The Colony: How did paradise on the beach devolve into lawsuits, bizarre plans and inaction?
I am tired of Colony metaphors. Tired of psychoanalysis. Tired of seeing plans like so many overbuilt sandcastles appear before us and then wash away in waves of resident protest.
Last and not least, I resent this whole charade of the “text amendment.”
These emotions sound personal, but they are not. What we are going through collectively watching and waiting for the Colony to redevelop is not a useful exercise in community soul-searching.
Rather, we are dividing ourselves due to the abject failure of our very Town Commission — a majority of whom walked into their posts unchallenged — to fashion a fair and meaningful zoning district to embody not only the outer extant of what we want to see on the site, but also to define the very fundamentals such as density, height and ultimately — market value.
Let’s play out what this means.
A brush with history
The Colony failed more than seven years ago. It now seems like a landscape out of another era.
The Sunday brunches, the tennis greats, the beachgoers plying the paths through the sand to the tan prayer rug that stretched from the pool and Monkey Bar to the dappled Gulf all are receding into a Technicolor glow. Children camps and laughs and screams of joy are now replaced by gnawing rats.
The Colony once offered a sense of coming home even for visitors. It became an apex for so many lives to spend time each year at the Colony. And Murf Klauber — inimitable, colorfully clad and omnipresent — had enough energy to keep the ownership structure functioning like a family with his paternalistic and intense grip on every aspect of operation.
And then it failed.
Some say it was the mutiny of the unit owners who objected to his financial assessments.
Some say it was the Iago-like friendship Andy Adams had with Klauber. Adams wanted to expand his rights in joining two units at the midrise and that ultimately led to the denouement.
Others say it was the lapping waves of time that rendered the structures old and dilapidated and the accumulated deferred maintenance collapsed the way a wall shudders when termites reduce solid pine to a honeycomb of sawdust.
The suits enter the room
Then our community saw the final death of the Colony day by day. It was like watching cancer metastasize in slow motion. Murf only rented a small number of rooms as the unit owners dissented and defected. The restaurant hours contracted to a few meals a week. And then, it was over.
Soon the activity and the life at the Colony was traded for so many blue suits arguing in a courtroom. Mismanagement, conspiracy, missing money, agreements ignored all became fodder as the days and months and years passed.
And this is where our town, instead of acting with leadership, mimicked the inaction at the Colony. We did next to nothing.
The greedy owners
It is popular to blame it all on the owners. It is popular for some to blame it on Murf and his sometimes-intractable nature.
Some say the market for tennis collapsed and the Colony never adjusted and reimagined itself for the next generation.
In many ways the daughters of memory can debate these thoughts forever. What is tangible is the Town, as said, did nothing.
And by that I mean we knew someday — probably years in the future — the ownership issues would end and a developer would come forward.
Many years ago, our then Town Attorney suggested the Town ought to decide what it wants to see or encourage on the site and then zone and create regulations to both encourage the desired outcome and to offer clarity for both residents and the property owners. We did the opposite.
Murf still plans our Town
The Town grandfathered the existing units. It is as if the Commission says the 237 units that failed after 50 years is what makes the most sense on that site. And instead of creating a zoning district that allowed a new endeavor, the Town merely changed its own rules to allow the grandfathering — which was supposed to expire each year — into a perpetual allowance.
In essence, our Town has said, “Murf Kluaber’s plan for the site is what we want and we will not even create a proper zoning method to allow that — we will simply say you have the right to rebuild what you have.”
Then there is the issue of the underlying zoning being 6 units per acre. That was enacted in the 1980s and mathematically allows 103 residences or hotel rooms on the site.
And then the Commission has a strange pool of tourism units it can allocate if and when it desires.
So with this hodgepodge of methodologies, both applicant and residents might see anything from 40 to 65 feet tall. They could see 103 residences or as many as 237 grandfathered units plus an addition 165 units from a tourism pool. They might see Chuck Whittall’s plan of 103 residences plus 165 tourism units from the pool. Or Whittall could get approved the 103 residences and the Commission not allow the tourism units. It is all based on loose and subjective criteria.
And how does a developer negotiate a deal with unit owners not having any clear idea what will be granted or allowed?
How can Longboaters — especially neighbors — have any certainty whether they will be living next to a bustling resort of 237 grandfathered units or up to 402 units if the tourism units were granted?
The strangeness goes on and on.
Will Whittall go away or simply sit on the property if he does not get his text amendment? Is it a deal maker or deal killer? Is that what Preserve Longboat Key wants? Probably not.
And if the Text amendment is denied and Whittall still has enough profit and resources in his plan to deliver his vision, than would not denying the text amendment help preserve the low-scale charm of the island?
A compromising position
The problem is the community and Whittall should not be in this position.
It leaves residents in fear of possible outcomes instead of embracing the very moment we might be on the cusp of seeing a new resort rise from the termite dust.
It also leaves an applicant growing cynical. Whittall could do exactly what we do not want to see and simply wait it out until a Commission comes along that might say, “yes” to his plan.
This is not clarity. This is not proactive planning and zoning. This reminds me of Hamlet.
Hamlet was handed too great a destiny. His heart was in the right place, but the demands of his father’s ghosts plunged him into a moral crisis and ultimately inaction. In the wake of that inaction, Ophelia kills herself in anguish.
This Commission resembles so many small-town Hamlets. They are charged with one of the most important tasks of their community. They need to steer a ship and bring light and clarity to the great injustice we all are suffering through — the moribund and decrepit Colony.
What to do…
I find it hard to get on bandwagons. I do not wave flags for developers, but at the same time I see the rallying cry of Preserve Longboat Key as short sighted.
Both are right and wrong.
I believe Whittall and Unicorp can develop a great resort minus the 26 units that are at stake. But we run a risk. I do not know that for sure. I also have little to no confidence that the pecuniary nature of some of our Commissioners will likely not grant him the tourism units.
On the other hand, I do not see the 26 units he does not want to lose in the process as destroying the ambiance of the Key. Could the opponents be enjoying an inflated sense of purpose in being reflexively against anything and everything — even a single unit if it makes sense?
At this point we would hope the applicant would present his best and final plan. And at this point I would love to see the Commission debate, discuss and react and help shape that plan in a way that shapes the deal without destroying the deal.
The vote will go like this…
I will take a realist tone. Mayor Terry Gans, and Commissioners Jack Daly and Irwin Pastor will likely support the text amendment. Commissioners George Spoll, Jim Brown and Randy Clair will fight it. The Commission will forward it along on Monday and then try and kill it at a vote in February. And that leaves Commissioner Ed Zunz as the presiding judge and jury.
Can you imagine destiny and our future devolving to this scenario?
Is this the best we can do for our residents as well as those investing hundreds of millions of dollars?
My suggestion on Monday is to not get too caught up in the text amendment debate. It is little more than an apparition. It is little more than yet another ghostly and flimsy reminder of the work that must be done on this island.
We need an era of true long-range planning. We need codes that protect us and offer clarity.
The best we can hope for this spring is to steer clear of lawsuits.
And let’s all dream of that day when a new Colony or St. Regis or some Palace by the Sea opens. Maybe Murf will still be alive to raise his voice in joy.
But we may have to do one thing before that dream arrives: vote for a Commission that can lead us somewhere other than into a courtroom.