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Bartell explains Homosassa resort vote

The Commission chairman meets with the Save Our Homosassa River Alliance to argue facts and ask the group to work with him.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT
Published July 24, 2006

HOMOSASSA - The plan called for three-story buildings over parking in condominium ownership.

The resort units could house owners for a big chunk of the year or they could provide time-share, hotel suite occupancy for lots of people coming and going throughout the busy season.

So close to the river, the luxury suites would provide a great waterfront view and attract plenty of people entranced by the water and eager to dip in their toes.

On July 11, the majority of the County Commission approved just such a scenario for a redevelopment of the 6-acre Homosassa Riverside Resort property in the heart of old Homosassa.

For many residents of the quaint fishing village, the resort expansion struck a gut-wrenchingly familiar chord.

Just a few years ago, another four-story time-share project was proposed on the nearby Halls River. Another commission voted 3-2 to approve the project, a vote that would later be overturned by a judge and would tie up the county in litigation to this day.

That project, the Halls River Retreat, is a battle cry of Citrus County's political struggle between growth and environmental protection.

But some things have changed.

Political allies who united against Halls River Retreat are pitted against one another on the Homosassa Riverside Resort. Among those caught in the middle is County Commission chairman Gary Bartell.

While he was on the losing side of the commission vote on Halls River, his vote secured a win for the redevelopment at Homosassa Riverside Resort.

Last week he faced a dozen unhappy people who make up the leadership of the Save Our Homosassa River Alliance, a group to whom he has long been an ally.

They told him they didn't want this kind of development in their community. They worked for several years to help the county develop and approve new development standards in the form of the Old Homosassa Overlay District that would maintain the fishing village they moved to and wanted to protect.

Then, when the first test of those standards came, the rules were violated.

Bartell urged the group to "stick with the facts" and argued that the overlay district rules were ambiguous. Instead of fighting the resort redevelopment, they should be working to make the confusing height restriction wording, which was at the center of the fight, much clearer.

He called it "audacity" to compare the Riverside Resort project with the Halls River Retreat. Anyone who would do that "doesn't know what they're talking about," a bristling Bartell told the River Alliance leadership last week.

Others in the room disagreed.

"The two projects are twins and probably identical, not fraternal," said River Alliance member Ron Schultz on Friday. "And this one Riverside Resort is more environmentally messy."

Even before the Halls River Retreat project - with its proposed 54-unit, four-story condominium time-share project - was igniting a growth vs. environment firestorm before the County Commission, Homosassa residents had already begun to talk about what the future of their community should be.

Those talks were the early stages of developing what would become the Old Homosassa Overlay District.

But the advent of the controversy on Halls River Retreat and another project called the Tradewinds angered, and therefore inspired, the Homosassa residents to complete an overlay plan to ensure that old Homosassa would keep its small fishing village ambiance and not become a resort town like so many other coastal communities.

"We have a very unique, a beautiful place here," said Homosassa resident Winston Perry, a member of the alliance and the steering committee that drew up the overlay plan.

He told Bartell during last week's alliance meeting that the commissioner should have known that a four-story motel and time share is not what the community wanted.

"What galls me is what is going to happen now that the floodgates are open," he said.

But Bartell countered that the Riverside Resort property was unique. Only one other area of general commercially zoned property exists in the overlay area, and that is across the street at MacRae's.

Perry countered that the effect of the commission's approval was that a four-story building "is right in our back yard."

"I'm not happy," Perry told Bartell. "What you voted for the other day is not what we want for our community."

Schultz explained to Bartell that the two-story-over-parking height were discussed in detail during the steering committee meetings.

Homosassa is a unique area that presents unique construction issues. Because of the flood zone requirements, many buildings need to be built up, with the bottom floor providing an area for parking and storage.

In some cases, that first floor might be a dozen or more feet about ground level to comply with the flood rules.

Schultz said the committee wanted to be sure that people could still build a decent house above that level, but didn't want to see it extend beyond two living floors.

The county's Land Development Code allows construction up to 50 feet high in the area.

That was part of the conflict, according to Bartell.

The code allows a building 50 feet high. The overlay district limits the number of stories allowed, but in language interpreted in different ways by different people.

Some say that the wording allows two stories over parking. Others say three stories over parking is allowed.

Gail Oakes, managing partner for the Riverside Resort, has said that even with three stories over parking, she still won't reach 50 feet.

