Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Political futures of Joe Gibbons and Alexander Lewy are part of the subplot of Wednesday night's crucial vote re the future Quality of Life of Hallandale Beach as City Comm. considers approval of GPH Regency, LLC's incompatible condo project at 2000 S. Ocean Drive




The news last week that Hallandale Beach City Commisioner Alexander Lewy will resign effective in May -story below- really makes what will happen Wednesday night at the continuation of the City Commission's 9-hour April 2nd meeting re GPH Regency, LLC's incompatible project at S. Ocean Drive, flanked by the very large beach condominiums, The Hemispheres and Parker Plaza respectively, much more interesting.
(That was a new low -and record-length for a HBCC meeting.)

The reason is that so long as Lewy was a candidate, the threat of alienating all those very well-informed and highly-motivated Super Voters on the beach -esp. at The Parker Plaza and The Hemispheres- would've been politically unappealing for Lewy, even though he's got a consistent record of being reflexively pro-development.

Even to the point of refusing to postpone for a few weeks the vote on the Beachwalk project next to the Intracoastal Bridge in August of 2012 until the majority of the residents most directly-affected by it had returned from from their summer out-of-town, and could actually be in attendance and make their concerns known.

But Lewy wasn't interested in doing that, even though it would've been the right thing to do, given that the waterfront site had been empty for MANY YEARS, and was sold for a song.
How could waiting 4 more weeks possibly throw everything out-of-kilter?
It couldn't, of course, but like his colleagues, Lewy didn't care.
Instead of doing the right thing for a change, Lewy insisted the vote be held and voted for it while the nearby property owners whose lives would be most affected were left to simmer with their justified anger -out-of-town.

Now, without the abstract threat of thousands of affluent and well-informed voters on the beach withholding their votes from him in the upcoming August primary for the Florida House 100 seat if he were to cast a vote for that incompatible project before us now, Lewy is free to vote for the developer and not have to deal with the logical consequences of such a decision.


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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Alex Lewy quits Hallandale Beach commission, drops out of state House race
By Anthony Man
Sun Sentinel
11:53 AM EDT, April 10, 2014
Original post | 10:40 a.m.
Updated | 11:47 a.m.
sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/broward-politics-blog/sfl-alex-lewy-quits-drops-out-20140410,0,3001497.story

Considering all the typing she was doing, this ought to be two full pages of play-by-play, with useful analysis and context of all the players and their motivations.
Reporter seems to have missed more of the meeting given pertinent facts that are missing.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Luxury condo wants to call Hallandale Beach home
By Susannah Bryan, Staff writer
10:18 p.m. EDT, April 2, 2014
Not Mission Accomplished:
Meeting of the Board of Directors 
September 18, 2013 

7:30 P.M. - The Plaza Room 

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