Courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel.
Some residents want to hold a referendum on whether to ease height restrictions.
Ludmilla Lelis | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted August 22, 2006
ORMOND BEACH — One beachfront lot has been razed to its sandy foundation. A vacant motel sits on another lot. Two other motels operate, though their days are numbered, too.
Those four pieces of prime oceanfront real estate are poised for redevelopment, but the plans sit waiting as this city of 40,000 debates the shape of its future skyline.
Will the buildings rise to the current height limit of 75 feet, or seven stories? Or can those buildings be taller in exchange for better beachfront access for the public?
That’s the underlying question that awaits a judge’s ruling and the ballot measure that could literally redefine the beachfront.
Large-scale renovation of the Ormond beachside wouldn’t have been possible before the 2004 tropical-storm season. Then hurricanes Frances and Jeanne blew through Florida, tearing apart many of the decades-old, mom-and-pop motels that persisted in Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach.
Some people worried that the trend of new high-rise condominiums in Daytona Beach could spread to Ormond. To prevent that, 3,415 city residents petitioned for a referendum to put a 75-foot, or 7-story, building-height limit in the city charter.
A circuit judge is expected to rule soon on whether that referendum may be placed on the November ballot.
“We are a suburban, bedroom community of low-rise buildings,” said Jeff Boyle, a former city commissioner who chairs the petition drive, dubbed CANDO, or Citizens and Neighbors Devoted to Ormond.
“Once one of those tall buildings comes in, we become just another high-rise community,” Boyle said. “You lose the character of the city.”
Many beachfront communities have grappled with that dilemma, whether smaller historic structures should give way to the condo canyons of South Florida, said Steffen Schmidt, a political-science professor affiliated with Nova Southeastern University who tracks coastal policy.
“With coastal property exploding in value, it has been happening so regularly that it’s almost like a formula,” said Schmidt. “More often than not, the victory always comes in favor of progress, or change for the bigger, newer buildings.”
Ormond Beach, once the winter home of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller Sr., has only a handful of beachside buildings that exceed the 75-foot height limit. The tallest one, a condominium standing 17 stories, sparked a citizen movement more than 20 years ago to limit building heights in the city’s comprehensive plan.
That limit is still there, though the current system could allow a building up to 90 feet under special circumstances that require the builder to clear other government hurdles.
Ormond Beach Mayor Fred Costello then posed a question to Bray & Gillespie, the hoteliers who bought many of the hurricane-damaged properties for potential redevelopment. The company currently holds more than a quarter of the city’s beachfront south of Granada Boulevard.
He asked whether the public could gain more beach access through the redevelopment plans. In what he calls a “transfer” of development rights, instead of having a broad, 75-foot building on the entire property, some of that land would be left vacant and the potential stories would be stacked on a narrower building.
The vacant land could become a beachfront park, something that the city lacks. Off-beach parking in Ormond is limited, and the longtime tradition of beach driving has been curtailed by changing beach conditions. Instead of the finer-grained sand that packs into a good driving surface, red sand has regularly washed ashore as another effect of the 2004 hurricanes, making the beach too soft for driving.
Costello points out that the potential change wouldn’t result in greater density, because there already would be a limit to how many hotel rooms or condominium units could be built on the land.
“We have a de-facto private beach,” Costello said. “So I think the underlying question here is do you value open space more than you hate height?
“And I value open space more.”
Doug Kosarek, senior vice president of Ocean Waters Development, Bray & Gillespie’s development arm, previewed what the developer could accomplish with such a trade-off: three public parks, a community center and off-beach parking accessible by a pedestrian bridge over State Road A1A. The company also offered a streetscaping project, a proposal to bury the utility lines, with an eye to improving the city’s appearance.
But the resulting buildings would range from eight stories to a 19-story hotel tower similar to a Ritz-Carlton or other luxury hotel.
“If you gave us the opportunity, we could create a work of art,” Kosarek said. “We don’t feel the issue is about height. It’s about doing it right.”
All along, Kosarek said the company easily could build what is legally allowable now, but that likely would result in the broad seven-story buildings without added public access to the beach.
Still, the potential tradeoff has many discussing the height issue and whether the exchange is worth it.
Boyle, the chairman of the petition drive, doesn’t think Ormond should become a high-rise city. “We’re selling our standards for money,” Boyle said.
However, he said he could live with the change if people in Ormond Beach want it.
“We’re just about having a vote,” Boyle said. “The developer isn’t the bad guy here, but we think that this decision needs to be made by the 28,000 voters of this city.”
This week, a circuit judge will rule on whether that decision may be made in November.
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