Colony occupancy questioned

Longboat Key commissioners are taking a long, hard look at hundreds of pages of old Colony Beach & Tennis Resort reports.

Why?

Because they want to figure out why two unit owners would want building permits to fix up shuttered units and if those owners have any possibility of receiving future certificates of occupancy.

Colony Beach & Tennis Resort unit owners Blake Fleetwood and Ruth Kriendler received building permits from the Planning, Zoning and Building Department two weeks ago to make interior renovations, repair and replace windows, install working air conditioners and upgrade electrical panels.

Obtaining a certificate of occupancy for Colony units being repaired, though, will be an issue for owners such as Fleetwood and Kriendler.

To make his point to commissioners, Town Manager Dave Bullock informed commissioners in a Sept. 5 email that “additional detailed inspection and research would be necessary should a property owner submit a specific request to occupy a building.”

Bullock provided commissioners with 160 pages of documents submitted since the resort closed in 2010 that reveal the complexities involved with owners receiving a certificate of occupancy.

“That includes a $343,000 overdue utility bill,” Bullock informed commissioners. “Additional research would be necessary should a property owner submit a specific request to occupy a building.”

Bullock also noted that broken sewer lines litter the property underneath the ground, there are multiple building and structural code violations and severe mold intrusion throughout the buildings.

There are also dozens of fire code violations, broken pipes and railings and engineering reports stating the units are not safe for habitation.

The town must also address the issue of zoning and grandfathered uses at the resort before any occupancy could be granted once all the other issues are addressed.

Talk to my attorney
Fed up with correspondence to unit owners from Colony Lender LLC and Unicorp National Development President Chuck Whittall, the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort Association is taking a stand.

Unicorp and Whittall have been sending correspondence that they will be pursuing $42.3 million in alleged debt the unit owners owe, an amount that equals $181,571 per unit.

In letters sent to Colony Lender LLC and Whittall, association attorney Jeffrey Warren ordered them to stop.

“You are hereby instructed to direct all future communications with regard to this matter directly to our office,” Warren wrote in a Sept. 2 letter. “Should you communicate with any of our clients regarding this matter, our clients will consider that communication a willful violation of…Florida statutes…and will seek damages for those violations, as well as attorneys’ fees and court costs against you personally and against Unicorp National Developments Inc.”