re Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort project - Special City of Hollywood CRA/City Comm. meeting re Margaritaville at 5 pm on Wednesday; re Hollywood's South Park Road Redevelopment (HIAD)

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re Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort project - Special City of Hollywood CRA/City Comm. meeting re Margaritaville at 5 pm on Wednesday; re Hollywood's South Park Road Redevelopment (HIAD)

There is a Special City of Hollywood CRA/City Commission joint meeting re Margaritaville at Hollywood City Hall on Wednesday on May 29th at 5 p.m.

http://agenda.hollywoodfl.org/cache/00001/234/AGEN%2005-29-13%20Joint%20Special.pdf

Last week's community meeting was another masterful production by Hollywood City Manager  Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark, with more than enough info to fill everyone in on what's what and what's been changed, with a well-produced Power Point presentation that answered and anticipated every conceivable question or concern with facts, not idle speculation or theories.

The City Manager's Office had 4 separate stacks of document handouts in the lobby for the public to grab on their way in, including a copy of new agreement; in total, weighing about 20 oz or so.

http://www.hollywoodfl.org/index.aspx?nid=650

http://www.hollywoodfl.org/documentcenter/view/2587

There almost might've been too much information to process, something that you could never say was the case in Hallandale Beach. 

Plus, they had a stash of three separate kinds of cookies in the lobby with a TV monitor set up for any possible overflow. Now that's planning.

Well, the cookies were grabbed and eaten, but the TV wasn't needed, as there were probably about 90 people in total inside, with a few empty seats near most of the usual familiar faces.

All but one current Hollywood City Commissioner was present in the chambers along with former Commissioners Fran Russo and Beam Furr.

From my perspective, someone who in the past had been dis-satisfied with various aspects of both Margaritaville's plan as well as the long-ago rejected Hard Rock proposal, it may've been the best single day thus far for the Margaritaville project and Lojeta developer Lon Tabatchnick.

Hollywood CRA Director Jorge Camejo, City Attorney Jeff Sheffel, Planning Dept. head 

Jaye Epstein and the city's hospitality consultant all spoke from dais when CSR wasn't connecting-the-dots down near the lectern with a mixture of both precision and humor.

It was clearly Lon Tabatchnick's best day at Hollywood City Hall in a long time, as he was up on the dais with the others, in a polo shirt instead of a suit, and from where I sat, with my video-camera rolling, he seemed much more relaxed and focused than in the past, and not nearly so anxious as he has sometimes appeared to be, given the investment of time, energy and money he's made.

Perhaps it was a turning point.

Coincidentally, there was an interesting photo-filled article in The Daily Mail today on Jimmy Buffet and the Margaritaville empire he and his team have created:

The Daily Mail
Welcome to Margaritaville: How Jimmy Buffett's four-minute song about being drunk and lazy became the most lucrative song in the world and spawned $100MILLION empire 
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 00:44 EST, 27 May 2013 
UPDATED: 00:47 EST, 27 May 2013
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331498/Welcome-Margaritaville-How-Jimmy-Buffetts-minute-song-drunk-lazy-lucrative-song-world-spawned-100MILLION-empire.html

Channel 10, Miami
Commission to vote on revised Margaritaville agreement 
New agreement adds Starwood Capital to the project  
Published On: May 28 2013 12:54:25 PM EDT
http://www.local10.com/news/commission-to-vote-on-revised-margaritaville-agreement/-/1717324/20327872/-/2pjlhpz/-/index.html

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*Separate issue: 

As I've said previously said to people around town, the place where the City of Hallandale Beach actually thinks it'll be charging its alternative energy vehicles for the foreseeable future is a facility in Hollywood located on Park Road & Pembroke Road -across the street from the Coca-Cola bottling plant and the Orangebrook Golf & Country Club- that'll be gone as soon as Hollywood can get rid of it, the South Park Road Redevelopment (HIAD)

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So what's HB's back-up plan for when this facility disappears?

