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Vote blocks developer's driveway plan

Pleasing residents, Dunedin officials deny an Orange Avenue entrance for a condo, but a court fight appears likely.

By RICHARD DANIELSON
Published October 22, 2005

DUNEDIN - Did City Commissioners act Thursday night to protect the Grove Terrace neighborhood?

Or did they take away some of developer Jeff Ricketts' property rights?

The controversy over those questions is almost certain to go on, probably in court. But this much is clear: commissioners voted unanimously to preserve a 30-year-old limit on traffic going from Ricketts' project into the neighborhood.

That means Ricketts, who is converting the old Clusters apartments into the Victoria Palms condominiums, can't have an entrance that he wants on Orange Avenue.

Instead, commissioners decided that his main entrance will be on Lyndhurst Street, just as it was for the Clusters.

That's what dozens of neighbors from Grove Terrace wanted. Although the original site plan for the Clusters showed a driveway onto Orange Avenue, the previous property owner put up a wooden barricade there to prevent the apartments' residents from using the driveway.

Giving Ricketts a driveway at Orange now would add traffic to an old brick street that's only 171/2 feet wide, neighbors said.

City officials estimated that opening the project's driveway onto Orange Avenue would double the traffic on the street. That increase, from 198 to 404 vehicles a day, would create a hazard, neighbors contended.

"Our children are used to a quiet neighborhood," said stay-at-home mom Holly Wintermeier, 39, who lives on Wood Street. "They ride skateboards. They ride bikes. They play ball. They have been raised in a quiet neighborhood."

But an engineer for Ricketts testified that allowing condo traffic to come and go on Orange Avenue would not put anyone in jeopardy.

"I do not believe this would create a safety problem at all," said Roy E. Chapman, vice president of Florida Design Consultants, a firm in New Port Richey. "The amount of traffic is so minor."

The commission's own staff agreed, saying that even doubling the traffic on Orange would not overwhelm the street.

"There's not an indication that the capacity of Orange Avenue would be exceeded," said city engineer Thomas Burke.

But commissioners weighed the engineers' opinions against the residents' concerns and sided with the neighborhood.

"I'm sure you're an expert in your area, but they live there," Commissioner Deborah Kynes told Chapman.

The basis for the commission's decision was critically important. City Attorney John Hubbard told commissioners that in voting to keep things the way they are, they were effectively deciding to change the site plan that the city had approved for the Clusters in the early 1970s.

To do that, Hubbard said, the commission's decision had to be based on competent and substantial evidence that the safety of residents required closing the Orange Avenue entrance. Closing it just because it was popular and people felt strongly about it wouldn't be enough.

Ricketts' attorney, Ed Armstrong of Clearwater, contended that the required evidence did not exist. He had a court reporter in the front row making a word-for-word record of the proceedings that could be used in a legal challenge of the city's decision.

Afterward, Armstrong wouldn't say whether Ricketts would sue the city, only that he and his client would discuss their options.

In one important way, the decision would have been a lot easier if everyone had known what a previous City Commission had done more than three decades ago. Unfortunately, they didn't. It's not clear whether past commissioners ever acted to close the Clusters' driveway at Orange Avenue. The driveway does appear on an approved site plan, but the previous owner always had a wooden barricade there.

Before he bought the property, Ricketts asked a city official if he could use the driveway.

Kevin Campbell, Dunedin's director of community services, told Ricketts that his project could use the Orange Avenue entrance as long as no previous commission had ever taken any action to close it. Ricketts checked the records and could find no such closure. Campbell also predicted neighbors would fight the opening and the City Commission could act on the matter.

Ricketts, 48, of Dunedin, told commissioners that he never would have bought the apartments if he had thought he couldn't use the Orange Avenue driveway.

Using that entrance, he said, was essential because it allowed him to create an ornate gateway into Victoria Palms, which will have 88 condominiums selling from $165,000 to $250,000 each. He had sold the project to his investors on the assumption that the main gate would be at Orange Avenue. Putting it at Lyndhurst Street, he said, wouldn't be as good because that street is not as attractive as Orange.

The legal standard for the commission's decision would have been easier to meet if a previous City Commission had ever acted to change the site plan and officially close the driveway.

But no one was able to show whether that happened.

"The records of closure are muddled," Burke said.

The closest he came was some minutes from a 1977 City Commission workshop. Then, a resident reminded commissioners that the wooden barricade had been placed at Orange Avenue at the request of the commission.

In response, then-Mayor Judith Gould asked the city manager to tell the developer to maintain the barricade. She hoped, according to the minutes, that the guidelines would be so clearly stated in the future that a similar situation would never again arise.

"And here we are again," Kynes said at one point Thursday night.

And not for the first time. In May, when Grove Terrace residents heard that Ricketts was opening the driveway, they crowded a commission meeting demanding that his access to Orange Avenue remain closed.

Commissioners voted then to order that the driveway stay closed, but the meeting was so jammed with people that Ricketts couldn't get in to plead his case. Attorneys said that created a problem where the commission made a decision affecting Ricketts without making sure that he received due process of law. So they brought the issue back Thursday night for another 21/2-hour discussion.

This time, commissioners again heeded neighbors' concerns. They did, however, volunteer to make unspecified improvements to Lyndhurst Street so that Ricketts could put his entrance there.

After the vote, Ricketts said the commission's offer "didn't impress me very much."

But neighbors were elated.

"We've had knots in our stomachs for six months," said travel agent Chris Dobey, 50, who lives on Wood Street. True, she said, it's probably not over. There will probably be a lawsuit. "But so far," she said, "two points for us."

[Last modified October 22, 2005, 01:13:18]