Preserve the 250 units

After successfully leading efforts to block the development of a hotel on the north end of Longboat Key and helping defeat a proposal for increased density at the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort, the organizers of the Keep Longboat Special group want to go further.

They have suggested a referendum to stop the development of any more hotel units on Longboat Key — beyond what already exists.

Specifically, they have suggested rescinding the 2008 referendum that voters overwhelmingly approved to create a pool of 250 tourism units that could be meted out to hotel developers. A variety of town leaders at the time arrived at that number because it would have replaced the number of hotel rooms that were lost during the conversion boom of hotels to condos in the mid-2000s.

Longboaters who were here then likely remember those days. They were not good for the Key.

History is worth recounting.

During the late 1980s and through much of the 1990s, the now-disbanded Longboat Key Public Interest Committee worked hard at reducing — some, like us, might say worked hard at eliminating — commercial enterprises from Longboat Key. 

PIC was anti-business. Its bylaws forbid members of the Chamber of Commerce from joining PIC. And thanks to PIC’s influence with Town Hall and on Town Commission elections, Longboat Key’s government developed a reputation as the worst place in the region for business.

Given this climate, and the great real estate boom of 2003-2006, several owners of small resorts, as well as the owners of the Holiday Inn, decided it made more economic sense to sell their resorts to condo developers.

Then came the consequences. 

With 250 fewer hotel rooms and the recession, the Key’s retailers and restaurants suffered. Just ask Harry Christensen or Ray Arpke what that was like. 

The former Avenue of the Flowers (Publix), once the most vibrant shopping center, became an alley of  shuttered store fronts. The Centre Shops experienced its own struggles. Whitney Beach looked almost abandoned. And Buttonwood Plaza struggled. 

The conditions became the proverbial vicious downward spiral. With fewer and fewer visitors, retailers and restaurants sputtered and shuttered. 

Everyone noticed. Many of the town’s leaders worried if the trends continued. This was top of mind: Word would spread that Longboat Key was in decline. Longboat Key would become less attractive for potential homebuyers. The Longboat Key Club and Resort would lose some of its elan. And by this time the Colony was on its way down.

Thanks to civic leaders, such as David Brenner, Jim Brown, Sandy Gilbert and Gail Loefgren, they recognized the atmosphere and conditions needed to change. Joan Webster, as a longtime leader of PIC and former  mayor, and other PIC leaders changed their position, too. They recognized Longboat Key needed a healthy balance of residences, tourism and commercial enterprises if it was to remain one of the premier residential-resort communities in Florida. PIC became a proponent of business, albeit a balance of business with residential.

All of these leaders and representatives of the chamber worked on a months-long campaign advocating the reasons why the town needed to bring back more tourism — and the reasons for creating the pool of 250 tourism units.

Most of the referendum’s advocates believed it unlikely there would be a rush to develop the 250 units — but at least the pool of units created an opportunity and sent a message about Longboat Key changing its ways.

The 2008 referendum authorizing the 250 units passed overwhelmingly. 

That was nine years ago.

Since then, only one hotel company has tapped the 250 units — Ocean Properties added 85 units to its former Hilton, now the Zota Beach Resort. Longboat Key still has 165 fewer hotel units than it did prior to 2004. Even fewer if you subtract the 237 units lost at the Colony for seven years. 

Longboat Mayor Terry Gans was right when he said recently: “Sometimes all of us need to take a deep breath.” We’ll take literary license here and translate the mayor’s comment this way: It would be a mistake to rescind the 2008 referendum.

Been there. Done that. Sending the signal of rejecting development and stopping development has consequences Longboat doesn’t want to repeat.