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Dear Pelican Bay Property Owners and Friends, Below is Naples Daily News reporter, Laura Layden’s article about the March 1st One Naples hearings and vote along with some video clips from NBC News. We are very unhappy with the result and particularly our very own District 2 Commissioner Andy Solis who completely ignored the will of his constituents. On our County wide survey with 68% of respondents being from District 2, Commissioner Solis’ District, a mire 1.6 % voted in favor of the project while 92.3% said to deny it. 6.1% had no opinion. It is unconscionable for Commissioner Solis to ignore completely by a survey margin of 57.6875 to 1 the will of the people in his District in favor of a developer who has no agenda beyond hauling a load of money out of here at our expense and apparently will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve this goal. Government does not always know best, and it certainly did not on Monday. Remember to thank Buzz Victor and his team SaveVanderbiltBeach who organized, funded and managed this effort for his dedication on our behalf and the positive results that were obtained when compared to the first rendering of One Naples. In addition, please reach out and thank Commissioner Penny Taylor for representing the will of the people. Her diligence, compassion and sensitivity to the ‘true will’ of the people are the standards of a truly professional public servant! Mark E. English, President for your Friends at the Pelican Bay Property Owners Association Collier County officials approve One Naples after surprise revisions Laura Layden Naples Daily News Published 7:27 a.m. ET Mar. 1, 2021 | Updated 4:44 p.m. Mar. 2, 2021 After last-minute revisions, Collier County commissioners approved Stock Development’s controversial plans for One Naples, one block from Vanderbilt Beach. At a marathon meeting Monday, commissioners voted 4-1 on each of the developer’s four requests — most importantly a rezoning and small-scale growth plan amendment. One by one, Commissioner Bill McDaniel motioned to approve the proposals, with a second coming from Andy Solis, who represents the North Naples district where the mostly residential, resort-style luxury project will go. After thinking long and hard about the multimillion-dollar project, Solis said it made much more sense than the only other alternative offered up by the local developer, a purely commercial project that could be built by right and similar to a mini-Mercato. “Having this developed intensely as a commercial property, I think would fundamentally change the neighborhood,” he said, and not in a good way, bringing more unwanted traffic and congestion to an already constrained area of the county. He asked rhetorically how many places existed where residents or visitors could dine and drink on the water and then walk to the beach in Collier County. “Maybe three,” he said. “Maybe. So it would be an attractor.” McDaniel, along with commissioners Burt Saunders and Rick LoCastro, all agreed the residential project would fit into the neighborhood much better. Commission chairwoman Penny Taylor voted no on each of the proposals, raising concerns about the eleventh-hour changes. Several times during the hearing, Taylor suggested continuing the meeting, or delaying a vote, to allow county staff, the public — and even planning commissioners — time to digest the series of alterations to the development proposal, which included further reductions in the height of the twin high-rise residential towers. “I think it’s prudent for all parties to pause and assess the development. It needs to be thought out,” Taylor insisted before the board’s final decisions came on the project. Her fellow commissioners wanted to press on with the hearing and the votes, keeping the momentum going. “This is the most controversial and probably one of the most important issues we’ve had before us in many, many years and not to … continue this, I think is wrong,” Taylor said in explaining her decision not to support the project as proposed. The meeting ran for nearly 12 hours, with a few breaks here and there, often for only 15 minutes or so. A “bad standard” Taylor was clearly upset by the outcome, saying the favorable votes by the rest of the commissioners set a bad standard because they’d heard an overwhelming amount of opposition from area residents, yet they’d found the development compatible with the neighborhood. She sided with the opposition, describing the project as too intense, even with the latest modifications. In what she described as her final word, Taylor said she hoped her colleagues understood they were approving a project that would significantly increase density in an area of the county where the infrastructure couldn’t be improved or expanded. She insisted there could be a better version worked out in time. After the approval, Saunders said moving ahead with the hearing and the final votes on One Naples were “the right decision,” however. He thanked Taylor for steering and moving the meeting along. “Well, I was outvoted,” she said. At the hearing, commissioners also approved giving up parts of county-owned right-of-way, to allow for the reconfiguration of a public road running through One Naples, and gave a thumbs up to a landscaping maintenance agreement for developer improvements on government-owned property adjacent to the project, including brick pavers, lighting and landscaping, which Stock will pay for and install. Stock Development and its team of experts kicked off the meeting, outlining a handful of changes during a roughly two-hour presentation. That included plans to acquire the adjacent DaRuMa property, which would become additional open space for residents of One Naples with the demolition of the Japanese restaurant. With the additional land, the new community — at the corner of Vanderbilt Beach Road and Gulf Shore Drive — would encompass more than six acres. It would include a mostly-private marina, with a small store and fueling stations, which would be open to all boaters. There would also be a new coffee shop and deli, which would serve residents, as well as outsiders. A scramble The many tweaks to the project left county zoning and planning officials — and opponents — scrambling a bit to react. After Anita Jenkins, the county’s planning and zoning director, said commissioners might be confused by staff’s presentation because of the project’s sudden changes, the board decided to break early for lunch to give planners a chance to review and digest the new development proposal — and to update their recommendations. The developer made a handful of revisions at the hearing including: Reducing the number of total residences to 140 from 172Cutting the size of its high-rise towers to 12 stories from 14, including two levels of parking, Decreasing the zoned height of its mid-rise residential buildings to 55 feet from 65Increasing the setback of the parking structure supporting the towers to 25 feet from 15Limiting the number of boat slips to 75 from 