Seal the Unicorp deal

Stranger things always happen on Longboat Key, so no one should take for granted the Town Commission vote Friday on the second reading of the ordinance to approve Unicorp National Developments’ plans to redevelop the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort.

To continue Longboat’s customary death by 1,000 cuts and designing by committee, Preserve Longboat Inc. continues to persist. The 7,650-square-foot ballroom is still too big. PLI wants 4,700 square feet, but it will take 5,000 to 6,000. 

In addition, Preserve Longboat and Commissioner Jim Brown want eliminated altogether the 2,350 square feet of ballroom space that Unicorp gave up and the total footprint of the project be reduced accordingly. 

A cut here, a cut there. It’s easy when it’s someone else’s money. But if the cuts continue, believe Chuck Whittall: The five-star St. Regis resort will vanish. 

In spite of this, we urge the five commissioners who voted March 6 to approve Unicorp’s plans (and compromises), not to capitulate and stay the course. Unicorp and its accommodating CEO, Whittall, have met the town’s legal requirements. There is no substantial or compelling legal evidence that gives the commission grounds to deny approval on second reading.

We know a few of the commissioners — George Spoll, Randy Clair and, to an extent, Vice Mayor Ed Zunz — still have reservations and objections to granting the remaining 165 units in the town’s tourism pool to Unicorp. Clair thinks Unicorp’s forfeiture of the Colony’s 237 tourism units in favor of being able to submit its application under the town’s Outline Development Plan rules is an unconstitutional taking. We won’t get into the legal weeds on that point, other than to say the town has granted the Colony Association and Unicorp the right and standing to submit its plans to the town. The town attorney repeatedly has said the commission is to rule only on the application based on regulations in effect today — not on any dispute over ownership of the Colony units.

Actually, these objections to granting the 165 units to Unicorp are amusing in their irony.

For years, the Longboat mantra has been “keep Longboat Longboat.” Don’t make it Miami Beach. Indeed, voters overwhelmingly last year turned down a proposed hotel on north Longboat. 

Then along comes Unicorp. To create a development with condos and a resort under town codes, it proposes to eliminate 236 of the Colony’s 237 tourism units and replace them with 166 tourism units — a net loss of 71 hotel units. What’s more, that would mean the end to the tourism pool. Voila! No more new hotel rooms to be added to the Key (not including the Longboat Key Club and Resort).

You would think this would please the Longboaters who moan about traffic and Miami Beach. But Longboaters are hard to please. A few commissioners have asked: What if some other developer or resort wanted extra units?

To our surprise, Commissioner Brown, one of the nitpickier skeptics of Unicorp’s plans, offered a simple solution: Take a vote, just as the town voters did in 2008, to create another pool of tourism units.

Unicorp’s Whittall has even offered to donate $10,000 to pay for a community mailing to determine whether voters would support creating another pool.

But first things first. Barring surprising substantial and compelling evidence at Friday’s second reading of the Unicorp ordinance, we hope commissioners make that meeting short and anticlimactic. 

It’s time to move forward. Go with Unicorp’s plans. Make history.