EDITORIAL: Manatee’s Mayberry: City Council Turns Riviera Vote into Farce

By The Bradenton Herald, Fla.

Jan. 28–Andy Griffith would have been proud of the Bradenton City Council. Its actions last week transported one back in time to Mayberry, N.C., where Sheriff Andy Taylor, Deputy Barney Fife and lovable Aunt Bea weekly presided over town doings with a laissez-faire informality that was endearing.

Somehow, though, Bradenton’s leaders lacked the charm of Mayberry’s in their Barney-like conduct Wednesday — perhaps because they were dealing with something a bit more serious than the church bake sale or Aunt Bea’s missing cat.

Like a $300 million urban redevelopment project in east Bradenton.

The council majority rescinded its approval two weeks earlier of Frank Maggio’s Riviera Southshore project which in September they had turned down. In case you’re confused, that’s three votes in four months. This time the project got thumbs-down, members said, because they didn’t know Maggio included city property that he wants handed over to him as part of the 28 acres required for his 691 units to meet the density maximum allowed by city code there, 25 units per acre. That acreage, Councilman Bemis Smith said he has learned, apparently included part of Glazier Gates Park and portions of three city streets.

All-important detail

The question is: How could city officials not know a detail as relevant as that before being asked to vote on it? Vacating the streets and park has long been part of Maggio’s plan — it was the stipulation on which the council got hung up in their first vote back in September. We don’t expect individual council members to calculate the acreage of a zig-zag property peppered by lots Maggio doesn’t own, but their planning staff should have done so. It’s such an elementary factor in the permitting process: Either a developer does or does not own the minimum acreage needed to qualify for a requested density. That Maggio agreed Jan. 10 to lop two floors off two of four mid-rise buildings to satisfy council concerns about height in exchange for an additional 157 units of density should have been a tip-off to planners and council members: Does this still fit the code?

Adding to the Mayberry flavor of Wednesday’s recision vote is that nobody seems to know whether it was legal. The mayor didn’t, and there was no city legal staff available for an opinion. So Maggio has a $25 million-plus investment that is in limbo, even as he scrambles to meet a 90-day design deadline based on the council’s Jan. 10 approval.

Flimsy basis for denial

Smith worries about the precedent of allowing a developer to count vacated city property as part of the density calculation. If Glazier Gates park is counted by Maggio, Smith asks, what is to prevent another developer from asking the city to vacate a chunk of G. T. Bray park to make a development on the west side feasible? Meanwhile, Councilman Gene Gallo says his “main issue (with Maggio’s project) is that I do not want those condos that close to the water . . . to take away the water view of a historic neighborhood.”

Neither of those concerns justifies denial of Riviera Southshore. The city deeds streets and alleys to private citizens all the time, so the street vacation sought by Maggio is not an issue. As to the park, Smith neglects to mention that the developer only seeks a portion of Glazier Gates park and that he would be required to pay the city $250,000 to improve the rest of it.

And to our knowledge no neighborhood around Bray park suffers from the kind of blight that East Bradenton does around Glazier Gates. So the city would have no incentive to approve redevelopment around Bray in the foreseeable future. But who knows what could happen long-range? Perhaps a Frank Maggio of 2057 will propose a development to revive the by-then-decaying neighborhood south of Bray and ask for a piece of Bray or a street vacation to make his project work. It might make sense then.

As for Gallo’s concern about building so close to the water, where was that concern when Tarpon Pointe was approved just 700 feet to the west, six stories taller than what Maggio agreed to? Or Riverwalk on the Sandpile? Or Perico Island? The council’s concern with water views, it would seem, is selective.

All of which begs the questions of why council members didn’t know about the density issue Jan. 10, and why they would vote Wednesday on a recision motion which they weren’t sure had any legal standing.

A-N-D-Y! Help!

Talk back

Is Bradenton City Council justified in having second thoughts about Riviera Southshore development in Old Manatee? Share your views below.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Bradenton Herald, Fla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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