Driving her white Mercury Sable on a Monday morning in August, Maureen Cadzow points out the beach landmarks of her youth along Gulf Boulevard. The 60-year-old realtor grew up in a tiny house just a five-minute walk from the water in Indian Shores. Now she surveys a non-stop wall of condos.
"They have to build them at angles to fit them all in," she says, her voice coarsened by Carlton Menthols. "You don't see a lot of beach. You don't see any beach, really. You used to see it all."
We pass what was once the Tides Bath Club, where for $50 a year a young Maureen whiled away the scorching summer hours in the pool. It's called the Tides Beach Club now, and it's a condo.
We cross into Madeira Beach, and approach a short strip of open sand with a large dilapidated cabin out front. The structure, near a sign that says "Archibald Park: Public Park and Recreation Area," was once known as the Snack Shack, run by Disabled American Veterans to support various veteran causes. Now red plastic fencing surrounds the building, and the framework of a new deck bakes in the sun, some of its boards beginning to warp — remnants of a renovation halted more than a year and a half ago.
Halted because of Maureen Cadzow.
For her, the shack and Archibald Park are the last vestiges of the beach as it once was, links to a past that the cement city, as she calls it, has all but obliterated. She's determined to prevent the incursion of the present on this 500-foot stretch of sand, even if it means fighting city hall, opposing a popular restaurateur and calling in the federal government.
Some of her opponents in this battle question her motives, accusing her of everything from stubbornness to greed. She says she has only one goal: to honor the wishes of the family who once owned the land, and to preserve an increasingly rare slice of unspoiled public beach.
As we pull up closer to the cabin, Cadzow notices something awry: The building isn't padlocked. She zips into a parking spot, pops out of the car, quickly feeds the meter and heads toward the building.
"They're inside," Cadzow says urgently. "What are they doing? Let's go find out."
Maureen Cadzow is not by nature an activist, and she's certainly no tree hugger. But she has a deep love of the beaches. Her folks moved her down to Redington Shores from Connecticut when she was 10. Her father, the burg's first cop, patrolled the area in the family car. She and her friends used to chase the truck that sprayed for mosquitoes. "We'd get covered in the chemicals so we could stay out and play," she says with a laugh. "We lived in bathing suits, and there was always a dry one on the line."
She lives in Seminole with her husband of 40 years, Bob, who first spotted her in the late '50s, a 16-year-old walking on the beach in a red two-piece bathing suit. The walls of her tidy home office are decorated with nautical art and framed artifacts: vintage postcards of beach scenes, old beach maps. She sells residential real estate and takes care of her two grandchildren a couple days a week.
In less politically correct times, she might have been called a tough old broad. She speaks with a no-nonsense assertiveness. Her wit is quick and at times biting. She makes resolute eye contact. Her tightly coiffed brown hair looks as if it wouldn't so much as rustle in a stiff breeze.
Cadzow remembers when she first heard what was happening at Archibald Park. She was representing her realty office at a banquet at the Vinoy Resort when someone happened to mention that the guy who owned the Salt Rock Grill was opening up a restaurant in the old Snack Shack.
It was true: Madeira Beach officials had leased Frank Chivas the building, and he had spent more than $200,000 renting and upgrading it.
But that couldn't be right, Cadzow thought. She was friends with Alex Archibald, the grandson of the original owner. She suspected that establishing a destination restaurant in that spot was exactly contrary to his wishes — and violated the deed that ceded the land to the Veterans' Administration, which then passed it along to the city of Madeira Beach.
So she phoned Archibald — or "Archie," as she calls him — and asked if she could do a title search of the original deed from the early '30s. Have at it, he said.
Archibald grew up on Madeira Beach. A retired Air Force colonel who now lives in San Antonio, Texas, he remembers as a young kid peddling the Gulf Beach Journal for a nickel on the corner of Gulf Boulevard and 140th Street. He'd often head up to Redington Beach and sell one to his grandfather. Years earlier, Albert Archibald had divorced his wife and married a younger woman. He and his son barely spoke. But that didn't stop Albert, whose health was failing, from inviting his grandson Alex in for a quick visit.
