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Owner shrinks plans for hotel

The Schiller International University site would become a much smaller hotel. For now, a Scientology-linked school gets a lease on the property.

By ROBERT FARLEY
Published August 5, 2006

DUNEDIN - Attorney George Rahdert has scaled down his plans to turn the Schiller International University buildings on Edgewater Drive into a hotel in a last-ditch effort to gain city approval.

Meanwhile, Rahdert has leased the property to Washburn Academy, a 40-student private school that will employ study techniques developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Rahdert's downsized hotel plan calls for 150 rooms without a parking garage. In April, the city balked at his plan for a 250-room hotel and four-story parking structure.

This revision is his last, he said. He has given himself a February deadline to see if city leaders will accept his plan.

Washburn Academy plans to be there at least that long - maybe longer.

It was formed recently by a group of homeschoolers with common views, said Shawn Smith, a high school teacher who is Washburn's facilities manager.

The school will use a 15,000-square-foot building at the rear of the property bearing the name Schiller High School. Smith said the school would like to purchase that building once its six-month lease is up, and depending on how the hotel plans go.

Washburn Academy, which will offer grades 1-12, is much too small to purchase the entire property, Smith said.

Rahdert said he pursued the lease with the school to preserve his options if the hotel plan fails. The 6.4-acre property is zoned for 28 residential homes, but has a special exemption that allows schools or religious use. When Schiller left, the property was in danger of losing that special exemption.

"I was grateful to get a school in there to maintain my zoning status," Rahdert said. To build a hotel, he will need special city approval.

Realistically, with some 100,000 square feet of buildings, a single residential buyer isn't going to buy the property, he said. So if it reverts only to residential use, he said, that would be the "death knell" for the historic Schiller buildings.

The only way to keep the restoration option alive is to keep the institutional zoning active, he said. As a preservationist, he said, renovating the building as a hotel is his goal.

Deborah Tilly and Jo Golson, who both live across the street from Schiller, are members of a neighborhood group that has strongly opposed Rahdert's original hotel plan.

Lawns throughout the neighborhood are dotted with signs that read "No 250 room commercial hotel and parking garage on Edgewater Drive."

Both said they will oppose the scaled-back plan.

"We want to keep our neighborhood residential," Golson said.

Tilly said neighbors want nothing more than for city leaders to keep the zoning of the property as it stands, strictly for residential homes, or for a school or religious institution.

Mayor Bob Hackworth said he's listening.

The first plan, with 250 hotel rooms, was too intensive for the residential neighborhood, he said.

"But I think there is some legitimate room for discussion about a smaller hotel," he said.

Rahdert, who represents the St. Petersburg Times, said that if the city doesn't look favorably on his project by February, "I guess I'll give up on trying to do a hotel."

Although Washburn Academy is not able to purchase the whole property, Rahdert said it's possible "they'd team up with other buyers."

Officials from Clearwater Academy International, another school that employs Hubbard study techniques, also toured the property. But headmaster Jim Zwers said the Schiller site is too large and much too expensive for its needs. And he said the school has no interest in joining a group to purchase it.

Some residents fear Rahdert is using the school as leverage to push through his scaled-back hotel plan.

"I have never made any threats of any kind and I don't plan to start," Rahdert said. "As far as I'm concerned, Plan A was a 250-room condo and hotel. Plan B is a 150-room hotel, a scaled down project. Anything else is Plan C."

[Last modified August 5, 2006, 07:29:10]