Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Madeira Beach steps, not shuffles, forward to turn a dated hodgepodge into an attractive, cohesive city.
By AMY WIMMER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 24, 2002
MADEIRA BEACH -- Longtime resident Debra Spaeth remembers when Gulf Boulevard offered more than an occasional glimpse of its namesake, when the old Welch Causeway that brought mainland visitors to the beach welcomed them with a panorama of sand and surf.
"You used to come to the top of the bridge and see the water before those buildings were built," Spaeth said.
"Those buildings" are the Ocean Sands condominiums, twin towers built about half a block apart in an early and futile attempt at compromise: Allow development on the tax-rich waterfront and save a piece of the view for residents and tourists.
It didn't work. There is virtually no beach visible from the bridge from Tyrone, just identical tall buildings, inordinately far apart.
From St. Pete Beach to Clearwater, the beach communities have approved condos, mansions and hotels that cover up the best amenity. The shell shops, T-shirt retailers and swimsuit-clad tourists along Gulf Boulevard are the best indicators there is sand beyond those concrete walls.
If you need one word to describe the county's famous beaches, it might be "tired." That was the conclusion of a 2000 study by the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention and Visitors Bureau of the tourist destinations Pinellas must compete with.
This week, Madeira becomes the first barrier island city to take a serious crack at turning its mish-mash of transient housing, sky-rise condos, tourist shops, old beach shacks and huge new Boca Ciega Bay-front homes into something cohesive.
The rest of the county, particularly communities like St. Pete Beach that are considering master plans of their own, is watching.
"We applaud Madeira Beach's efforts to improve the look and feel of their beaches and their city overall," said Zaneta Hubbard, spokeswoman for the Convention and Visitors Bureau. "In the end, we all benefit."
In a series of workshops called charettes, three companies hired by Madeira Beach will lead residents through the city's hot spots:
Gulf Boulevard, where poles support ugly utility wires that are expensive to bury underground.
Madeira Way, the city's closest thing to a classic downtown, which greets travelers arriving from the Tom Stuart Causeway, formerly the Welch Causeway.
Madeira's residential neighborhoods, which dredges carved from mangrove islands in Boca Ciega Bay.
Based on what residents have to say in this series of workshops, planners will design a new Madeira. By the end of the week, they'll have charts and drawings that depict what the city could be.
And by the end of the year, the city hopes to have a new set of codes to facilitate the changes residents want to see. The entire process is included in the $200,000 that Madeira Beach is paying the three companies: Jones Edmunds & Associates, an engineering firm; HDR, a Tampa-based planning company; and DPZ, a Miami-based planning and architecture company.
Andres Duany, the "D" in DPZ, is best known for his work planning new towns designed to resemble old-fashioned ones. Seaside, Fla., a Duany creation, was used as the backdrop for the 1998 feature film The Truman Show.
Duany has also had a role in redeveloping cities, such as his plan for downtown Sarasota. He gained recognition recently when he helped Asbury Park, N.J., quell a controversy surrounding a developer's plan to raze the Stone Pony, an old Bruce Springsteen stomping ground.
Duany's solution? Townhomes built around the landmark and marketed to people who want to live close to concerts. One council member said Duany "managed to convince the developer that not only would people want to live near the Stone Pony, but that they'd pay more to be part of the complex."
Because Madeira and the rest of the beach cities are already developed, those are the projects that interest local leaders most.
"We are not Seaside," said Doreen Moore, a city commissioner who is liaison to a citizens committee. "We do not have a clean slate."
So can a built-out city like Madeira Beach expect to change its face when so much of what happens hinges on help from private property owners?
City leaders say they don't have much choice if they hope to lure tourists and keep taxes down for locals.
"We've been given the responsibility, charged with a challenge, to see that this has to go forward," said Moore said. "This is just the beginning process, and it's really important that we don't drop the ball.
"Madeira Beach is the first piece of the beach puzzle."
The process started last year, when James Moore, a community design principal with HDR, led a two-day workshop in Madeira Beach. About 100 residents identified the areas that need help and brainstormed about what they would like to see.
The city decided to take that process a step further by hosting a week of public workshops that began Saturday.
The planners will physically locate a satellite office inside City Hall -- complete with computers, draft tables and fax machines -- where they will work between sessions to create a picture of what residents want. When the workshops end Wednesday, the planners will spend the next two days putting residents' visions on paper.
At a final presentation Friday night, neighbors will get to see their dreams.
Madeira's decision to look in the mirror comes at a critical point in the city's history. As the oldest beach buildings deteriorate and the value of the properties they occupy escalates, developers are looking for ways to make new projects fit with what the community wants.
Gators owner Sid Rice, whose family compiled several Gulf Boulevard properties linking the gulf and bay sides of the street near John's Pass Village, has proposed convention facilities, a yacht club and a gulffront hotel -- the first new one in Pinellas in a decade -- but the project has no chance if residents do not embrace it in the master plan.
The development of Madeira Beach mirrors development along the other gulf beaches: The dredges cleared out the mangroves, digging canals in places such as Crystal Island that created more pricey waterfront lots.
Such dredging was outlawed in the 1960s, but development maintained its pace. By 1980, the city recognized that allowing condominiums as high as 10 stories had stolen the gulf views from Gulf Boulevard. Commissioners restricted construction to five stories.
Now Madeira is faced with dated codes and restrictions, and officials fear they are lagging behind the redevelopment going on elsewhere on the beaches. Take the height cap, which is intended to preserve the city's character. Developers are reluctant to take on a dilapidated 10-story condominium that, if rebuilt, would be limited to five stories.
A 32-year-old Holiday Inn remains the city's largest single taxpayer.
Many residents blame the city's dated regulations for slowing redevelopment.
"I'm just hoping that we get our codes and our zoning right up to date where they ought to be," said longtime resident Pat Shontz, who is part of the visioning committee. "We're way back in the '50s when we talk about codes in this town."
Madeira Beach's weeklong project got under way Saturday night with a keynote speech from Duany. The city hopes that people return to this week's workshops energized and interested.
"Everybody will go home, and it will start them thinking," said Jeffrey Siewert, project manager for Jones Edmunds, the engineering firm working with Madeira Beach.
You can buy five T-shirts for $10 in Madeira Beach. And shark's teeth and conch shells. In the "grouper capital of the world," every restaurant menu has it broiled, blackened or fried.
But condominiums block the sunset, and the properties are worth exponentially more than the outdated and graying buildings that occupy them.
Even the county has concluded that the beach cities look tired.
James Moore sees potential.
"You've got a deep-water outlet to the gulf. You've got phenomenal amounts of waterfront property because of all the dredging. You've got a direct bridge to the mainland," said Moore, an architect with a company that is helping the city reinvent itself.
In workshops this week, neighbors, business owners and city leaders will consider what they want this fun, funky but fading beach town to look like.
Other Pinellas beaches, facing the same problems, are taking note.
Urban planners will hold the following presentations and workshops in Madeira Beach:
Neighborhoods. 2-3:30 p.m. Sunday, Madeira Beach City Hall, 300 Municipal Drive.
Gulf Boulevard. 10-11:30 a.m. Monday, City Hall.
Triangle of Madeira Way, the Municipal Center and 150th Avenue. 1:30-3 p.m. Monday, City Hall.
John's Pass Village and surrounding area. 3:30-5 p.m. Tuesday, City Hall.
Waterfront and natural resources. 10-11:30 a.m. Tuesday, City Hall.
Codes. 2-3:30 Tuesday, City Hall.
Final presentation, 6-8 p.m. Friday, Madeira Beach Middle School gymnasium, 591 Tom Stuart Causeway.