99With the changes, the actual height of the two towers dropped to 165 feet from 186. County staff recommended approval of the previous plan, but not without changes. Many of the alterations the developer committed to make during the hearing were in direct answer to staff’s concerns about the density and intensity of the project, and its visual impact on the neighborhood. After reviewing the changes to the project on the fly, county zoning and planning officials said they were supportive, finding them of benefit to the neighborhood and promising to ensure that the developer’s commitments are captured in the formal documents approved by commissioners. In a statement after winning the county’s approval of his long-desired project, Brian Stock, an owner and CEO of Stock Development, said he appreciated the county staff’s — and county commissioners’ — “dedication in listening to both sides.” “We believe they made the right decision in approving the final plan, which responded to the concerns of our neighbors by significantly reducing the height and density and providing increased setbacks, while generating only a fraction of the traffic that a commercial development would bring to the location,” he said. “Also, Stock’s commitment to provide $1.75 million in transportation improvements will benefit the entire community,” the developer added. “We look forward to forging ahead and working with the county staff to make One Naples a first-class development that makes all Neapolitans proud.” The other side Experts hired by the opponents made detailed presentations of their own, touching on everything from traffic to compatibility in the neighborhood. Dozens of opponents also spoke their mind at the hearing, in person and via Zoom, talking for up to three minutes each, raising myriad issues from how the project could negatively impact traffic, property values and the environment to how it could ruin sight lines and quality of life, including the beach experience, especially for its closest neighbors. Several of the objectors suggested One Naples would create a canyon-like effect and set a bad precedent for future developers, making the neighborhood look more like a Miami or Miami Beach. Some accused Stock of trying to mask the impact of the project by showing how it would look at a distance, or overhead, not up close from the street, in his renderings. Naples land use attorney Rich Yovanovich, who represents the developer, told commissioners that opponents, including Save Vanderbilt Beach, had spread misinformation about the project and he and the rest of the team planned to offer only “the facts” in their presentation to the board. One of those facts? The revised project would only generate an additional 45 trips during the peak p.m., or evening rush-hour, commute, while the commercial alternative — stretching 100,000 square feet — would create 404, or about nine times as much traffic, Yovanovich said. The commercial project, he said, would be viable, despite opponents’ arguments to the contrary. He offered up a plan that would include six restaurants, with 575 parking spaces, which was sure to create a dining destination. Yovanovich also told commissioners the modified project would have the lowest density — at less than 23 units per acre — compared to some of the nearest residential developments, including Regatta, which also has a couple of high-rise towers that stretch 12 stories tall. Further, he stated the only reason the property still had the C-3 commercial zoning on it was because of the long-standing businesses that operated there, as the county now encourages such intense development to be located in so-called activity centers, or nodes, and away from primarily residential or tourist-driven areas. Even though most speakers opposed the project, it garnered support from some of its closest neighbors, including the homeowner associations representing Barefoot Pelican and Vanderbilt Palms and the owners of Buzz’s Lighthouse Restaurant & Inn. While the boards representing Barefoot Pelican and Vanderbilt Palms endorsed the development, with promises from the developer to spiff up their communities, some individual residents still opposed it. Several opponents urged commissioners to put off their decision on One Naples for another day, due to all the unforeseen changes, which they saw as significant. After the vote In an email after the hearing, North Naples resident Guy Kellam said he felt extremely disappointed that none of the other commissioners supported Taylor’s efforts to postpone a decision, so that all of the new information could be properly vetted by all of the stakeholders. “If this is how the Collier County board continues to make decisions on long-term issues, you are doing a disservice to us all,” he said. Buzz Victor, founder of Save Vanderbilt Beach, said he still felt the group’s relentless and well-organized efforts against the project paid off, forcing Stock to downsize his project to make it more palatable, including reducing the height of any high-rise from 21 to 12 stories. “I’m not embarrassed about the job we did,” he said. “I think we did a great job. I think it would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t been there and been part of it. So I can’t feel bad about it.” However, Victor questioned how a supermajority of commissioners could have still voted for the development, when his group delivered 2,137 voices against it through a countywide survey, who all wanted it denied in favor of a more “reasonable development.” Victor praised Taylor and scorned Solis. “The answer now lies in the hands of the voters,” Victor said. “If this is the way we want the county to go, then we keep electing these kinds of officials. And if we want to see this change, then it’s our ability to change it, by voting for others — by voting for people who express the intent to support responsible growth throughout Collier County.” Betty Pircio, a resident of Barefoot Pelican and a board member for Save Vanderbilt Beach, who fought hard against the project every step of the way, echoed many of Victor’s thoughts, saying the group “achieved some of what we wanted.” One of her big sticking points has been building setbacks. While the developer agreed to increase some of them, others remain inadequate, Pircio said, especially the ones that would leave little, if any, space between the development and the waterfront. “The commissioners are supposed to be protecting the quality of life and I believe that the four commissioners were abysmal in their responsibilities towards the residents and the neighborhood of Vanderbilt Beach,” she said. The Pelican Bay Property Owners Association Annual Member Meeting via Zoom Thursday, MARCH 11th, 2021 3:00PM Watch for upcoming details and plan to join us! |
Special Foundation Board Meeting-Resiliency
An Informed Community Makes A Better Community Important Notice… We Need You!Special Foundation Board Meeting This Friday, November 15, 2:30 p.m.at the Community Center & via Zoom You won’t want to miss this special meeting Read more…
