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The City Commission will have to look at site plans for Paul Skipper's project before he is allowed to go forward.
By AMY WIMMER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 29, 2002
ST. PETE BEACH -- The City Commission will have a role after all in deciding whether local developer Paul Skipper can pave part of a beachfront right of way for his personal driveway.
The decision came minutes before the city's Development Review Board was to consider a variance for one of two beachfront homes Skipper plans to build.
Skipper's project was delayed because Pass-a-Grille resident Ralph Lickton, a frequent critic of Skipper's relationship with the City Commission, pointed out a city ordinance that calls for site plan reviews for all homes that require variances.
Now city commissioners, originally shielded from the controversy, will have at least some say in whether Skipper uses the right of way.
Skipper, the developer who built the new $4-million City Hall last year in an unusual deal that did not require him to bid on the project, has made two requests of St. Pete Beach. The first is a variance allowing him to build 10 feet closer to the right of way than currently allowed by ordinance. Several Pass-a-Grille residents have been granted similar variances, and no neighbors have stepped forward to object to that variance.
The other part of his plan has prompted a spirited campaign in the neighborhood surrounding the site of his proposed house, planned for Sunset Way and 23rd Avenue. Skipper wants to use a portion of a public right of way, for decades commonly thought of as a park to access the beach, as his private driveway.
City Attorney Jim Devito has ruled that the green space is platted on city maps as a street, and the city must allow Skipper access to his property through the right of way. Bonfield has said the city would still allow beach access through the right of way, which is as big as a beachfront lot.
The Development Review Board was scheduled to consider the 10-foot variance on Wednesday, while city staff would make a final decision on use of the right of way. But now that the board must review the site plan for the home, it will have a hand in deciding whether Skipper can use the right of way.
Because the City Commission reviews board decisions, it will have a role in the process as well.
Minutes before the Development Review Board meeting Wednesday, as neighbors of the proposed Skipper home filed into City Hall wearing "Keep 23rd Avenue Green" buttons, Lickton showed the ordinance to Chris Brimo, the assistant city manager. With Bonfield out of town at a convention on coastal management, Brimo made the call to postpone the Skipper hearing.
The hearing on Skipper's proposed home was not properly advertised as a site plan review, so it had to be delayed.
Skipper is building two beachfront homes on the site of a former brick estate in Pass-a-Grille, originally built in the 1930s as the beach house of a former Nebraska governor. He paid $2.35-million for the property last month.