For a change, THE place to be Wednesday night is in Hallandale Beach: Vote tonight at 6:30 p.m. re The Related Group's 31-story Beachwalk hotel-condo project. YES to building a hotel, NO to 84 more condos and ceding de facto control of North Beach to Related

 Rendering from The Related Group

We say YES for a Beachwalk Hotel, NO to 84 more condos! And an emphatic NO to turning-over de facto control of North Beach to The Related Group, so they can create a boutique-style beach there that caters largely to their clients, not the taxpayers of this city who've had to watch in dismay as the beach has continued its decline under Joy Cooper and Mark Antonio. 

Obviously you're the best judge of how you spend your own free time, but IF you're free on Wednesday night for a bit, it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world if you came to Wednesday night's City Commission meeting in Hallandale Beach at 6:30 p.m.

You can not only be an eyewitness to the longstanding dysfunctional democracy we have here, but also watch and see if the Commission actually gives in to their own worst instincts -to act without thinking things through- and decides whether or not, in exchange for, essentially peanuts, in order to get another new hotel in the city which EVERYONE wants, including me -something The Related Group could already legally build if they wanted to, without the Commission voting- the city will hand over de facto control of the public beach called North Beach, so they can make it a boutique beach that caters largely to the TRG residents and hotel clients for their three properties located within four blocks of the Hollywood- Hallandale Beach cityline. 
Oh, and they'd also have control of the public parking garage, too.

Both for thirty years. 

                                                                                                         

So why not just encourage them to build the hotel that everyone supports -and which they can already build without the City Commission weighing-in-? There is no shortage of condos in this community, so why are we going to add to the hundreds and hundreds that the City Commission has already approved but which have not been built yet? Greed. 

Above and below are renderings offered by The Related Group at the June 6, 2012 HB City Commission meeting.  

On the renderings offered up by TRG, they show an idyliic view of North Beach under their control, but neglected to show the large physical footprint of the 41-story hotel -Beach One Resort- that would be occupying most of the skyline on the right side of this rendering. Why the obvious deception?

They also completely failed to explain where all the myriad customers would park when the city's North Beach Community Center -under the Water Tower- had an event on the weekend at the same time that the restaurant was busy and there were lots of people at the beach. The public garage they'd be in charge of only has 91 spaces. Where's the answer to that?

In my own opinion, and that of many other HB residents who pay close attention to what happens here, that sort of bad decision re the public beach WILL permanently and negatively affect the Quality-of-Life in Hallandale Beach. Unfortunately, the evidence is already clear that Mayor Cooper, the same woman who genuinely believes the taxpayer-owned North Beach Community Center, the one she has never held a meeting about, just steps from the beach should remain closed to actual taxpayers unless they pay to use it, has no problem with any of this.

None.

She will, of course, publicly claim to have some concerns about the parking situation along Diana Drive, the two-lane residential street south of the project, just so she can feign concern for the residents who will get a new 31-story neighbor, but she'll still vote yes anyway.

Attorney Debbie Orshefsky will smile and say something non-committal and the mayor, as usual, will act like Debbie and Related are actually doing the community a big favor, when the truth of the matter is that they're the ones who need the city to NOT follow their own rules, their very own Master Plan and any semblance of common sense for this project to get approved. 

 Attorney Debbie Orshefsky at the First Reading at Hallandale Beach City Hall. June 6, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

The Second Reading re The Beachwalk is tonight at 6:30 p.m. at 400 South Federal Highway

Yes for a Beachwalk Hotel, NO to 84 more condos!

Part 2 of 2 re The Beachwalk project in Hallandale Beach -Initial comments & ruminations on Wednesday night's HB City Comm. meeting; calling out Carole Pumpian, crony capitalism mercenary

The Second Reading re The Beachwalk is Wednesday June 20th at 6:30 p.m.

Having waited an entire week, it's now time to move on to some long overdue public discussion of what I'm calling the "meat-and-potatoes" portion of our discussion of The Beachwalk project at 2400 East Hallandale Beach Blvd., next to the Intracoastal Bridge in Hallandale Beach, along with some related matters which you surely WON'T be seeing raised or discussed elsewhere in this community, especially among the sleepwalking news media.
I call it "meat-and-potatoes" because like that sort of comfort food when it's done right, it should be thoroughly chewed-over and savored -with some time for reflection.

It was hard for me and many other well-informed Hallandale Beach residents attending last Wednesday night's City Commission meeting -or among those watching it online- not to take notice of the fact that corporate PR shill and Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce president Carole Pumpian kept her dubious record intact of supporting every single development project proposed in HB, despite what it's for, despite what it'll looks like, and most importantly, despite what HB neighborhood residents, homeowners and small business owners think or want.