Good question.

In none of the HB City Commission meetings that I've personally attended or watched online in the past year or so on the subject of the city purchasing alternative energy vehicles, have I once heard former City Manager Mark A. Antonio and current CM  Renee Miller -or any of her three highly-paid assistants- say one word about the future reality of that Park Road site that HB intends on using to refuel its new vehicles.

Each time I hear it brought up I honestly wonder if the highly-paid help at HB City Hall even knows.
And each time, I'm convinced they don't, because they speak in such smug and oblivious tones. 

http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/quick_topics/publications/wc/brownfields/resolutions/BF061102000_RES.pdf

http://www.hollywoodfl.org/DocumentCenter/View/1962

Tell me, when have you ever seen anything like this level of detail in HB for constructive suggestions for all the various empty lots and city/CRA-owned parcels in HB?

I mentioned this meeting last year on th blog but was unable to attend it:

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/important-meeting-tonight-at-hollywood.html

The Department of Community and Economic Development is holding a public meeting regarding the South Park Road Redevelopment Site, formerly the Hollywood Incinerator Ash Dump, on Monday, October 22, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall, Room 219.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for has announced funding availability to carry out cleanup activities at a specific brownfield sites. The City of Hollywood is interested in applying for a grant for the purposes of cleaning up environmental concerns on the South Park Road site.
This public meeting is the first step in moving forward with the potential redevelopment of this site and discussions will include funding availability and process and community support of grant efforts to address existing environmental concerns. Community participation is essential in City projects and your feedback during this public meeting is encouraged.
All interested groups or individuals are invited to attend this public meeting. If you are interested in providing feedback and are unable to attend, you may send your comments via e-mail to dbiederman@hollywoodfl.org. For additional information about this meeting contact the Department of Community and Economic Development at 954.921.327

Update re Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort; Community Meeting/Q&A at Hollywood City Hall re proposed changes to the project's lease & related documents is Thursday at 6 p.m.; What are Starwood Capital and Lon Tabatchnick/Lojeta up to now?

Received a helpful head's up yesterday from a well-informed and plugged-in reader in next-door Hollywood about a timely update on the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort; with a community meeting/Q&A scheduled for Thursday at 6 pm at Hollywood City Hall regarding the various changes to the project's lease and related documents.

This morning I officially received the news from the City of Hollywood, below:

What are Starwood Capital and Lon Tabatchnick/Lojeta up to now?
Hmm-m...

Seven weeks ago, thanks to The Balance Sheet Blog,  the conscientious “eyes and ears” of Hollywood, we knew the following: http://balancesheetblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/margaritaville-2/

I attended that semi-contentious meeting at Hollywood City Hall (and recorded it) and I think it's fair to say that even among the Margaritaville supporters in the chambers and within the general public as a whole, there is definitely growing resistance to letting this little melodrama play itself out much longer, as was made clear by the not-so-sanguine comments of Comm. Peter Hernandez towards the end of the meeting.

This was not at all helped by what in my opinion appeared to be the general evasiveness of some of the Starwood Capital team members present in their responses, as they seemed more tight-lipped than you would think they'd be at a public meeting involving something that the Hollywood community is so emotionally and financially invested in -and for good reason, too.

That's especially true given the history of this project and the fact that Starwood Capital and their new pal Lon Tabatchnick were asking for something from Hollywood's elected representatives, NOT giving them something to make the medicine go down faster.

Some of the Starwood Capital folks almost seemed genuinely upset that the City Commission wanted more specific answers from them than they were prepared to give, but then I saw this phenomena all the time on Capitol Hill, too, where well-prepped people hit a wall after a while, and became increasingly disconnected to the larger picture.

Specifically, that happened more frequently than you'd imagine it would at Congressional hearings I attended in the 1990's held by what was then called the House Telecomm. & Finance Subcommittee, under then-Chair John Dingell involving the U.S. financial services industry, some of which were both highly-publicized and highly-controversial.

