Welly, White spar on project history

It comes as no surprise that Longboat Key Club and Resort General Manager Michael Welly and Islandside Property Owners Coalition’s (IPOC) Bob White remember the Key Club’s proposed project differently.

It was 2004, and the plan was Ca d’Coure, a $20 million Islandside proposal that called for 20 single-family units and a new Harbourside tennis club. IPOC was formed in response to the plans, from which the Key Club ultimately withdrew.

Welly recalls the plan in a letter sent last week to Key residents in an effort to gain support for the Key Club’s proposed $400 million Islandside redevelopment proposal, which will be the subject of oral arguments June 5 in the Second District Court of Appeals.

Welly wrote:
“Go back as far as 2004 when the club’s Ca d’ Coure project was before the town for approval of its 22-townhome development on the south parcel. The club offered to reduce the scope by 10% and IPOC responded, ‘Not enough.’ The club eventually decided to withdraw the application.”

But White disputed Welly’s account in a May 7 email to Islandside residents, in which he challenged Welly’s assertion that IPOC has been unwilling to compromise with the Key Club, both for past project and the current plan.

White wrote that the Key Club had already reduced its proposal to 20 homes before the proposal was submitted to the town and that IPOC’s objection wasn’t the cause for the revision.

“The fact that even the reduction to 20 homes only allowed 7 feet between eves of the adjacent residences might have had something to do with their decision,” White wrote.

White told the Longboat Observer that IPOC and the Key Club had an agreement in which IPOC’s 11-member condominium association would support plans for the project if the Key Club would put money in escrow with the sale of each unit to repair the Islandside golf course and community clubhouse.

Welly said that he didn’t know all of the terms of all the deals. He told the Longboat Observer that he started his position at the Key Club when the Ca d’ Coure project was in the midst of town hearings.

According to Welly, the deal-breaker was that as part of agreement, beyond the 22 town homes, the Key Club could develop nothing additional.

“These 20 town homes were the last thing we could build on our property,” he said.

He added that ultimately he recommended to officials at Loeb Realty Group, which owns the Key Club, that they withdraw the project because he studied it and decided it wasn’t a good plan.

“I thought it was a very iffy project selling 20 town homes for $5.5 million apiece, even in the best of times.”

Welly said that the project was “just a bunch of really expensive condos” that wouldn’t have benefited the club in the long term.

But is the eight-year-old project still relevant?

Yes and no.

“Every time Ca d’Coure is brought up, it must annoy Bob,” Welly said. “If it had been built, they wouldn’t have this project before them.”

White acknowledged that the statement could be true.

“Obviously that would have occupied the south end but they could have come back and proposed more development for the north end,” he said.

Click here to view an email by Michael D. Welly to Longboat residents. 

Click here to view a response by Bob White.