Plain and simple, Carole Pumpian just doesn't care what they -YOU- think.


She's working her agenda, not the community's.

Above, in pink, Carole Pompian sitting in the second row of the three rows of lobbyists and hired hands working for Related to get this over-reaching bad idea passed. June 6, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Pumpian's been very consistent about that if you hadn't noticed, but as you'll soon hear, there's a very good reason for her to be so unconcerned about the genuine public opinion of this ocean side city's 38,000 residents.

No, rather than be concerned with what Hallandale Beach citizens think, Pumpian's more of a fan of the sort of phony and insincere corporate "artificial turf" grass roots efforts that yours truly has seen up-close in many parts of this country over the years.


That includes the orchestrated one involving the controversial out-of-scale proposal from 2009-2010 by the union that owns the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa, which wanted to place multiple giant condo towers of over 25-stories in and around the Diplomat Gold Course in NE Hallandale Beach, including one of the city's most affluent streets, which HB residents and homeowners overwhelmingly opposed, an effort my friend Csaba Kulin was among the leaders of throughout.


But Carole Pumpian and the HB Chamber of Commerce of Patricia Genetti and Joe Kessel didn't let the facts or the Hallandale Beach public's clear opposition to the Diplomat's plan get in the way of their vocally championing the proposal at public meeting after public meeting thru the long process, before the Broward County Commission eventually killed it 6-3 about 26 months ago.


http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2010/04/diplomat_plans_fail_to_win_cou.html


For those of you who don't already know, and I'm sure that the vast majority of you, let me connect-the-dots a bit more on the Chamber and its Executive Director, Patricia Genetti, who runs it on a day-to-day basis.


Genetti had no qualms at all about supporting City Hall's deceptive handling of the issue, which included trying to keep public information about the developer's changes and modifications from the original plan from the public, and not placing it online until little more than 24 hours before the first actual vote that took place in the city, by the HB Planning & Zoning Advisory Board.
With yet another vote the following day by the City Commission.


More importantly to me and many other HB residents who care about transparency in public policy and use of taxpayer dollars, Genetti showed no moral or ethical qualms in vocally attacking HB taxpayers at public meetings who were against the project, even while she NEVER publicly disclosed when she spoke, that the City Commission paid the Chamber $50,000, much of which went for her own salary.


Which is to say that for a number of months, extending over two separate years, concerned HB taxpayers found themselves in the odd position of having their own tax dollars being used against them by someone like Genetti who was happy to bash them and other opponents of the Diplomat's plan like there was no tomorrow, but who lacked the basic integrity to come clean and admit that she was not an objective person. 


Genetti never admitted it in 2009 or 2010, and she's never admitted it in the two years since the Diplomat plan (and its cocky crew) were shot-down overwhelmingly by the Broward County Commission, and used as an example of what residents throughout the county did NOT want to see in the future near their neighborhood.


That ought to give you some sort of insight into the caliber and moral rectitude of some of the people we have in Hallandale Beach who always have their hands out for the taxpayer handout, and who have no qualms about attacking the citizens, taxpayers, homeowners and Mom & Pop shop owners of this community.
http://hallandalebeachchamber.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=53

Earlier I conspicuously used the word "residents" and that wasn't by accident, because there's a good reason that Pumpian is so consistently deaf, dumb and blind to the the genuine feelings and desires of actual Hallandale Beach residents, and why Pumpian is NOT someone whom the most-concerned citizens of this very frustrated town trust.
Far from it.


It's not just because of Pumpian's general demeanor, though it's true that it's been said to me by more than a few female residents of HB over the years that Pumpian gives the appearance of a woman constantly trying to connive or worm her way into important matters, and have some sort of connection to every one of these sorts of large construction/development  projects.
Now whether that's because of some basic economic desire on her part to make some money as a PR shill for them or their friends, or, in part, to fill some sort of need to appear to be an important and influential person in this city, I can't say, but it is the perception of a lot more well-informed people than she thinks.


But she's NOT either, of course.
This post of mine today will discuss in some general terms why she and the HB Chamber of Commerce aren't taken seriously by the most well-informed and most-involved citizens of Hallandale Beach.
Do you know what those reasons are or might be?

I'll give you a small hint.

It's one of the same reasons that I so gleefully ripped into her -and her ilk, the Joe Kessels of the world- two years ago at multiple Broward Planning Council and Broward County Commission meetings on the far-too-large Diplomat project they championed against the interests of HB residents who already lived next-door to the Diplomat Golf Course.

