,000 cubic yards of sand on portions of the center shoreline from just south of the Islander Club to Beachplace via dump trucks driving 100 miles each way from an inland sand source in central Florida.

Parties involved with the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort, the only other viable access for the beach project, have agreed to allow the town to use the property. But the shuttered resort at 1620 Gulf of Mexico Drive sits about a mile south of where the sand needs to be placed.

“The more we haul up and down the beach, the more we pay for trucking and the higher the cost, and it stretches the project out as well,” Bullock said. “It drives us to have you consider this request.”

Sea turtle nesting could stretch  the project’s length further. If nests are found during construction, work must be delayed until nests can be safely relocated.

Terms of the easement can be negotiated and require the town to relandscape bushes just north of an emergency road on the site that need to be removed to make way for the width of dump trucks.

Approximately 30 residents in attendance worried about how the project could inconvenience them.

They also wondered if they could add stipulations to the easement agreement.

Bullock said he couldn’t negotiate terms of an easement agreement Monday but suggested there might be leeway on what the town can do to enhance the easement when the project is finished. 

The possibility also exists the town could start the project first at the easement and give the Bay Isles beach access sand priority to get its portion of the project completed sooner.

The board declined to make a decision on the town’s request Monday and plans to make a decision its November meeting.

“This is a major project,” said Bay Isles board member George  Spoll, who worries that a temporary easement could lead to a precedent. “If we allow it this time, it would be hard to say no the second time.”