Town center: Let market work

The 4.8-acre Amore property is another example of what happens when governments buy land.

By Matt Walsh
| 6:00 a.m. October 9, 2019

Planners envision retaining the parking facilities from the now demolished Amore.

Longboat Key
Opinion

Around and around we go.

It appears increasingly apparent that the Longboat Key Town Commission is becoming stuck in a circular discussion about what to do with the 4.8-acre site near Publix where it envisioned a vibrant arts, education and community center as part of a town center.

Here is a simplistic and realistic answer on what to do: Sell it.

Longtime readers of this page know we rarely have supported local governments buying and owning land. Typically, governments are poor stewards of land and even worse developers.

The former Amore restaurant property is a case in point. When you have seven elected commissioners, it’s not likely they will reach agreement on how best to use 4.8 acres of vacant land. They all have ideas and a bureaucratic quagmire, as Larry Thompson, president of Ringling College of Art and Design, learned.

There is a way out. We have seen it occur twice on a much grander scale.

Forty years ago, South Miami Beach was a graveyard of decaying oceanfront hotels, apartments and retail stores. For more than a decade, Miami Beach city commissioners solicited proposals to redevelop almost all of South Beach in one grand, visionary project, according to the city’s specifications.

It never happened.

Likewise in downtown St. Petersburg. In the mid-1980s, city commissioners there sought a master developer to redevelop block after block of crumbling buildings in the heart of the city — again according to the city’s detailed specs. This went on for more than five years.

It never happened either.

A Task for the P&Z Board

Typically, it’s healthy when new perspectives come into governing bodies. They can bring needed and positive change.

To that end, David Green, a new member of the Longboat Key Planning and Zoning Board, is urging the board to be more proactive than reactive.

Yes and no.

Longtime Longboat residents might remember this idea of a more assertive, proactive P&Z board brought about some conflict between the Town Commission and P&Z board during the tenure of late Mayor Hal Lenobel. The conclusion was a reminder to P&Z members they served at the behest of the commission.

Nonetheless, Green is on target when he suggests the town staff help educate the planning board’s new members on land-use issues.

Although Green wants to view these issues with an eye toward climate change, we would urge discussion of two issues that are equally worthy — if not more so:

The requirement for a referendum on any increase in residential density; and
The oversupply of commercially zoned property.

Those two issues stand as extraordinary impediments to redevelopment and ensure the deteriorating nature of the Key’s commercial properties.

But here’s what happened instead: Each government gave up and let the private sector do its magic.

The value of the real estate had fallen so low that they attracted creative developers who bought one, two and three parcels and redeveloped them.

The results were incredible. South Beach became one of the most valuable, sought-after locations in the U.S. and the world. And downtown St. Petersburg is the most vibrant downtown in all of Florida — teeming with apartments, retail, restaurants and offices.

Moral of the story: Put a “for sale” sign on the property, and let market forces take over.