The future of Treasure Island was up against the clock and the ladies of Jazzercise on Sept. 19.Four months earlier, the Pinellas County city's commission had asked its municipal zoning board to review proposed regulations that will likely replace the funky bars and sandy roadhouses along Gulf Boulevard with glitzy high-rise hotels.
At the rear of a city hall auditorium where the zoning board was meeting, beneath a clock ticking precariously close to 6 p.m., Jazzercisers had gathered.
Nearby was perched a Jurassic boom box so massive that a turn of the volume past five might threaten the city noise ordinance. The platoon of women, resplendent in flowered tops and stretch pants, aimed disapproving glances toward zoning board Chairwoman Roseanne Petit.
The surreal scene prodded one fellow to snicker and say, "The city can go to hell in a hand basket right now, as long as Jazzercise starts on time."
"Hey Mister," the head Jazzerciser retorted, "I paid for this room!"
Suddenly, in a flurry of motions and votes, it was all over. Petit refused the plea of zoning board member Larry Yost for more time so the panel could actually understand what it was voting on.
"I'm personally not in favor of delaying this any further," said Petit, who owns the quaint Seahorse Cottages, the island's toniest rustic getaway. "My business has suffered. We've beat this thing to death. We are going to vote."
Citizen Gerry Ehly was at the podium, explaining why towering gulf front hotels won't save the city. Ehly was ordered to sit down.
The rushed vote was 9 to 1 to send revised land development regulations, or LDRs, back to the city commission for final approval.
The audience gasped. The gavel fell.
With their city torn between upgrading tourist appeal and serving residents, the confused zoning board members put on the blindfold and pinned the donkey's tail on the sagging tourism teat.
Everybody must get zoned.
Curses rang like the bells of sunset over the tiny barrier island directly west of St. Petersburg, from people watching the government cable channel at home to cult gatherings at the local bars.
The dank auditorium quickly emptied. Like zombies, board members walked methodically through a light rain to their cars, having voted on something none of them ever saw in final format or could even explain.
Yost, the dissenting vote, lingered outside with the naysayers and shook his head. Inside, cowering janitors quickly put away the tables and chairs of government, under the Jazzercisers' stare. One after another, the ladies assumed the position, stretching and reaching for the sky. Big Bertha, the boom box, came on. Five minutes late, but what the hell.
Another Florida beach was on the verge of biting the dust.
Buried TreasureOne day there is a beautiful pristine beach, like the magical 1950s aerial photo hung outside the city manager's office. It depicts Treasure Island as a deserted, Australian pine-swept paradise devoid of humanity, concrete, asphalt or 99-cent hot dog specials.
The next day, hotels and fences block beach views. Concrete covers the archipelago. Dredge-and-filled homelands reach out into virgin shallows like spiny caterpillar tentacles. That scene is dramatically portrayed around the corner from the city manager's office.
It doesn't stop there. Another day dawns with skyscrapers crammed with out-of-towners, like Miami Beach and other locales constantly referenced by Treasure Islanders as the living hells they do not want to emulate.
Yet, it happens anyway. A variance is granted here. A set of rules is changed there. It could be a simple "adjustment" for a rooftop cupola or the addition of seven stories on a high rise.
There are several buildings on Treasure Island taller than the five-story limit imposed more than 20 years ago. Each carries its own sordid tale. Each christened with the promise of pompous city leaders: This will never happen again.
But it keeps happening. And one day there are shadows in the afternoon and the turtles never return.
The ordinance sent by the Treasure Island Planning & Zoning Board to city commissioners contains development incentives described as "the most liberal of any Pinellas beach community," according to the Pinellas Planning Council's Mike Crawford, who assisted city staffers with the plan.
If adopted, developers will be allowed to use density bonuses and other regulatory tricks to build 10-story hotels and pack twice as many people on the precious, wide, white sand beach. It creates a stunning new order for Treasure Island, undeniably catering to a select few wealthy interests.