Of course it was hard not to be gleeful in picking apart the Kessel Crew's transparent weaknesses in their arguments, which sounded so remarkably similar that you couldn't help but wonder if they'd been written by the same Chamber or Diplomat marketing geniuses we have seen accomplish nothing, even while they rounded-up union supporters who didn't actually live here.

One of those pro-Diplomat supporters on the Chamber was the owner of the faux newspaper that's supported by tax dollars thanks to Mayor Cooper, Craig Farquhar's South Florida Sun-Times, who publicly lied about not having an opinion, when I and others have actually seen a copy of his email to Broward County urging its passage.


Plus, here's the official record that Craig Farquhar, this recipient of HB taxpayer largess that the taxpayers are actually AGAINST, this so-called person with "no position" on this issue is a stone-faced liar: Page 13 of the Broward Planning Council's Minutes of February 25, 2010.
is that enough proff for you that he's a hypocrtite?
Right there under Speakers in support of PH 8, six spaces after Joe Kessel, five spaces before Patricia Genetti.


Yes, of course, Farquahar is a member of the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce!
I told you it was the center for crony capitalism in this town -and he's the proof of that.
He received a $50k CRA loan, only has to repay $25k.
http://www.broward.org/PlanningCouncil/Documents/PlanningCouncilMonthlyMinutes/02252010Minutes.pdf


Newcomers to this blog take notice:

Broward Bulldog

Sweet deal for owners of Hallandale newspaper that features mayor as columnist

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 

FEBRUARY 9, 2012 AT 6:11 AM

A weekly newspaper in Hallandale Beach got a $50,000 city “loan” under terms so favorable that half of it – $25,000 – amounted to a taxpayer giveaway because the city did not require it to be repaid...

Read the rest of the story at: 

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/sweet-deal-for-owners-of-hallandale-newspaper-that-features-mayor-as-columnist/

See for yourself:
http://web.me.com/mike.butler/Change_Hallandale/Updates/Entries/2010/2/26_CIty_Raises_Taxes_while_Wasting_Money_on_Private_Companies_files/SunTimes_PromissoryNote.pdf


Or, see my February 14, 2012 blog post titled, Csaba Kulin on Hallandale Beach's crony capitalism deal with a fake newspaper that stands ethics on its head and takes CRA money in exchange for being a City Hall propaganda machine

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/above-september-12-2010-issue-of.html

Yes, the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce is sort of the ground-zero for the professional crony capitalism crowd of HB, who want to act like insiders and profit off the public's teat, which is something that as we all know so well, Joe Kessel managed to do below-the-radar for years.

See: 

Realtor Being Paid by Hallandale May Have Had Role in Controversial Loan to Pornographer

By Thomas Francis

April 8, 2010 at 4:50 PM

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/04/hallandale_digital_outernet_joe_kessel_jenna_jameson.php

There's a good reason that the Chamber doesn't do the sorts of normal civic events that CoCs do in the rest of the country. 
The sorts of things that people in those towns from coast-to-coast take pretty much for granted as traditions, albeit perhaps hokey ones in the minds of some, like hosting debates for mayor, city commission and local state races,  esp. Breakfast Debates, with money going to charity.

Here, though, the folks who make up the Executive Board of the Chamber know that one way or another, HB City Hall pays the freight around here, so why should they anger Mayor Cooper and actually have a debate giving anyone challenging her and City Hall a chance, and force the mayor and her Rubber Stamp Crew to have to explain and defend the indefensible?

First, for reasons unknown, the folks at the Chamber have a very high opinion of themselves, which is very odd considering how little they have accomplished for the greater good of the community and how truly disconnected they are to the real community activists of this area.


This difference also explains in part why The Related Group chose to meet with them instead of the real activists of this community, and perhaps, even paid for a nice meal in the process while everyone brainstormed.

No doubt that's have been held somewhere at the Village of Gulfstream Park where PR shill and Chamber Director Suzanne Friedman is their paid mouthpiece, and because, of course, that's their hangout and unofficial clubhouse.

To me and many other HB citizens who pay close attention, the Chamber is not unlike a mid-1960's high school clique, right down to their having a couple of uncool kids they like to keep around from time-to-time to toy with, and play the role of court jesters, amusing them.


Here, former HB Commissioner Bill Julian plays that latter role, as he even writes about them and their spouses and their vacation adventures in the faux newspaper that is taxpayer-financed.

Here's the secret they haven't figured out: they're the only ones who think they're cool.

Everyone else who really knows what's really going on here just laughs at these phonies and their pretentious ways.

As for their current elected President, Carole Pumpian, who, supposedly, also redesigned the Chamber of Commerce's dopey website that said nothing before and says little of note now,
and which was often 5-6 months behind with information on their own activities, but which did have a link to her business in Hollywood.
At least they have their priorities, huh?