As of today, I don't know with certainty who'll be speaking on Thursday -besides, likely, Hollywood City Manager Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark, whom as regular readers of the blog know, I'm a big fan of- but I genuinely hope that we hear the answers directly from Starwood and not from Lon Tabatchnick's attorney, or from a hired-gun PR whiz.
Guess we'll all find out soon enough...

The community meeting is NOT being called "As The World Turns," but you can be excused for thinking that it ought to be after all this time, with yours truly at 99% of those public meetings from the beginning.

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The City of Hollywood will be holding a Community Meeting to review the proposed changes to the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort Lease and related documents along with a question and answer period on Thursday, May 23rd at 6:00 p.m. at Hollywood City Hall (Room 219).

The Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort is proposed for construction on an approximately 5 acre parcel of city-owned land between Johnson Street and Michigan Street on Hollywood Beach.

The Community Meeting will be followed on Wednesday, May 29th at 5:00 p.m. with a Joint Special City Commission/CRA meeting.  This meeting will also be held at Hollywood City Hall (Room 219). City and CRA Staff will present the proposed changes to the City Commission. Representatives from Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort, LLC, including Starwood Capital, will also be in attendance. 

For questions, please contact the Office of the City Manager at 954.921.3201.

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Later...

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Developer tweaks Margaritaville contract with Hollywood
By Susannah Bryan, Sun Sentinel
5:38 p.m. EDT, May 21, 2013
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hollywood/fl-margaritaville-hollywood-update-20130521,0,2186680.story

re Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort - Sara Case of Hollywood's Balance Sheet Blog weighs in on the plausible merits of the City of Hollywood CRA's plan to increase their stake in the Johnson Street project from $10 million to $23 million; Starwood Capital Group jumps on board, but why now?

Above, looking west at Hollywood City Hall, where Tuesday night's very important Hollywood CRA meeting will be held at 6 p.m. September 20, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

re Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort - Sara Case of Hollywood's Balance Sheet Blog weighs in on the plausible merits of the City of Hollywood CRA's plan to increase their stake in the project on Johnson Street from $10 million to $23 million; Starwood Capital jumps on board, but why now?

Over the weekend, well-informed Hollywood civic activist and blogger Sara Case posted some thought from her point-of-view on the city's new proposal to stanch the bleeding in the Johnson Street project known as Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort and mentions why she, rather counter-intuitively, supports it, despite the large number of CRA dollars involved.

I urge you to read it before Tuesday night's meeting, which I will be at.

Balance Sheet Blog

MARGARITAVILLE FINANCING

By Sara Case

September 1, 2012, 4:08 PM 

Hollywood residents in need of tax and fee reductions and City employees in need of salary increases …Time to Pay Attention!

As we all know by now, the Margaritaville project has been unable to secure funding from foreign investors as the original plan required.  So now we have a new proposal in which the CRA is to give the developer $23 million for construction financing.  When I learned of this plan, I initially opposed it as one more boondoggle — a massive developer subsidy like Radius, Hollywood Station, WSG, Great Southern, and Block 55, to name a few.

Read the rest of the post at:

http://balancesheetblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/margaritaville-financing/

My post on this topic from Friday, August 31st, was titled, Important public forum on the proposed Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort is scheduled for Tuesday Sept. 4th at 6 p.m. Chief among topics will be whether the Hollywood CRA should increase their investment in the Lon Tabatchnick project on Johnson Street and the Broadwalk from $10 million to $23 million

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/important-public-forum-on-proposed.html

Saturday also brought forth this news, which is interesting in ways that I can't get into the details of now, but which I may be able to get into after Tuesday night, depending upon what gets said.

The Miami Herald

Hollywood’s Margaritaville project gets new funding source

By Carli Teproff

August 31, 2012

Margaritaville — the $130 million beach resort Hollywood city leaders have been dreaming about for years — has a new funding source: Starwood Capital, the investment group which once financed high-end hotels such as the St. Regis, W, Westin and Sheratons around the globe.