The benefits to residents, promoted by city officials and business leaders since the scheme was made public in April, are more intangible.
It's all about the voodoo tourist dollar, which the beach chamber of commerce swears can start with a McDonald's cheeseburger or a sandy-ass postcard and get spent six more times before heading back to the mainland.
This is the City, for NowIf the Pinellas gulf communities were patrons of a beach bar, Treasure Island would be the dude with the parrot on his shoulder.
About three miles of Gulf Boulevard barrier island, with several upscale neighborhoods (Isle of Palms, Isle of Capri, Paradise Island) and a pair of cantankerous independent-minded residential neighborhoods (Sunset Beach, Sunshine Beach), Treasure Island is connected to the rest of the planet by three bridges, all slated for major construction soon.
The entire city and its population of 7,404 are within the coastal high-hazard area, where building is not advised.
Randy "Macho Man" Savage lives here. So does Pinellas Sheriff Everett Rice and Tim, the cook at Robbie's Pancake House.
The city is blessed with a beautiful wide beach, is home to numerous millionaires and their mansions, as well as a significant populace of authentic, beer-drinking beached bums. It is charmed with an eclectic amalgamation of cheap shops selling toilet paper and T-shirts, quaint 1950s-era mom-and-pop motels and some of the funkiest bars this side of the Keys.
Treasure Island has never fully embraced the tourist as has hotel-happy St. Pete Beach and Clearwater Beach, nor has it committed to being a residential community like Madeira Beach or Redington Beach. And therein lies the problem. Having it both ways ain't working.
Three hotels and nine small businesses have gone away in the past 18 months.
Condos are occupied an average of only 50 to 70 days a year, according to the Treasure Island Business Association. Beach lodges are filled more than 85 percent of the time — a significant difference in impact on city infrastructure.
"It costs an average of $200 every time a policeman takes a patrol car out on a call," says Isle of Capri resident Ehly. "And where do they go? The hotels! To deal with the transients. More hotel rooms, more police calls, more stress on infrastructure."
The town is stuck square in the middle of a dilemma best articulated by Sunset Beach resident Catherine Rezak at a recent city meeting:
"There is a clear choice between two very different visions of our city. One is the vision of increased tourism, higher hotels, increased density and the survival and growth of businesses that cater to tourism. The other is the vision of a robust residential community, with more limited tourism, that is supported by great businesses that cater to the community's mix."
Hundreds of residents who signed a petition to get an anti-high rise initiative before voters on Nov. 5 don't agree with the first scenario. "Their vision is for Treasure Island to grow and prosper as a community without major new high-rise hotel development," said Rezak.
But City Manager Chuck Coward, City Planner Lynn Rosetti and most of the five-member commission and the zoning board are stuck on preserving "the city's long-term vitality" by exploring business incentives and ignoring the growing call of the populace. "Find a different source of revenue besides ruining our quality of life," resident Chris Hearn tells unblinking commissioners.
Da MayorMayor Leon Atkinson does very little to soothe rampant feelings of resident insecurity. An opponent of open-government laws, Atkinson fought against carrying commission meetings on cable. He stares down citizens who comment at public meetings.
"I vote on what I think is right for the city, not for political gain. The only special interest that has any influence on me is me," says the mayor. "These Sunset Beach people are bringing up turtles, for God's sake."
Using "keep tall buildings off our island" as a battle cry, the loosely organized Concerned Citizens of Treasure Island was born in Sunset Beach. These are obsessed door-knocking, phone-calling, sign-waving, meeting-disrupting citizens who "ain't giving up," says the organization's leader, Mike Daughtry.
More people than have ever voted in a city election signed the Concerned Citizens petition to transfer control over height and density increases from the control of the commission and the zoning board to city voters.
"If the tourists are not here paying our bills, who is going to pay 'em? The petition signers need to keep that in mind," says the mayor. "Don't blame me when their taxes go up."
