Only You Can Stop Long Bar Pointe

On Thursday, the Manatee County Commission will decide whether to approve a 2,900 unit development on one of our last barren swaths of land on Sarasota Bay. The planned development raises many legitimate concerns and requires several concessions in order to be developed as proposed. Nevertheless, the board is likely to rubber stamp the project and force citizens to accept the resulting impacts É unless you stop them.

The controversial development, named Aqua by the Bay, is the latest project by politically-connected developer Carlos Beruff. Beruff is heavily invested in determining who sits on the BOCC and has enjoyed very good returns on that investment by way of such approvals. In the rare instances when he hasn’t gotten what he’s wanted, Beruff has been quick to drag the county into expensive legal battles that seem to have the desired effect of having them think twice in the future (though the county won a rare victory against Beruff in defending their rules on coastal development in a recent case).

Long Bar Pointe has been, by far, the most controversial project the Medallion Homes CEO has undertaken and arguably the most opposed development in Manatee County history. When it first came before the BOCC in 2013, the meeting had to be moved to the convention center, where more than 1,200 people showed up to oppose the project on the grounds that it would destroy an abundance of environmental resources, while the density and ensuing traffic would create safety issues in the form of hurricane evacuation, all of which would negatively impact the quality of life of surrounding residents. Thousands more protested via petition.

Despite such opposition, Beruff got most of what he wanted and then went to court in an attempt to get the rest. He’s cleared land he didn’t own (later purchasing the remaining lots of an adjoining development that had been impacted) and used a dubious agricultural-use loophole to circumvent the approval process in order to start impacting the land before all permits were in place. In short, his method seems to be pushing the development through at all costs and worrying about the consequences afterward, probably assuming there won’t be any.

Aqua by the Bay presents several big problems any and all of which can be used by the BOCC to deny the application outright on Thursday. The dense development will put thousands of additional cars on roadways that are not designed to support such intense use, which will impact an already troublesome traffic problem far beyond the immediate area as all of those new residents access the beaches, downtown and head toward the interstate.

There’s also the height issue. The current plan would allow for heights of up to ten stories from grade, which would be about 150 feet–approximately the size of the two large towers at Riviera Dunes in Palmetto on the north side of the Manatee River. Beruff plans to build 24 of these massive structures. This not only violates the county’s rule on coastal height (which is limited to 35 feet without a special finding for compatibility) but grossly distorts the vistas of the bay’s shoreline. Eco and fishing tourists, along with residents on Longboat Key and Tidy Island, all of whom currently look at a natural vista, will instead see something for which there is no local example to compare, as even downtown Sarasota does not have 24 buildings of such height visible in its skyline. A proposed seawall would also threaten Tidy with flooding as it pushes water laterally toward their roads and homes.

As proposed, the development would simply wreak havoc on coastal wetlands, a full 13 acres of which would be directly impacted. A proposed lagoon would be dug at the back of the wetlands, disregarding the county’s rules requiring 50 foot buffer areas, without abutting solid land, making them less effective and more vulnerable to erosion. This particular portion of the bay is often referred to as "the kitchen" because so many of the small feeder fish in the food chain develop along the mangroves, but the deep lagoon behind them would invite larger predators. The impact of this imbalance on our fisheries would be felt all the way out to the Gulf of Mexico and negatively affect both the commercial and sport fishing industries.

Clearly, there is every reason for the BOCC to deny the general development plan Beruff is submitting. History, however, suggests they will not–not unless you cause them to think differently. At the end of the day, it has simply proven more dangerous for elected politicians to deny Beruff than to deny the will of the people. Beruff has made office holders who oppose him pay a dear price, while voters have failed to enact similar costs on those who do his bidding, even when it’s clearly not in the best interest of the people who should be their real constituents.

For this power, Beruff has been rewarded handsomely. Remember, it’s not just at the BOCC that he’s demonstrated the juice to secure whatever approval he wants. That same influence has been exerted with the state–he’s one of Governor Scott’s closest political allies–and with Swiftmud (the regional water management board he recently chaired), from whom he secured a notice to approve his conceptual plan in the wee hours of the evening before the Manatee Planning Commission would narrowly vote to recommended this application for approval on April 13. Look, we already have Swiftmud's approval ...

Remember, the Long Bar Pointe project was almost in bankruptcy before Beruff came in as the managing partner. It was dead in the water until someone came along and essentially said, Don’t worry about the rules and restrictions, I can get around those. It may not be feasible as currently zoned or while following the county’s rules, but not everyone has to abide by such limitations. Anyone who’s familiar with development in Manatee County would know this to be the case, once more demonstrating how effectively Beruff’s investments have served him, allowing him to all but spin money out of thin air by way of developing land in manners that are not reflected in values that consider such limitations.