Regardless of the height in feet, Diann Schultz, Ron's wife, said that people don't seem to understand that the aesthetic of two stories over parking is different than three stories over parking.

"They're missing the point ... of the visual impact," she said.

Ron Schultz agreed.

"We did not want middle rise buildings" in the overlay district, he said.

When the residents of Homosassa and the River Alliance took on Halls River Retreat, they got plenty of free legal help from lawyer Carl "Skip" Bertoch. But in the case of Riverside Resort, Bertoch represented the resort owner.

"There's all this comparison to Halls River Retreat and Homosassa Riverside Resort," Bertoch said. "I was also involved with the Halls River Retreat. ...

"I know the Halls River Retreat and the Riverside Resort is no Halls River Retreat," he said. "It's so unfair to make that comparison, because the Halls River Retreat was not recognized as an existing hotel/resort. It didn't have the zoning. It didn't have the authority to do it. There was a lot of other issues involved with that that are not there with the Riverside Resort."

That has been Bartell's argument, as well.

Riverside Resort is zoned general commercial, which allows a much higher intensity land use than the site of Halls River Retreat.

The resort has been in operation for decades and its zoning category allows densities and uses that are very different. By rights, the owner of that site can do much more with it legally, Bartell said.

The Halls River site, in contrast, is undeveloped and zoned with the stricter restriction of coastal and lakes zoning, as is much of the riverfront in old Homosassa.

"It's not a fair comparison at all, because the legal status of that thing was different," Bertoch said. "The whole concept was different."

But those opposed to three stories over parking see the same kind of artist's renderings from Oakes' project as they saw from the project proposed as Halls River Retreat.

According to Bartell, even that is misleading. The early artist's renderings for Homosassa Riverside Resort were rough sketches. In order for Oakes to build her 72 motel suites, she will have to comply with all the other requirements of the overlay district.

The buildings will not be big, rectangular boxes like in the sketches, because the overlay district requires each higher floor to set in on each side so that the second is smaller than the first.

These details don't persuade Ron Schultz to think that the Riverside Resort is all that different from the Halls River Retreat plan. As former Citrus County property appraiser, he knows about land uses and values.

"Both of those projects are - economically, aesthetically and impact-wise - identical," he said.

Despite the similar appearances of the two projects, there are also some other features that make the fights against the Riverside Resort and Halls River Retreat significantly different.

For one thing, Oakes has been active in her community, providing employment opportunities and community support in a variety of ways.

That has made some who fought the first project support her redevelopment. The developer of Halls River Retreat was seen by many as an outsider.

Even Lewis Ranieri, the New York investment banker with a home on the Homosassa River, wrote a letter supporting the Riverside Resort project. In Halls River Retreat, he bankrolled much of the opposition.

Some in the River Alliance have felt betrayed by Ranieri's support for the resort redevelopment. In a more practical sense, it also means a source to fund a legal opposition has dried up.

Despite that and Bartell's pleas for the alliance members to work with him rather than against him, the organization voted last week to continue its opposition and explore legal options.

Alliance member Perry even asked for Bartell to refund to him a $100 political donation to his campaign because he said Bartell's vote "destroyed the Homosassa community's trust in you."

Bartell faces two political opponents in the November election, including one who joined the race at the 11th hour, qualifying just before Friday's deadline.

Bartell said he would refund Perry's money and would be happy to do so. He said he felt Perry and others in the alliance have attacked his family over the Riverside Resort issue and that upsets him and his wife, Joanne.

Their daughter works at the resort and their son worked there briefly. Still, Bartell said he asked the county attorney if there was a conflict, and was told there was not and that he would have to cast a vote on the project.

"Every time I make a decision, politically, it's going to hurt me one way or the other," Bartell said. "I can't base what I do on emotions but what the regulations are, what the law is and what the special conditions are."

He said that was the basis of his affirmative vote.

"If the rules and the law did not support that project moving forward and the conditions of the overlay did not have to be completed for a permit, then in a second I would have voted against it," Bartell said.

Diann Schultz said that her biggest frustration is that the commission unanimously approved the overlay rules and the rules were always meant to limit the height to two stories over parking.

Yet three commissioners approved three stories over parking anyway.

"The visioning process really was focused on how we wanted a fishing community. We wanted to combine residential and commercial development in a compatible way," she said. "We'd seen what has happened in other places and we didn't want it to happen here.

"It's a sense of betrayal," she said.

Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report. Barbara Behrendt can be reached at 564-3621 or behrendt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified July 23, 2006, 22:34:10]