Colony deal: No sure bet

Get ready. There will be a lot in the news over the next few weeks about the future of the Colony. The long-suffering unit owners must make a decision before the end of the year whether to accept a purchase and sale agreement from Orlando-based Unicorp Acquisitions LLC.

Let’s lay out some of the details of most interest to Longboat Key residents:

Unicorp’s proposal

• A new five-star hotel;
• No fewer than 150, but no more than 200 hotel rooms;
• Related amenities, including restaurants and bars, both inside the primary hotel structure and free-standing on the grounds of the resort property;
• Ballrooms, function rooms, health club, outdoor sports facilities and pools;
• No fewer than 100 but no more than 200 residential units;
• No fewer than 25, but no more than 60 residential units to be used for tourist units.

Summary

• Minimum version: 150 hotel rooms; 100 (new) residential units, with a minimum of 25 residential units serving as time-share, tourism units. Total: 250 units.
• Maximum version: 200 hotel rooms; 200 (new) residential units, with a maximum of 60 residential units serving as time-share, tourism units. Total: 400 units.

What formerly existed

• 237 tourism units
• Restaurant, spa, meetings rooms, banquet hall, delicatessen, clothing store, tennis pro shop, pool, bar, tennis courts.

Current zoning

Tourism use, six units per acre, although grandfathered for the existing 237.

Suffice it to say, if you’re an owner of one or more units at the shuttered Colony Beach & Tennis Resort, you would be wise to invest sufficient time to study and have explained virtually every detail of the 84-page purchase, sale and development agreement that Unicorp Acquisitions LLC has submitted to the Colony Beach & Tennis Club Association.

It’s complicated. Perhaps the biggest complications are not the details of proposed sale agreement between Unicorp and the Colony unit owners, but rather the thresholds that must be crossed with the town, Longboat voters and the Colony’s neighbors. How will they respond to Unicorp’s proposals? Unicorp — and the Colony unit owners — will need the blessing of all three.

Take the matter of the town:

The proposed contract states that, to close, Unicorp shall have received final town approval of:

• The zoning entitlements
• The development plan
• Building permits

That may not sound like much, but if you were here when the Longboat Key Club and Resort attempted to obtain all of those approvals for its redevelopment and expansion — mind you, a $400 million project — you remember the difficulties.

And keep in mind that as of today, Unicorp has not shown any renderings of its proposed five-star hotel. Nor has it indicated whether its plan will include high-rises or midrises. It is not likely the new Colony will resemble the old Colony, with its many two-story bungalows.

You can be sure the Colony’s neighbors, Aquarius Club and Tencon, will have much to say, just as the Islandside Property Owners Coalition became the Key Club’s most vocal and stiffest opposition.

And that brings us to Longboat Key’s voters in general. Because Unicorp is proposing to construct new residential units, it will be required to obtain voter approval. Back in the early 1980s, the Key’s voters approved a charter amendment requiring a public vote whenever anyone proposes to increase the town’s residential density.

You saw what happened to Floridays on the north end of the Key in the most recent election. 

Unicorp’s plan is markedly different, to be sure. It wants more units on a property that for nearly 50 years has served tourism uses.

But you also know the mood of Longboat Key residents these days. They abhor the idea of anything that will contribute to increased traffic congestion. 

What everyone — Colony unit owners, town officials and Longboat residents — is anxious to know is Unicorp’s final proposed plan: the minimum of 250 units or the maximum of 400?

This is far from a done deal.