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Controversial project receives rare rebukes

State and federal permitting agencies rejected a St. Petersburg surgeon's plans for the Magnolia Bay development  in Taylor County and will deny permits unless he makes major changes.

By CRAIG PITTMAN
Published April 24, 2007

The controversial condominium-marina-hotel project St. Petersburg surgeon J. Crayton Pruitt Sr. wants to build in rural Taylor County was dealt a pair of staggering blows by regulators Monday.

Both state and federal permitting agencies rejected Pruitt's plans for the Magnolia Bay development and will deny permits unless he makes major changes.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which issues federal permits for wetland destruction, said it relied heavily on a conclusion by the state Department of Environmental Protection that Pruitt's project is "not in the public interest."

The corps processes thousands of wetland permits in Florida every year and has not turned down more than 10 in a year for the past decade. From 1999 to 2003, it approved 12,000 wetland permits in Florida and denied just one.

The state permitting agency, the Suwannee River Water Management District, criticized virtually every aspect of the project, including the 7-foot-deep channel that Pruitt wants to blast through an aquatic preserve, the 200-foot-wide road he has proposed building through wetlands and the development's failure to deal with the site's high potential to flood during storms.

Even though the channel is a critical part of the project, Pruitt shrugged off the agencies' rejections.

"This is just them saying the things they're worried about," he said. "We're in the early stages of this thing."

He said he would sit down with both agencies to negotiate, but acknowledged: "It may not be feasible to build anything. If that's true, that's the way it is."

Pruitt, 75, wants to build 624 condo units, a marina, an 874-room hotel, a helicopter landing pad, a public aquarium, a marine science laboratory and 280,000 square feet of commercial space.

Currently the site in the community of Dekle Beach consists of 500 acres of swamp and salt marsh that the locals call Boggy Bay. Surrounding it is the Big Bend Seagrass Aquatic Preserve, the state's largest aquatic preserve and one of the largest stretches of uninterrupted sea grass in North America.

The plans for turning Boggy Bay into Magnolia Bay call for filling in more than 100 acres of the wetlands and blasting a channel for the marina 2 miles long and 100 feet wide through the preserve's sea grass beds.

Pruitt has said the channel is essential to making the development financially feasible, and that his plan to transplant all the sea grass to other spots is a sign of how environmentally beneficial the development will be.

The channel also is the feature that has generated the most opposition.

"It's a big factor" in the state's review of the project, said Jon Dinges, director of resource management for the Suwannee River Water Management District.

Dinges signed the 66-page report recommending the district board reject the permit when it meets May 10. A "denial with prejudice" like this happens perhaps once a year out of 800 permits that are approved, Dinges said.

The report also contends that Pruitt's plans underestimate the size of the sea grass impact and overestimate the value of his proposals to make up for the damage.

The flooding concerns cited by the water district report bring up another aspect of the project cited by its critics. Seventy houses lined the Dekle Beach waterfront in 1993 when the No-Name Storm hit Florida's coast with a massive tidal surge. Ten people were killed, 57 houses destroyed.

The corps' letter to Pruitt cited "the project's lack of avoidance of impacts, its proposed purpose and the high quality and value of the resources proposed for impact." One alternative suggested by the corps: avoid building anything in the wetlands.

While the objections may be impossible for Pruitt to overcome, the development's loudest critic said Monday he isn't ready for a victory party.

"I know how these things get turned around," said Dekle Beach resident Rick Causey, a retired soil scientist. "I'll be happy when the last nail is driven into it."

[Last modified April 23, 2007, 23:43:24]