Alex attended Madeira Beach Junior high, where he became friends with a group of "beach kids" who were inseparable. There was Susie Brown, Dan Lester, Mona Evans, Paula Manginelli, Dottie Rizzo, Margie Clymer — and Maureen Gavaghan, later Cadzow. They went on to Dixie Hollins High School, class of '62. The guys would play beach football against their rivals who lived south of John's Pass and attended Boca Ciega. Afterward, they all danced near the concession stand at the public beach on Treasure Island.
None of their sandy fun would've been possible without a handful of prescient men who opened the Gulf Beaches to development. Until the 1920s, these barrier islands were remote outposts. Albert Archibald and fellow developer David S. Welch were among the few who purchased large tracts on the beaches. They pushed to get bridges built, which opened the flood of motorcars, residences and tourism. Property values soared. Lands worth $10,000 just a few years earlier vaulted into the millions. Late in the decade, Pinellas County's first free link to the beaches opened, connecting the mainland to Mitchell's Beach, now Madeira Beach. They called it the Welch Causeway.
In the early '30s, the Veterans Administration was looking to build a new hospital in Florida — either in Pinellas County or the Miami area. Archibald and Welch lobbied the VA to choose their stomping grounds, and to sweeten the pot threw in the property that would later become Archibald Park. There was one condition: the land could never be used for commercial purposes.
After Bay Pines Veterans Hospital was built, wounded vets used the piece of beach and its log cabin for hydrotherapy and R&R. By the mid '60s, after a good decade of peacetime, the facility was used less and less.
The Nixon administration established its Federal Lands to Parks Program, which gave the slip of sand to Madeira Beach in the early '70s. The deed restrictions held, but with a caveat: It allowed for concession agreements to provide products to beachgoers. The city officially dedicated the park to Archibald in 1974, and a year later, the Disabled American Veterans opened up the Snack Shack.
The concession clause was the "aha!" moment for Cadzow and Archibald when she checked the deeds. Chivas' project, which he'd all along described as a beach restaurant, didn't sound like anyone's idea of a concession stand. So the fight began. With Archie's blessing and help, Cadzow launched a campaign to make city hall and the feds recognize that establishing a full-service restaurant at Archibald Park simply didn't wash. Through extensive letters, e-mails and phone calls, and appearances before the Madeira Beach commission, she doggedly chipped away at the plan.
It's ironic in a way that Cadzow and Archibald are on the opposing side of Frank Chivas, because they all have something in common. They were all raised on the beach and have fond memories of Archibald Park. Chivas, 50, grew up on North Redington Beach, rode his bike down to Madeira to hang with buddies and fished out of John's Pass when he wasn't working. He remembers buying burgers at the Snack Shack in the '70s. He worked in the seafood business for years, then opened up a series of restaurants. Seven years ago, he kicked off the Salt Rock Grill, the first modern, upscale eatery on that stretch of beach. It put his business over the top. Chivas is gregarious, quick with a quip. He fishes with Bucs players Mike Alstott and Dave Moore, investors in his Island Way Grill on Clearwater Beach.
He first heard that the Snack Shack was available in a newspaper ad in 2000. The veterans had made a go of the place for more than 20 years. The volunteers, mostly WWII vets, hung around, played checkers, flipped burgers, kibitzed with folks. By '97, though, the DAV's ranks had become too old to staff the Shack, so they tried subleasing. The first tenant couldn't make the business fly. Then Chivas came along.
He thought he could upgrade the old Snack Shack, give the neighborhood a boost and turn a little profit. The idea was to transform the place into a cozy beach restaurant, the Archibald Grill, with sandwiches in the $6-$10 range and entrees less than $20.
He agreed to continue paying the DAV their $2,000 a month. But the Department of the Interior, which had to approve all developments at the public park, vetted the deal and deemed the veterans group ineligible for payments. According to mandate, revenues garnered by the city had to go back into maintenance and improvement of the park, not to a third party.
Soon the DAV was out on its keister. The group originally threatened to sue for $36,000 in lost revenues, but that effort fizzled.
The city of Madeira Beach then rented the property to Chivas for $5,000 a month or 5-percent of the gross restaurant income, whichever was higher. The lease called for a five-year term, followed by two five-year options.