Government and business leaders have used pocketbook scare tactics to promote increased building heights and density. A tired, old Treasure Island loses its hotels to the ugly wall of five-story condos up and down the beach and barely survives as a tiny canyon town where resident taxes must rise to replace the tourist dollars that have sought cash registers elsewhere.
Tax money from tourists — the 11 percent "bed" tax and Pennies for Pinellas — takes its own voodoo trip, disappearing into county coffers and reappearing in mere fractions disbursed to the cities, none permitted for infrastructure. Property taxes pay the lion's share of city expenses. While residents are assessed at 75 percent to 80 percent of their actual home value, the 64 Treasure Island hotels average only 57 percent assessments.
Read Gerry Ehly's lips. The retired minister has spent much of his summer looking at city cash flows: "If the hotels were assessed properly, then this scare tactic would be moot. Actually, this city is in great shape right now. The city manager says so himself. There is no reason to press the panic button at all."
In most cases, replacing an old hotel with new residential properties means an increase in property taxes, says Ehly.
Naples attorney and planning expert Tim Ferguson represents the town's largest landowner, the Rice family, and 13 other Treasure Island hotel and business owners. The tall, articulate attorney was nicknamed Darth Ferguson by resident activists.
Ferguson's the-sky-is-falling argument is compelling. "The heyday of this city was 1960. Most of the hotel buildings are 40 to 50 years old," says Ferguson. "They have to be destroyed. This is an opportunity for Treasure Island. Give me a little room to work and I can make this city much better."
A tireless negotiator, Ferguson keeps in constant touch with all the players, including city leaders, whom he has unmercifully lobbied for his clients. "I talk to everybody, every single week," he says.
As a mediator, Ferguson has attempted to forge several compromises with the Concerned Citizens, to no avail. With a degree in planning, Ferguson may be the only person in town who can actually read and understand the proposed new regulations.
"People say they want more beach views. The only way to do that is to go up," says Ferguson. "We can work this out without screaming from the back of the room or name calling."
But lawyer and resident Heidi Horak says of Ferguson's approach: "Why does there have to be a trade off? Why not put into place regulations that give more view and better design without giving them five more stories of height?"
Beating Voters to the PunchLater this month, Mayor Atkinson and city commissioners could cast votes on the document that will have more to do with the look, feel and quality of life on Treasure Island than any single proclamation in its history.
"There's a problem with that," says Daughtry, a Sunset Beach resident who sports a black patch over his right eye and keeps a bad attitude toward government focused in his left: "It's called political suicide."
Daughtry is referring to the Nov. 5 referendum that resulted from the Concerned Citizens initiative petition. If the referendum passes, and withstands an expected court challenge, it will be one of the strongest environmental regulations in Florida. Decisions on height and density — the playground of the politician — will go directly to the people.
The stakes are considerable and not just in Treasure Island. Beach communities everywhere will take notice.
"I'll admit it. We were shocked they got the signatures," says Peter Jon Volmar, a local architect who has played a key role in the campaign to liberalize density and height restrictions. "None of the business people out here thought the citizens could pull this off."
Volmar says the citizen group has created a formidable political machine. "It has put some panic into the situation, that's for sure," he says.
Attorney Tim Ferguson wants commissioners to pass the liberal height and density changes before Nov. 5. Echoing pleas from Treasure Island business and hotel associations, Ferguson is quarterbacking an end run around the voters.
"The referendum is not retroactive. We need to do something now to soften the impact of this initiative," said Ferguson, who called it "a disaster for Treasure Island" in a letter to the zoning board. "Its shotgun approach aims at killing anything but residential development on this island."
Scary words, but the mayor says he is more scared of the alternative.
"Today, under the current rules, they can build a wall of five-story condos up and down both sides of Gulf Boulevard," says Atkinson. "Hotel builders come to town and leave when they see our regulations. Tourists are going to go elsewhere. There goes our lifeblood."
