Swamp owner looks to transfer rights
To the editor:
I received a letter a few days ago from the owner of the mangrove swamp at the bay end of Chapel and Mango Streets. In it, he urges nearby property owners to support a request he is making to the town’s Local Planning Agency. The posting on the property says he wants “to amend the Fort Myers Beach Comprehensive Plan to create a TDR (Transfer of Development Rights) Sending Area Overlay and apply same to applicant’s property consisting of 40 platted residential lots of record.”
Huh?
A bit of research revealed that he wants to sell the rights to build on that property to another property on the beach, and in return, he will deed the swamp to the Town “in its present state.”
The town staff is recommending that the deal be approved. Apparently, the owner has lobbied individual LPA and council members about the issue, which I suppose he has a right to do. Ultimately, the deal will have to be approved or rejected by the Town Council.
This is a conundrum. I would like nothing more than to see the town own the swamp (and keep it pristine) because I’ve lost track of the number of times the owner has returned with yet another scheme to turn an investment of less than $200K into a potential profit of millions.
The facts are that the land was platted into 40 lots in 1919. Even then it was labeled a “mangrove marsh.”
Decades later, in 1984, the Florida Legislature enacted its first mangrove protection statutes, making it impossible for the “mangrove marsh” to be developed.
The owner purchased it in 2002, 18 years after that legislation, for a grand total of $173,367. That’s supposedly 40 lots for less than $200K. In 2002, when the real-estate bubble was still growing, a single average building lot on the beach was worth between $79 and $180K. A reasonable person can only conclude that the owner knew he had bought lots that couldn’t be developed, but hoped someday down the road to get the rules changed, which is precisely what this latest request is attempting to do.
Last August, the LPA ruled, in a request from the owner for a Minimum Use Determination, that there was only one lot of the 40 whose elevation and vegetation could be built upon.
There’s a huge question here: Does the owner, in fact, own anything beyond the development rights to one lot to sell? I don’t think he does. Creating an amendment to the Comp Plan that permits someone to transfer development rights he doesn’t own just doesn’t pass the smell test.
I was assured by Josh Overmyer, the town’s planning coordinator, who thinks this deal is good for the town, that there was only one place on the island, the Carousel Inn, where this transfer of rights would work. Apparently, the Carousel owners are wanting to expand and the whole deal for deeding the swamp to the town is contingent on approving that expansion, too. Even with that assurance, this whole issue sounds like a slippery slope that I find frightening for its potential for future abuse.
As I said, it is a conundrum. The Chapel Street property-owner part of me screams, “Make the damned deal and be done with it.” The other part of me that believes people should not profit by usurping rights they’re not entitled to, leads me to repeat a statement made several months ago by Councilman Dan Andre, “The gentleman bought a swamp. He owns a swamp.”
Jay Light
Fort Myers Beach