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Group now fights review session

Already against redevelopment plans in St. Pete Beach, it also protests a meeting with the planning consultant.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published May 17, 2006

"Now the attempts are going to be to try to discredit the meeting," said City Manager Mike Bonfield of a public event May 31 with the Orlando community planning firm Glatting Jackson at St. John's Catholic Church, "even though people had said Glatting Jackson was the savior that we fired."

Bonfield said members of Citizens for Responsible Growth are questioning Glatting Jackson's value and are seeking copies of all communications between the firm and the city. He said e-mails and letters will show that the firm is merely coming back to review the visioning work it did before.

"What we really looked at was a set of broad vision-based ideas that came to us from the community," said Pete Sechler, the Glatting Jackson planner who orchestrated months of public meetings in 2002 and 2003 and then prepared the master plan that the city is now using. "I don't think it's fair to say the city changed what we did."

Criticism of the city started in early 2005 when the City Commission began discussing hotels as tall as 20 stories. Citizens for Responsible Growth members said Glatting Jackson never proposed anything that tall, so the city was corrupting what everyone had agreed on.

Sechler said his firm never prescribed heights for buildings but did use some hypotheticals to clarify examples. He said the community agreed that it wanted to keep its hotels and tourism and that his firm's plans provided a guide to achieve that.

"Hotels need increased density, and you can't achieve that without height," Sechler said. "If you could, you wouldn't like the result."

Bonfield said the point of the meeting is to clarify how and why the city is trying to redevelop its hotel district. During the past year, Bonfield said, opponents of the city's plans have misinformed voters and muddied the political discourse about an issue that once had consensus.

For instance, the city's opponents have said that Glatting Jackson was fired because the city wanted to go in a different direction than what the firm suggested. Sechler said that's completely false and professionally insulting, and he finds it "alarming."

"I could see somebody who doesn't have a lot of information making those assertions," Sechler said, adding that the firm continues to work with the city. "Apparently, things have gotten a little heated."

Citizens for Responsible Growth went from condemning the city's redevelopment plans to insisting that the community vote on those plans. Efforts to put referendum questions on the ballot were found illegal in court, though appeals were pending.

Still, Citizens for Responsible Growth members said Glatting Jackson can't fix what ails the city.

"Just bringing them back is not the total solution," said Jack Olhaber, a group founder who also heads the Council of Presidents, a group that invites community leaders to talk about issues. "I would much rather work with the city and develop a plan everyone can get behind and then bring it to the citizens."

Bonfield said that's what the city did through Glatting Jackson's studies and the agreement at the time. Even Olhaber praised the firm's work, as listed in the appendices of the master plan. Bonfield said there was consensus until Citizens for Responsible Growth halted the process.

The city will record the Glatting Jackson meeting and play it on Channel 15, the city's TV station.

There will also be a meeting in June of 50 to 60 community leaders chosen from recognized groups, including Citizens for Responsible Growth, and appointed by city commissioners, Bonfield said. That meeting will be an attempt to work through disputes and develop a political strategy to move redevelopment ahead.

[Last modified May 17, 2006, 06:51:18]