Residents of a mobile home park call the sheriff, file complaints and talk of moving. Nightly, the Green Iguana hops with business.
By JADE JACKSON LLOYD
Published February 25, 2004
BAY PINES - Last Wednesday found Cecil and Helen Cox up past their 9 p.m. bedtime. Lately, thanks to a raucous new neighbor, late nights and lost sleep have become routine.
Since its Jan. 15 opening, the Green Iguana Bar & Grill at 8790 Bay Pines Blvd. has meant a new place for the community to eat, drink, and listen to live music seven nights a week.
For the Coxes and other residents at the Sea Horse Mobile Home Park, the bar has meant noise and little sleep.
The park at 8424 Bay Pines Blvd. sits about 50 yards from the bar's back patio, separated by an inlet of water. A DJ and nightly live music, the bar's boasting points, have been the park residents' biggest headaches.
"When that woofer (speaker) gets going, it feels like it shakes the ground," said Cecil Cox, 64. "It's enough to drive you crazy."
It has not been enough to warrant a noise violation, however. To date, environmental code enforcement officers have visited the mobile home park twice. On both occasions, the bar was not in violation.
"It could be wind rustling the trees. It could be traffic on Bay Pines (Boulevard) from the bridge. It could be background noise we don't factor in," Robert Mortoro, code enforcement division administrator for the county Department of Environmental Management, said during a Monday phone interview.
"There was nothing that was generated from the club itself" that exceeded lawful noise limits, he added.
Still, Mortoro said his officers would continue to monitor the situation.
"You've got an annoyance factor where the noise is disturbing ... but it doesn't pass the litmus test" of breaking the law, he said. "There was no music. There were no drums. When the officer was there, there was no such noise."
Residents tell another story.
Lee Platt, 62, has teamed up with Rachael Cote, 60, to organize a petition and write letters to various media outlets, county officials and the restaurant.
Platt usually awakens at 4 a.m. to get her husband, Walton, ready for adult day care - he has had Alzheimer's disease for five years - and make it to her job at the Eagle's Pass Publix bakery by 5 a.m. His illness has left her the primary breadwinner for the household.
Since the bar opened, she has stayed awake some mornings until 2 a.m. because of the noise, she said.
"This is my home," she said last week. Up four hours past her 7:30 bedtime, she rested her head on her hands, eyes heavy behind her glasses. "Why should I do things to make me not comfortable when I've been here longer than them?"
The rumble of voices and music were audible in her bedroom.
The park's mobile home owners have called the Sheriff's Office nearly 15 times since the restaurant and bar opened Jan. 15, Cecil Cox said. Three formal complaints have been filed.
Though the Coxes say sheriff's deputies faithfully respond to the weekly disturbance calls, they have not proved an effective deterrent to the noise.
"If it's against the law, why is it it can't be stopped?" Cecil Cox said. "Don't keep running back and forth over there saying, "Well, don't you do this no more."'
The Coxes said they moved to Florida to enjoy a quiet, peaceful lifestyle. "If it keeps on, we just won't be able to stay here," said Helen Cox, 62.
They aren't the only ones considering leaving.
"We are looking for a house," said Ray Cote, 62, and the Sea Horse's president. He and his wife, Rachael, spend five months of the year at the 55-and-older park. "If the right place comes up and this doesn't change, I'm not going to live with this."
Cote said residents have not talked with the bar's management about a solution "and they have not called us to do so."
"We know they have to run a business, but they could sit down with us and work this out," said Cote, during a phone interview last week. "Our (retirement) plans were made and they've been altered."
Kathleen Bambery, the Green Iguana's regional manager, did not return several phone calls to her Tampa office. Jose Rodriguez, the bar's general manager, had no comment.
Cote said the noise has likely devalued the property of nearly 20 mobile home owners and lessened their chances of selling.
"They're not going to buy my mobile home unless they like to rock and roll," he said.
The Green Iguana, which has three other bars in the Tampa Bay area, has had problems with noise complaints for 10 years. From Ybor City to West Shore, residents have fought and lost battles against the bar.
Though the bar's managers have told Sea Horse residents that they turn off the patio speakers after 10 p.m. and close the doors, residents say that simply is not enough.
"There's no difference between that business and me in my house," Cecil Cox said. "If I turned up my boombox and opened the windows, what would happen to me?"
Across the water, a 5-year-old song by Juvenile pumped out of the bar's 10 speakers. A DJ, from his perch above the packed dance floor, bobbed his head as he searched for the next tune that would keep the crowd moving.
The wraparound patios and outdoor tables seemed a constant shuffle of smoking, drinking, laughing, boisterous people.
True to management's word, the doors from the bar to the patio were closed, but traffic in and out of them remained constant. Though vinyl baffling adorned the restaurant's exterior, large portions of the patio remained open - in areas facing the mobile home park.
Despite the brisk weather, it was so packed last Wednesday that more men waited in line for the bathroom than women. (Four portable restrooms stand in the bar's parking lot to accommodate the overflow.)
By midnight, nearly 850 people had come out for the bar's college-$1 beer night.
"It's better than any other place in St. Pete other than the beach," said Brooke Schroder, 23, of St. Petersburg. A first-year law student at Stetson University, she likes the bar for its late hours and beer specials.
When asked whether she considered the bar excessively loud, she shook her head. Fellow bar-goer Myron Spilde, 33, agreed.
He said that despite residents' complaints, the bar has been "a gold mine" for the area.
"They're not used to this," said Spilde, a Madeira Beach software consultant. "I would think they would think any place like this was too noisy."