Sunset Beach resident Alan Sansotta, who was defeated by Atkinson in the last mayoral election, counters: "The residents are this town's lifeblood. Putting this toolbox in front of these developers is like putting a wounded calf out in front of a pride of lions. There will be a feeding frenzy."
Conflicted Commissioners?City Commissioner Butch Ellsworth, who lives in the Isle of Palms, is a general manager for the Rice family and has firmly supported the height and density increases. "I don't see any reason why we should wait," he says.
Ellsworth's status as a salaried employee of Sid Rice, who stands to gain much from any schemes to increase height and density, has brought stinging charges of conflict of interest from residents.
"Butch once recused himself from voting when a bungee-jumping attraction was proposed for his boss' property," says George Makraurer, a former commissioner who founded a citizen group called the Voter's Watch. "But now, with millions and millions of dollars on the line, he's staying put."
Citizens have complained to Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe and the state Ethics Commission about Ellsworth, the mayor and zoning board members Roseanne Petit and Gary Dion. The latter three own properties in areas slated for zoning boosts. McCabe refused to get involved but the ethics commission has sent an investigator.
Commissioner Barbara Blush, who represents Sunset Beach, has been vocal about her displeasure with the referendum: "I just wish people had taken a deep breath."
Blush was elected in March with 207 of 290 votes. More than 600 voters from her district alone signed the no-tall-buildings petition. She maintains a close friendship with Atkinson, whose election campaign her husband directed.
Efforts to recall Blush from office began this month when she refused to support a resolution to hold off the commission's zoning vote until after the referendum.
"I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't," Blush told her constituents. "I've asked you to hold back and wait. You said you did not trust us. I interpret that to mean you already know how I am going to vote."
The mayor? Go down to the grocery store and talk to the man.
Mayor Atkinson sits at a little table just inside the entrance of Topps Supermarket, the largest commercial business on the island, every Wednesday afternoon to meet constituents. Most of them push carts with dry goods and frozen foods hurriedly to the parking lot.
"These idiots are complaining about something that hasn't happened yet," says Atkinson. "If we pass it, it will be in the best interests of the people, even if the people don't know it."
No CompromiseCommissioner Mary Maloof's attempts to forge a compromise between the warring sides have been ignored by her colleagues. "Mary would like to make everybody happy," says architect Peter Volmar. "That's impossible out here."
Maloof's Paradise Island district includes the site of the first tall building on Treasure Island — the 10-story Paradise Towers built in the early 1960s.
"The citizens were so shocked about that monstrosity that they formed the island's first civic association," said Paradise Island newsletter editor Ruth Bartlett. "They wanted to make sure another building like that was never constructed out here. That's still their priority. Mary Maloof is flying directly against her constituency here."
"Her ass is on the griddle," says Daughtry. "There's some big money out there that want to make Mary the next mayor. And there's a whole bunch of residents who will boot her out of office if she votes for those land development regulations!"
After a visit from two Concerned Citizens leaders, Maloof recently agreed to ask commissioners to delay their vote on the LDRs until the voters speak next month. Siding with Maloof was Commissioner Stephanie Lavino.
"I don't agree with a lot of the wording on that petition, but I feel in my heart, I can not ignore 1,700 people, if not more, who signed that petition," said Lavino.
The commission was 3-2 against a delay and it isn't likely to change.
"That's where the suicide comes in," says Daughtry. "Anyone who votes to head off the referendum and puts LDRs in place that will increase height and density on this island will be facing a life out of public office."
Sansotta, one of the reform instigators who has served on the commission and the zoning board, cannot understand the hurry. "Delaying it until after the election will make all of this moot," says Sansotta. "Instead the board rushed it through. And now the commission is in a rush."
The mayor sees the citizen revolt much differently. He points to two television cameras in the city hall auditorium, which have been broadcasting to residents for two years. "There's the real problem," he says. "TV. It's created monsters. Everybody is a big star on the screen now. It's ruined our small town thing out here."
Writer Peter B. Gallagher lives in St. Petersburg.
This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2002.