Work got underway. But no one counted on the Maureen Machine.
It's past noon on Monday. The cabin's doors and windows are open, the electricity is on, but no one is working. They must be on a lunch break. Cadzow flips through papers on a workbench. "The National Parks Service told them to stop until they had an agreement," she says sharply, and bolts toward her car. "Let's go find out who approved it, and who's working on it."
Within a minute we're at Madeira Beach City Hall, where Cadzow quizzes the town clerk and others about what's going on at the Archibald Park site. No one seems to know. "This is Madeira Beach, guys," she says testily. "The National Parks Service said the lease needed to be terminated and the work stopped."
City commissioner John Wolbert ambles down the hall, with an easy smile and avuncular manner. Cadzow pounces, quickly telling him about the activity down the street. He shrugs. Cadzow announces, "Mr. John Wolbert, Madeira Beach commissioner, get in my car. Let's have a look."
He smiles faintly. "I probably shouldn't go, but I will."
Three Latino men show up at the site. "Hi guys," Cadzow calls out. They look uneasy. One says in halting English that the boss is on his way. A young guy in a tank top and baseball cap rounds the corner and issues a "Howdy."
He tells Cadzow that they work for Chivas. "We're getting ready to start back on the project here. Who are you, may I ask?"
She replies curtly. "I am Maureen Cadzow. I am the one who stopped the project last year. They need a new agreement to do this work."
"We're pretty much just cleaning up and clearing stuff out," the foreman says. "We're not doing any new work. No nails or screws are going in."
Cadzow walks toward the beach, lights a cigarette and sets her square shoulders in the direction of the water. She reaches for her cell phone to call Archibald.
"I don't understand this at all," Wolbert says with a sigh. "This situation changes on an hourly basis."
Back in January 2003, after confirming her suspicions about the deed's restrictions, Cadzow contacted Jim Madden, then city manager of Madeira Beach, who faxed her the Chivas lease. She told Madden that the deed did not permit the land to be leased, explaining that only concession agreements were permitted. While accumulating documents, she ran across the name Bill Huie, Atlanta-based regional director of Federal Lands to Park Program, a division of the Department of the Interior that gave Archibald Park to Madeira Beach in 1972. Partly because of Cadzow's efforts, Huie ordered all work stopped at the site in February of last year.
Cadzow didn't know what reaction her initiative would get, but it has not been pleasant. One night after a commissioner's meeting, Cadzow and her husband were eating at The Hut when, she says, a town powerbroker named Joe Jorgensen loudly accused her of being an operative for a competing restaurateur.
Cadzow says the town commission has treated her dismissively, sometimes rudely. She's heard murmurings around town alleging that she and Archibald have a secret plan to reacquire the beach land, assessed at $4.3 million and worth far more than that, and sell it, thus putting Cadzow in line for a fat commission. All of it is absolute garbage, she says bluntly. She never knew any of the players before the conflict and has no allegiances other than to Archie and the park.
Cadzow thinks that Madeira Beach officials either (a) didn't bother to research the restrictions in the deeds; or (b) figured they could cut the deal with Chivas, get the restaurant up and running, and the Department of the Interior would never catch on that they were circumventing the deed. Furthermore, she maintains that Huie in Atlanta didn't know enough detail about the situation, and gave early approvals to the deal that were inappropriate.
In effect, she claims, both local and national government took shortcuts that led to a colossal mess. It's a mess that has caused several revisions to the contract, countless letters back and forth, arguments over semantic minutiae (e.g. "lease" vs. "concession agreement") and, perhaps most absurd of all, bureaucrats in Atlanta looking at a sample menu and determining whether the would-be Archibald Grill is a beach concession or destination restaurant. Perhaps worst of all, it's a mess that could end up costing the city of Madeira Beach up to a half-million bucks.
Some of Maureen Cadzow's adversaries express a certain grudging admiration for her. Chivas says it's nothing personal, that she's just doing what she feels is right. Wolbert says, "As a grassroots politician, she's very effective. I applaud her for that. If you believe strongly in something, that's the American way. She's taken a bunch of hits, but she doesn't hit below the belt. She keeps it clean, sticks to the issue."
