TPI secures “playoff win”
Last week’s LPA vote was a first step, but TPI Hospitality has two rounds before the Town Council before it will know if it’s won, or lost.
TPI’s Chief Investment Officer, Chris Flagg, likened the process to football during an Estero Island Taxpayers Association meeting Feb. 13. While the LPA may recommend approval, the project must go before the town council twice before it gets an official vote.
“It was a playoff win,” he said. “We’ve got another play off coming up, and then the super bowl.”
EITA meeting attendees were already looking ahead: one man asked what TPI’s timeline could be, saying he was concerned with a negative impact of more construction on Estero Boulevard.
“If things go as we hope, we could be under construction in 12 to 18 months,” Flagg said. “Our general contractor does estimate construction will take 24 months.”
He reminded the audience that there are still at least two meetings left before the project would be approved, but said if construction began this time next year, the resort could be open in 2021.
The EITA meeting occurred just a few hours after the LPA meeting concluded – the LPA board spent seven hours taking public comment and discussing aspects of the rezoning application between staff and the applicant.
Two reports – what happened?
The 5-2 vote to approve came after some LPA members shredded town staff for providing a “supplemental” report just a week prior to the Tuesday meeting, contradicting some of the information provided by town consultant Bill Spikowski in an extensive application review submitted several weeks ago.
“Did you just wake up a week before the meeting and decide it’s wrong?” Jane Plumber, LPA member, said. “I have a hard time, that the town hired someone and is now fighting their own consultant. I’m just wondering how that a week before, we decided to put this report together.”
Town Council hired on Spikowski as a consultant to the project, paying him to review the proposed development and cross-reference the Land Development Code and the Comprehensive Plan. Spikowski can often be called the “father” of the town’s LDC, as he helped to write it. After Principal Planner Matt Noble resigned, Spikowski said he was asked to prepare a staff report.
Two weeks ago, Spikowski provided an 85-page analysis of the TPI proposal, giving the town governing bodies different options for approval, approval with amendments or denial. Town staff comments were a part of his review, he said.
“My report was developed with a lot of review with town staff,” he said. “Since then, town staff issued a staff report. I thought there would only be one, that’s why there’s some confusion.”
Town staff submitted the supplemental report last week, and it contained some glaring contrasts to Spikowksi’s review.
For example, Spikowski found that based on his calculations of parking requirements per the LDC, TPI was short 5 spaces, need a total of 371 spaces. The staff report, which was reported Feb. 1 but was not available online until the following Feb. 7, said the development needed 848 spaces, which did not include employee parking.
Community Development Director Jason Green calculated the resort parking without including discounts it could get for its location in the commercial downtown core and also counted uses within the resort – such as the proposed restaurant and bar within the hotel – for needed parking.
However, the facilities contained within the resort and not open to the public can be considered accessory uses, meaning no additional parking is necessary- and LPA member and former mayor Dan Hughes thought that’s how it should be done.
“Was that done at the Lighthouse? DiamondHead?” Hughes said, referencing two nearby resorts with their own bars and restaurants. “I was instrumental in writing the code, and I don’t agree with you.”
TPI Hospitality wants to build a resort, beach club and stand-alone restaurant. Within the resort there will also be an enclosed restaurant and bar for guests, and a restaurant and bar for the beach club.
The beach club is open to the public to purchase entry, but is also an amenity of the resort guests to use.
This is in part where other differences of Green’s calculation comes in. Green’s report suggests that since there are two uses present, parking must be accounted for for both the resort and the beach club – even though resort guests will likely walk across the pedestrian bridge, not get their car to drive across the street to the beach club. Although the applicant has said it will limit public access to 225 tickets to the facility, which can host 950 people, there’s no way for the town to enforce how many members of the public are going in. The town could risk approving something without sufficient parking.
Plummer referenced the many establishments on the beach that already don’t have parking, such as the Salty Crab, saying most people will park and walk to where they want to go anyway.
Spikowski factored in the accessory aspect of the beach club, adding just parking that would count toward the paying public. He also included a parking discount that can be granted to developments in the downtown area that reflects the town’s “park once” goal in the comprehensive plan, which brought him closer to the applicant’s number than the staff number.”
The contrasts between Spikowski’s review and the town staff report had other LPA members disconcerted, too.
TPI provided a response to the staff review and sent to the LPA on Monday, alleging that the staff report brought up issues that had never been mentioned to the applicant since the project was submitted in March 2017, a troubling point to Hughes.