“We now have the necessary funds to complete the project,” developer Lon Tabatchnik said Thursday. “This is what we were waiting for.”

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/30/2977506/hollywoods-margaritaville-project.html

After reading the above, you're more than reasonable if you ask whether or not anyone from Starwood Capital Group will be making themselves available for some serious questioning by Hollywood taxpayers at Tuesday night's meeting -besides City Manager Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark, some city staffers and developer Lon Tabatchnick or one of his reps, and, most likely, every single candidate challenging a City Hall incumbent.

Like, well... were they interested in the project much earlier and turn it down because of concerns about some aspect of the overall plan, marketing concept or the strength of the financing, or were they always biding their time in the bushes waiting for Tabatchnick and Company to get desperate enough to finally agree to meet their demands for whatever concession it was they weren't given originally?

It would also be great if someone asked Mr. Tabatchnick, given how over-confident he has appeared to many observers to be, when was the last time that he and his group actually met two of his promises, guarantees or legal deadlines (to the city and its taxpayers) in a row regarding this project?

Isn't that sort of history animating at least some of the opposition in Hollywood to this project getting more CRA funds now?

Yes, it is.

March 21, 2012  CNBC video: Maria Bartiromo interviews Starwood Capital's CEO Barry Sternlicht.
http://www.executiveinterviews.com/delivery/v1/mini/default.asp?order=U14414

http://www.starwoodcapital.com/Overview.aspx

Important public forum on the proposed Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort is scheduled for Tuesday Sept. 4th at 6 p.m. Chief among topics will be whether the Hollywood CRA should increase their investment in the Lon Tabatchnick project on Johnson Street and the Broadwalk from $10 million to $23 million

Important public forum on the proposed Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort is scheduled for Tuesday Sept. 4th at 6 p.m. Chief among topics will be whether the Hollywood CRA should increase their investment in the Lon Tabatchnick project on Johnson Street and the Broadwalk from $10 million to $23 million

I received the communication below from the City of Hollywood this morning about an important subject that I've written about dozens of times on this blog the past few years, sometimes with frustration, sometimes with pleasant surprise. 

In an election year, with 5 of the 7 incumbents in Hollywood running for re-election in November, you simply can't underestimate how important this meeting may prove to be to the future of the city and the beach, depending upon not only the turn-out, but the tenor and direction of the debate as well.

Don't kid yourself -what Hollywood's elected officials are proposing is nothing less than doubling-down on their original bet with CRA dollars, from $10 million to $23 million.
Is this a wise and reasonable decision based on the facts on the ground, or is it going past the point of what is prudent under the current circumstances?

If you live anywhere in the area, you owe it to yourself to come see the presentation in-person and get the facts undiluted, and then hear Hollywood taxpayers ask questions and make the case for or against doing this, one day before the Hollywood City Commission meets as the CRA and votes on the matter at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

View this in your browser

Public Forum on Proposed Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort

A public forum to review proposed changes to the development agreement and ground lease

between the City of Hollywood, Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and

Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort, LLC is scheduled for Tuesday, September 4, 2012

at 6:00 p.m., Hollywood City Hall, Room 219, 2600 Hollywood Boulevard. 

This meeting comes in advance of a special joint meeting of the Commission and CRA Board

set for September 5, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. in which the Commission will consider an amendment

to the existing agreement that updates the timeline for the construction of the project, details

new financing plans and provides additional revenues to the city that have been

negotiated with the developer. The Commission, in its role as the CRA board, will also

consider a new compensated funding agreement that increases the CRA's investment in the

project.  

All interested residents are invited to attend.

For more information and history on the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort project, see http://www.hollywoodfl.org/index.aspx?NID=650

3D animated depiction of the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort is at
http://www.hollywoodfl.org/mediacenter.aspx?VID=9