Still, in this post-Gordon Gecko, greed-is-good world, some folks want to know: What makes Maureen Cadzow tick? The question seems to flummox her. "All of this is time-consuming, but it's a labor of love," she says, and adds flatly. "It's the right thing to do."
And she's not one to take any shit. "All of the animosity and anger directed at me just makes me dig my heels in the sand," she says. "They thought they could shoo me away. I will not be intimidated. I will not go away."
An interesting non-factor in all of this is the citizenry of Madeira Beach, who have been strangely silent on the matter. Commissioner Wolbert, for one, says he hasn't heard a thing. With city government in a near-constant state of upheaval, marked by infighting, backbiting and considerable turnover, perhaps Archibald Beach just doesn't make the radar. Proponents of the new restaurant are fond of saying it's just two people — Cadzow and Archibald — who oppose it. They are two people who appear to have considerable rightness on their side.
That hasn't stopped advocates from trying to finesse the situation. An Aug. 17 letter from Huie to the city approved the menu and found Archibald Grill "a food service amenity supplementary to public beach use (as the DAV restaurant did previously), as opposed to being simply a destination restaurant, [and] is allowable under the deeds which conveyed Archibald Memorial Beach to the United States and again to the City."
Although a step in Chivas' direction, Huie's missive required a change in the "concession agreement": the restaurant must close a half-hour after sunset. The lease between Chivas and Madeira Beach has all along stipulated a 10 p.m. closing time.
Chivas won't say such abbreviated operating hours are a deal-breaker, but he clearly has trouble with the latest mandate. "It's not acceptable as far as hours go," he says. "Part of the year, I'd be losing two major dinner turns, part of the year I'd be losing one. Still, I think we've come a long way. I'd like to sit down with this guy Huie and the city, and we could settle this thing in one morning. Bottom line is, I have a signed lease."
As for dispatching a work crew to the site, Chivas says, "We're cleaning the place up." He anticipates resuming construction, but has no specific plans to start building. "Do I plan on winning this deal? Hell yes," he says, and then adds with a laugh. "If I can get this much attention just cleaning the place up, maybe I'll paint the outside of it."
Realtor Doreen Moore, who was voted off the city commission in March, thinks the city should "call [the feds'] bluff," and proceed with the deal. Mayor Charles Parker is more circumspect. Asked if he would advocate abiding by the Interior Department's order to make the restaurant close 30 minutes after sunset, thus opening up a likely lawsuit from Chivas, he said, "We would give every effort to change their ruling. The federal government has to approve what we're doing. The alternative is a significant financial liability that the city would incur."
A June 24 letter from Leonard Englander, Chivas' attorney, expected the city to "[recognize] that our client's claim has a value in the $500,000 range, or more."
Even if the city manages to settle with Chivas for more like a quarter million, that's not chump change, even for a relatively affluent beach town. "It would be a significant hit," says Wolbert. "A quarter million dollars could go a lot of places in the city that would do some good."
The battle at Madeira Beach might strike some folks as a hurricane in a coffee can. Why all the fuss about putting up a restaurant that will upgrade a rundown building, offer an amenity for residents and tourists, provide a financial windfall for the city and generally spruce up a tired section of the beach? It's not as if they're building a Wal-Mart or another condo there.
"It'd be great to have a beachfront place to watch the sunset with a tall cold one," Wolbert says. "We don't have one place like that in all of Madeira Beach."
Archibald and Cadzow would like to see the shack torn down and the park turned into one of the few pristine sections on the Gulf beaches. She worries about what the first foray into commercialism might lead to. "After the 15-year restaurant lease runs out, who's to say someone can't come in and do a 99-year condo lease?" she says. "I don't think we can afford to let this ball get rolling. After all, it is a public beach."
But the reluctant crusader has more immediate concerns. She envisions the Archibald Grill becoming a hot spot, where people flock and teens sneak drinks off the deck, where restaurant customers squeeze out beachgoing families, where all the parking gets gobbled up by people heading for a clear destination — a popular restaurant. Such a scenario, she says, "saps the spirit of what a public beach is all about."
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2004.