Nancy Meuse liked what she saw in the Key West-style house at 111 Fifth Ave. N. in St. Petersburg.It was within walking distance of Beach Drive, Straub Park, the Vinoy and Central Avenue. From the sidewalk, Meuse could look down the road and see the sun glistening off Tampa Bay. The downtown house, built in 1910, was perfect for the Philadelphia transplant's new bed and breakfast.
But the same area caught the attention of architect and developer Tim Clemmons. His company purchased a dilapidated hotel on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Second Street. Then Clemmons announced plans to build a 16-unit condominium called Fifth Avenue Lofts.
That has pitted Meuse and her neighbors against a well-known developer and community activist. They claim Clemmons' proposed modernist-style building will destroy the character and charm of the neighborhood originally developed in the early 20th Century.
"It is one of the most unattractive buildings I've ever seen," Meuse said of the architectural renderings for Fifth Avenue Lofts.
Meanwhile, Clemmons maintains that his project has received more scrutiny than larger developments, including BayWalk. In fact, the City Council, acting as the Community Redevelopment Agency, held a public hearing last year to offer residents an opportunity to comment on Fifth Avenue Lofts. That, according to city officials, was unprecedented for an individual development.
"This has received more public comment than any other project in the city," said Clemmons, a historic preservationist who recently helped to found a new civic group called FOUR (Friends of Urban Renewal) St. Pete, which advocates pedestrian-friendly downtown growth and redevelopment of Albert Whitted Municipal Airport.
In the early 1990s, Clemmons headed a group called Save Our St. Petersburg, which battled Bay Plaza Cos. in an effort to save the Soreno Hotel on Beach Drive. Clemmons' previous projects include The Arts Center and Straub Court.
Despite objections from neighbors, the CRA sided with Clemmons in May 2001 and approved Fifth Avenue Lofts. Sally Ann Lawson, who lives across the street from the proposed site, and Helena Murphy, who lives adjacent to it, then requested the courts review the CRA decision. Lawson and Murphy say the proposed project violates a city intown redevelopment plan dating back to the 1980s.
"[T]he proposed development facades nearly fill the north and west boundaries of the property, which creates a massive 'block' of a building while adjacent residences are relatively small, set apart from each other and surrounded by landscape," architect John T. Parks testified for Lawson and Murphy. "The mass and scale of these two disparate building types are completely opposite and not compatible."
Indeed, Fifth Avenue Lofts would bring marked change to the area. The plans show a five-story building accented on each side by balconies and set above a parking garage and two units of retail space. It would have 19 parking spaces, plus some additional elevated spaces, in an area already choked with automobiles.
"It's out of character with the neighborhood. It's not pleasing to the eye," said Laura Green, who doesn't live on Fifth Avenue, at the CRA hearing.
City Council and CRA member Virginia Littrell agreed that Fifth Avenue Lofts would not match the neighborhood. But because the proposed development would not violate any laws or zoning regulations, she voted to approve the project.
Bob Jeffrey, the city's manager of urban design and historic preservation, said Meuse and her neighbors should learn to accept such developments if they want to live downtown. The properties they own have become valuable in part due to zoning ordinances that allow for higher-density residences than in surrounding neighborhoods. What's more, said Jeffrey, because the Fifth Avenue Lofts site is not in an historic district, the development needs only to meet zoning regulations.
For developers to make downtown investments worthwhile, they must build high-density projects. "It is in many ways unreasonable to say you should build a single-family house or only three units," said Jeffrey, who worked with Clemmons and others on Vision 2020, the city's recently adopted plan for the next two decades.
St. Petersburg Times attorney George Rahdert, who is also a downtown property owner and counsel for Clemmons' Loftsville Inc., added that the project already has helped to clean up the neighborhood. "My clients have knocked down one of the most notorious flophouses in St. Petersburg," Rahdert said of the hotel that formerly occupied the corner.
Clemmons is replacing the flophouse with a monstrosity, according to Lawson. "We're not telling Tim to build a bungalow in our neighborhood, but we don't want The Pier there, either," Lawson said at a CRA hearing last year.
Until recently, the lawsuit had halted groundbreaking at Fifth Avenue Lofts. Rather than begin construction before the court decision, Loftsville instead started building Charles Court, a 19-unit townhouse project near the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg.
Had the company gone forward immediately with Fifth Avenue Lofts and the court reversed the CRA decision, Loftsville may have had to demolish the project. In Martin County, developers lost $3.3-million when a Pinecrest Lakes resident filed suit against their company for building a luxury apartment building next to her single-family home. After the court ruled that the apartments violated Martin County's comprehensive plan, the developers were forced to tear down the project.
Loftsville was more fortunate. A state circuit judge threw out the Fifth Avenue Lofts lawsuit. In September, an appellate court reaffirmed that ruling without comment. Lawson chose not to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. Rahdert has filed to recover legal fees for Loftsville.
The construction road now appears clear for Fifth Avenue Lofts. Once Loftsville completes Charles Court, the company will finally break ground along Fifth Avenue, said Clemmons. "That would be at least a year away," he added.
Land speculators, following a national trend of attempting to turn profits on Main Street as Wall Street languishes, have already converged on the 100 block of Fifth Avenue North. In the last three months, four properties have changed hands, altering the dynamic of the neighborhood and causing Lawson to reconsider her wish to live out the rest of her days in her downtown St. Petersburg house.
"I believe in justice, but I don't want to spend my whole life fighting these people," said Lawson. "I almost wish the drug dealers were back. At least they kept a low profile."
Contact Staff Writer Trevor Aaronson at 813-248-8888, ext. 134, or trevor.aaronson@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2002.