Siesta Sands - Reopen Beach Road

2
Siesta Sand
MAY 2016
941.349.0194 www.siestasand.net
North Beach Road
|County abandonment of 360-foot segment of North Beach Road sought,
along with a variance for new construction in the same area
By Rachel Brown Hackney - SarasotaNewsLeader.com
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On the morning of May 11,
two public hearings have been
scheduled back-to-back for the
Sarasota County Commission to
consider matters pertaining to a
360-foot section of North Beach
Road on Siesta Key that has been
impassable to traffic for years.
During the first hearing, the
board will consider whether
the county should abandon that
portion of the road; the second
hearing will involve a petition
for a Coastal Setback Variance
for new construction between
that part of the road and Avenida
Veneccia.
North
Beach
Road
has
deteriorated significantly over
the years as a result of persistent
storm
damage,
including
problems precipitated by the
passage of “Superstorm Sandy”
in 2012. A group of people who
own property along the 360-foot
segment at the heart of the May 11
hearing submitted an application
last year, petitioning the county
to give up all rights to that part
of Beach Road, county documents
show.
Additionally,
one
couple
among the three sets of petitioners
wants to tear down four structures
with a total of 12 dwelling units
along the same part of North
Beach Road.
Those structures were built in
the 1930s and the 1940s, county
property records show. The
couple — Dennis and Wendy
Madden — plans to replace them
with a single new building that
would be further landward, their
road abandonment application
says, noting that the “proposed
vacation of the deteriorated
segment of Beach Road is possible
only if the … lots are redeveloped
consistent with [the couple’s]
Coastal
Setback
Variance
Application, [because several of
the units] are accessible only from
Beach Road.”
Matt
Osterhoudt,
senior
manager in the county’s Planning
and
Development
Services
Department, told SNL on April
14 that the public hearing on the
road abandonment is scheduled
immediately ahead of the hearing
on the Coastal Setback Variance
petition. However, he said,
“Sometimes [the commissioners]
will open both hearings at the
same time because they’re
interconnected.” That decision is
up to the board chair, he added.
The petitioners seeking the
road abandonment also have
offered to pursue the necessary
legal means to ensure that
unimproved lots they own west
of Beach Road would be restricted
from future development if the
County Commission agrees to the
abandonment.
The
commission
voted
unanimously on April 12 to
proceed next month ( May ) with
the public hearing on the road
matter.
Both public hearings will be
held at the County Administration
at 1660 Ringling Blvd. in
downtown Sarasota.
The matter at hand
The petition for the “Vacation,
Abandonment,
Closure
and
Discontinuance of a Road or
Portion Thereof” was filed with
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MAY 2016
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Continued from the previous page
the county by attorney Charles D.
Bailey III of the Williams Parker
firm in Sarasota on behalf of three
couples: J. Edward Ramsey and
Christy S. Ramsey of Bristol, IN;
Dennis W. Madden and Wendy W.
Madden of Ada, MI; and William
Caflisch and Sheila S. Caflisch of
Sarasota. The application explains
that the petitioners own contiguous
lots abutting the east and west sides
of Beach Road north of Columbus
Boulevard that lie within the Mira
Mar Beach Subdivision.
The petitioners signed the
application in April and May of
2015.
They are asking the county to
vacate and close the portion of the
Beach Road right of way platted
as Avenida Puesta del Sol, “which
bisects their lots and extends from
Beach Road’s intersection with
Columbus Boulevard northward
approximately 360 feet,” according
to the application.
The document’s narrative points
out that that section is “impassable
by vehicles due to the deterioration
of the roadway conditions over the
last several years and the lack of
road maintenance and repair by the
County.”
It adds that the petitioners’
lots on the east side of Beach
Road “front directly on and have
driveway connections to Beach
Road. However, there presently is
no practical access to these parcels”
because of the road’s “continued
state of disrepair.”
The
narrative
continues,
“Fortunately, each of the Petitioners
also own adjacent lots which
abut either Avenida Veneccia or
Columbus Boulevard, providing
legal access to their respective Beach
Road lots.”
Additionally, the narrative says,
they own unimproved platted lots
west of Beach road, “which lie
within the sandy beach and Gulf of
Mexico.”
That portion of Beach Road at the
focus of the petition was washed
out regularly during storm events
over the past several decades, the
narrative explains. Among those
were the 1982 “No Name Storm,” it
points out.
In June 2012, Tropical Storm
Debby contributed to significant
erosion of the road, county staff
noted at the time.
The narrative says the petitioners
propose that the road vacation “be
conditioned upon the creation of
public easements” that would allow
for pedestrian access, utilities and
drainage, “and, significantly, to
their extinguishing development
rights on the lots waterward of
Beach Road to ensure they remain
undeveloped in perpetuity [the
emphasis is in the document].”
The narrative also points out
that the “proposed vacation would
not in any way impede the public’s
pedestrian access to the beach
or the Gulf of Mexico” and that
county public beach accesses are
located both north and south of that
segment of Beach Road.
A plan for
new development
The narrative further explains
that the Maddens’ lots contain
12 dwelling units that are not in
compliance with the current Florida
Building Code or regulations of the
Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA), the Florida
Department
of
Environmental
Protection (FDEP) or the county’s
Zoning Code.
The Maddens intend to redevelop
those lots by building one structure
with six fully conforming units,
the document says. It would be
located further landward than the
concurrent structures and accessed
exclusively from Avenida Veneccia.
According
to
records
of
the Sarasota County Property
Appraiser’s Office, a 12,283-squarefoot parcel at 89 Beach Road has
two buildings on it that have a total
of seven units. Erected in 1935 and
1940, they were sold to Wendy
Madden in August 2001 for $420,000,
county property records say. The
Maddens also own a 10,724-square-
foot parcel at 84 Avenida Veneccia,
where structures containing five
apartments stand. Those buildings
date to 1941 and 1945, the records
show. The Maddens purchased
them in April 2003 for $545,000.
The 2012 storms
During the July 2012 Siesta Key
Association meeting, Diane Erne —
then a resident of a condominium
complex on Avenida Messina —
talked bout the “huge holes” that
had opened up on North Beach
Road near Access 3 as a result of
Tropical Storm Debby’s lingering in
the Gulf of Mexico for several days.
Then-County
Commissioner
Nora Patterson told her she had
asked staff to take a look at the
situation, adding, “I got some
frantic calls [about it].”
After Hurricane Sandy swept
by the coast in October 2012, the
county’s then-chief engineer, James
K. Harriott Jr., reported that it
would take about four to six weeks
before permanent repairs could be
made to a 150-foot-long section of
North Beach Road, at an estimated
cost of about $200,000.
The three couples’ application
for the road abandonment says the
county spent more than $230,000
“performing emergency repairs to
the roadway segment immediately
north of this portion of Beach Road”
in November 2012, which were
necessary “to provide access to
the homes north of the Petitioners’
lots.”
However, the segment of the
road that is the focus of the petition
“remains unusable by and unsafe
for vehicular traffic,” the application
points out.
The petitioners’ application says
that in 2013, the county obtained
an independent coastal engineering
study that evaluated various options
for the potential repair of the road.
“Ultimately,” the application adds,
“the County opted to take no action,
monitor the conditions for change,
and maintain Beach Road ‘as is,’ in
its current, unusable condition.”
Damage from Hurricane Sandy was evident on North Beach Road
in late October 2012. Image courtesy Sarasota County
A graphic from the county Property Appraiser’s Office shows
an aerial view of the Madden parcels with the buildings