“The applicant alleges there are things in the supplemental part never raised by staff. This is after one year of deliberations,” he said. “Lastly, conflicts with Spikowski’s report. Now, this puts us in a difficult position. We’re getting two staff reports which in some issues conflict. That’s not really fair or appropriate.”
Green has worked for the town since September 2017. After the meeting, Green said the issues brought up, such as height, density, traffic and parking, have all been had in conversation with TPI. He said his report was compiled last week after he received Spikowski’s report, which took time to review. Hughes said he knows Spikowski, and worked with him for two years with the town comp plan, six years with the LDC and knows he has 50 years of municipal law experience.
“He’s one of the finest planners,” Hughes said. “His report said there is not conflict with the comp plan.”
A rezoning – not a comprehensive plan amendment
TPI’s application is for a rezoning to consolidate the three parcels that make up the project under one zoning category, Commercial Planned Development, with deviations from the Land Development Code. Under the LDC, a developer is allowed to ask for a deviation. The application on the table right now does not include an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan; Spikowski has said the application is compliant with the Comprehensive Plan.
Town Manager Roger Hernstadt said after town council reviews the project, the council members may decide if the project would need a comprehensive plan amendment to be built. But right now, what’s on the table is a rezoning request.
“It’s a little more complex than the average rezoning,” he said.
Hernstadt said Green’s report was generated to make sure the LPA had “all the relevant information” it needed, and staff didn’t feel Spikowski’s analysis of the parking requirements reflected the LDC – a point Hernstadt wanted on the record.
Chairman Hank Zuba said he felt skeptical about the supplemental staff report. He moved to approve the application with the four requested deviations and the 13 conditions as recommended by Spikowski’s report, and discarded the staff report from mention.
Lorrie Wolf and Dan Hendrickson voted no to recommend approval.
Although Scott Safford voted yes, both he and Hendrickson said the LPA needed to discuss more publicly their thoughts on the “asks” of the developer and the conditions brought forward by Spikowski.
Hendrickson said he was concerned about the way density was calculated, increasing the ratio to allow more.
“I’m concerned we’ll open up a can we can’t close,” he said.
Taking sides
Council Chambers were filled to fire code capacity; staff set up a tent and a screen outside for overflow public to watch the meeting in real time. Approximately 17 speakers stood up for public comment.
Several of those speaking in opposition to the project came in the same t-shirts which said “size matters,” a logo being used by The Voice of FMB, which “supports RE-development, not OVER-development.”
“I don’t think this fits into our beach,” said Ralph Hickey, who spoke while wearing one of these shirts. “This is too big. I don’t think it would work.”
Several of its members are other island hoteliers – most which spoke in favor of something new being built, just something within the town code.
Bob Boykin of the Pink Shell said the resort’s proposed location is “crying” for something exciting to go there, but the development was big and “the comp plan hasn’t changed.”
Doug Speirn-Smith of Matanzas Inn, also a member of The Voice, said he believed the TPI project required a “rewrite” of the code.
“The LPA and council needs to be a defender of the code,” he said. “You end up with a mass and a scale that’s urban, not town.”
Tom and Annie Babcock sat on Torgerson’s focus group when he decided to scale down the Grand Resorts idea. Both spoke at the meeting. Tom said he did not believe the proposal complied with the comprehensive plan, and it could lead to both a precedent and a legal challenge from future developers. Annie said the town needed to be sure the public benefits justified the approval that would increase density and height.
“The codes were written to control and limit,” she said. “It’s your job to preserve the community for years to come.”
Jay Light, also a member of the focus group, also spoke.
“I was one of its most vocal critics to one of its biggest supporters,” he said. “There’s a difference of opinion (with Babcock).”
John Richard, a Crescent Street resident and property owner, also spoke up in favor of what could be his neighbor.
“Bill Spikowski is the father of our code. What a great opportunity it was to have a report on this project, fair and unbiased,” he said. “When I walk out my front door, I’ll see TPI. It’s a good project.”
Andrea Carriere, owner of the Silver Sands Resort, spoke in support “110 percent” of a project that would almost be her next-door neighbor.
She said when Tom Torgerson made his first pitch with the scrapped Grand Resorts plan, she pointed out all the reasons he couldn’t do it in the LDC. When he revised it to the first version of Times Square Resort, she pointed out those issues again, she said. With this third TPI-FMB revision, she’s supportive.
“The third plan, it’s perfect,” she said. “Please let me have a better view of my neighborhood. He’s spent a lot of time, effort and money and talking to the town and town people about what you want.”
With the LPA’s recommendation, the plan must go before Town Council for two public hearings. A date for the first hearing has not been set.