October 30, 2020
Collier County Planning Commission
Board of County Commissioners
Re: Proposed One Naples project
Dear Commission and Commissioners:
The Pelican Bay Foundation (Foundation) recognizes and values the importance of redevelopment to maintain property values and the quality of life in our community. We appreciate both the multiple and complex considerations of the criteria provided for in the land development code, the comprehensive plan amendments, the rezoning requests, etc., and, further, respect the concerns, objections, or support, of various community interest groups, individuals, or businesses.
The Foundation expressly neither supports nor opposes the proposed One Naples project. In fact, we appreciate the open communication with which Stock Development has approached this proposed project. However, because properties within Pelican Bay have been cited as compatibility justifications for the One Naples project, the Foundation believes it has an obligation to clarify how Pelican Bay differs from the area to the north of Vanderbilt Drive since it is not part of Pelican Bay.
Pelican Bay was created years ago as a comprehensive, well-planned, mixed-use Planned Unit Development, and it is vastly different from the neighborhoods to our south, north, and east. The planning, the PUD regulations and the applicable private declarations and covenants that govern Pelican Bay and have controlled its development include a myriad of factors, controls, constraints and planning techniques to regulate and manage development. The allowance of high-rise construction and mixed-use development are regulated and controlled by multiple different and important factors and controls.
To compare only height in Pelican Bay to other areas, without also considering the overall planning and multiple other constraints that apply to Pelican Bay, seems like selective cherry picking. It is not an apt comparison. For example, the maximum height of principal structures within the Pelican Bay PUD is two hundred (200) feet above finished grade, provided that minimum yards must be maintained, from tract or development parcel lines, right-of-way lines and/or the edge of the gutter of a private road, of fifty (50) feet or one-half (1/2) the height of the structure, whichever is greater.
Simply stated, Pelican Bay is a well-planned, well-organized and well-run large-scale development that should not be compared or used in a comparative analysis to justify any position (for or against) relative to development outside of its jurisdictional boundaries unless the entire Pelican Bay regulatory scheme of controls and constraints are similarly included.
We wish you well in your deliberations of the value and appropriateness of the proposed One Naples project for the Vanderbilt Beach neighborhood.
Sincerely,
Jim Hoppensteadt
President / COO
Pelican Bay Foundation
6251 Pelican Bay Blvd.
Naples, FL 34108
239-260-8460 direct
239-597-6927 fax
