City Lets Neal Break Ground on Disputed Project Despite Lack of Compliance

BRADENTON – In the continuing saga of developer Pat Neal's drive to destroy high-quality mangroves on Perico Island in order to develop a four-mansion family compound, contractors for Neal Communities broke ground on Monday, despite the fact that the matter seems far from settled as to whether the four 10,000 square-foot houses can be built as proposed. Nonetheless, the City of Bradenton approved the commencement of work.

Neal, the most prolific developer in the county, is being sued by former Manatee County Commissioner and TBT publisher Joe McClash and a consortium of environmental groups that joined his challenge of the proposed development.

The developer scored his first break when the city officials used an administrative loophole to change the land use map governing the property, thereby avoiding a public hearing process. However, the Army Corps of Engineers then said it didn't like the project as proposed, joining the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in recommending that a permit to fill wetlands at the development site be denied.

Neal also needed a permit from the Southwest Florida Water Management District, a developer-friendly board that quickly issued it. However, the groups requested an Administrative Law Judge's opinion, and in his findings of fact, Judge Bram Canter gave a recommended order that SWFMD not issue the permit.

Despite the ALJ ruling, the SFWMD board, led by fellow Manatee County developer and sometime Neal business partner Carlos Beruff, went against Canter’s recommended order and issued the permit. The groups, which include Sierra Club, F.I.S.H. and Suncoast Waterkeeper, filed an appeal last Friday.

The city says that they have only allowed Neal to begin work on the upland part of the project, where they say there are no wetlands.

In an email response to McClash, City Planning Director Tim Polk cited an email from city engineer Kim Clayback, which said that Public Works staff had authorized work on the upland area based on SWFMD’s acceptance of the jurisdictional line, with the understanding that no excavation is permitted west of the silt fence that the contractor had put up to divide them.

McClash argued that that their environmental expert, Lee Cook, a professional wetland scientist formerly with the ACOE, did determine that there were wetlands in the upland area where ground was broke. The former 22-year county commissioner thinks it might be an issue of it being easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

"The feds still haven’t ruled,“ explained McClash. "Their determination of what is a wetland and what isn’t, is often different from the state’s and if they were to rule in our favor, it would trump the state’s determination. By going in and clearing them out now, (Neal) avoids having an upland issue with the feds later."

McClash also said that there is the matter of buffer areas, in which the current jurisdictional line being recognized by the city doesn’t meet with either city or ACOE rules. He also said that the Site Improvement Plan for the project is void, since it expired in August and cited other problems with the SIP. In a lengthy email response to Polk, filled with the findings of the ACOE and other experts and agencies, he called on the city to issue a stop work order immediately pending the final outcome of the challenge.