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A beach reborn

The boom now blessing Clearwater Beach was little more than a dream sketched on paper three years ago. On the ground, there was only gloom. The '50s-era motels were eyesores. T-shirt shops and pizza joints dominated retail offerings. Grass poked through cracked sidewalks. The wide beach was consistently ranked among the best in the country, but developers passed over the island on their way to places that showed more promise.

Those dreary years when Pinellas County's top tourist beach fell deeper and deeper into decline are now over. St. Petersburg Times staff writer Aaron Sharockman recently reported that $1-billion in condominium and resort/hotel projects is under construction or on the way. Investors are scrambling to get a piece of the action, and property values are soaring.

What's happening is proof of the value of smart city planning and wise public investment. The boom on the beach didn't just happen; the city of Clearwater engineered it.

Much credit goes to a man who has remained behind the curtain for years. Charles Siemon, a Boca Raton lawyer with a knack for urban planning, helped Clearwater defend its stringent sign code against the attacks from the billboard industry in the late '80s, helped modify the city's land development code so it could flex for redevelopment, and created new master plans for the beach and downtown Clearwater. His most innovative work was Beach By Design, a detailed plan to spur redevelopment of the tourist sections of Clearwater Beach while also controlling the type and amount of new construction.

Siemon doesn't get all the credit. Forward-looking city commissioners approved the plans, taking no small amount of heat from those who didn't want change. Clearwater's capable city attorney and hard-working city planners slogged through the detail work to set new and in some cases untested plans into motion.

Clearwater officials understood the city would have to signal its own faith in the future of Clearwater Beach to lure substantial private investment. So they approved millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded public improvements, including a new high-level bridge to replace a malfunctioning, traffic-clogging drawbridge and street and sidewalk improvements. They also dangled before developers their enticing dream of a spectacular 35-foot-wide pedestrian promenade along the public beachfront that would have plazas, landscaping and sidewalk cafes and would be financed by both taxpayers and developers.

Now it is all happening, and with such speed and intensity that the city should moderate some of the trends. It needs to design the next phase of beach redevelopment so the end product will be a modern, beautiful and welcoming place for everyone - not just the affluent. Other beach communities could learn a lot from studying Clearwater's path to success.

[Last modified April 4, 2005, 01:26:10]