Did you happen to catch her mention her home address as required when she walked up to the microphone and spoke before the City Commission?


I mention it because she rarely actually goes to public meetings here, which is unusual given her position, but then it's not like the HB Chamber actually polls its own members what they think of something and whether or not they should support or oppose something at City Hall.


But then there's a reason for that.


Try to think of something within the past six years that the HB Chamber opposed that Mayor Cooper supported.
Just one.


Just name one public policy change, one proposed ordinance, one proposed resolution, one...
There isn't one.


No, as a regular attendee at public meetings throughout this city for many years, I can tell you that about the only time you can count on seeing Carole Pumpian around is every 18-24 months or so when there's something involving construction/development.


Then, like the photo above from last Wednesday, she sits with her bosom buddies up in the front rows of the commission chamber: the real estate developers and their hired guns.


Sometimes, that also includes the lemmings of the do-nothing Chamber of Commerce and their clique/cult of personality where "insider" Joe Kessel plays the role of guy who invented the wheel and who works all the angles.


Often, as we've seen over the years, speaking in favor of unpopular HB City Hall initiatives WITHOUT publicly disclosing who's paying him, like the secret deal he had with City hall itself.


So if you haven't already guessed it by now, folks, Carole Pumpian works in the same city that she lives in, and that city is NOT Hallandale Beach -she lives in Hollywood.

So, to recap, in short, Carole Pumpian doesn't really give a damn about anybody or anything in Hallandale Beach unless she, a client, or the Chamber can somehow make a dime off of it somehow.
She's a mercenary.

Yep, that's about the size of it.

More on Beachwalk in the coming days

-----

Broward Bulldog

Hallandale gives thumbs up to condo king Jorge Perez’s $100 million, high-rise Beachwalk project

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org

June 7, 2012 AT 12:39 AM,

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/06/hallandale-commissioners-like-condo-king-jorge-perezs-100-million-high-rise-beachwalk-project/

Miami Herald

Proposed hotel gets tentative approval in Hallandale Beach

Miami developer Jorge Pérez gained preliminary approval from the Hallandale Beach commission to build a more than $90 million project on the Intracoastal Waterway

By Carli Teproff

Posted June 7, 2012

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/07/2838243/proposed-hotel-gets-tentative.html

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Hallandale considers 31-story hotel/condo

By Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel

6:27 p.m. EDT, June 7, 2012

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-hallandale-beachwalk-project-20120607,0,6092598.story

The Second Reading is Wednesday June 20th at 6:30 p.m.

See plans at  http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/index.aspx?NID=805

Part 1 of 2 re The Beachwalk project in Hallandale Beach -Initial comments & ruminations on Wednesday night's HB City Comm. meeting; calling out Carole Pumpian, crony capitalism mercenary

Above, my friend and fellow Hallandale Beach civic activist, Csaba Kulin, at a place that ought to be one of the city's crown jewels and a natural meeting place for the whole community -but isn't: the City of Hallandale Beach's very poorly-maintained North Beach park, with the iconic HB Water Tower and The Beach Club condo towers to his right. He's looking south with Hollywood Beach to his back, in particular, the construction site for The Related Group's 20-story condo project, The Apogee, which is actually in Hollywood. The longstanding rusty eyesores on the public beach that I've previously discussed -last week and many times before The Beachwalk project came on the scene- completely ruins any positive experience you could have, situated as they are right in the middle of the beach. As it happens, Csaba is running for HB City Commission this year precisely because of the longstanding public failure and incompetency of  HB City Hall on a whole host of public-policy matters, or to even acknowledge their role in that failure, of which this unappealing public beach is but one of several obvious examples. This is just the tip of the iceberg. When first-time visitors come to the public beach in Hallandale Beach, they often are left to wonder, "If they can find a way to really screw-up a beach, how bad must things be where nobody goes?" Exactly. So what ought to be a source of great civic pride for us is instead the place that is largely avoided when friends and family come to visit and want to be shown around, because it's so embarrassing and unappealing, Especially with Hollywood Beach and Johnson Street nearby. June 2, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Thought it was time to share my initial thoughts, ruminations and tangents on Wednesday night's Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting re The Beachwalk project, which lasted about four-and-a-half hours. 


This will likely be one of several posts on this topic over the next two weeks, until the next City Commission meeting on June 20th, so keep tuned here so you can know exactly what's going on.


Before I get into what I think, here's what's been written thus far since Wednesday, not all of which I necessarily agree are either 100% accurate fact-wise or context-wise, but it's what's out there for now:

Broward Bulldog

Hallandale gives thumbs up to condo king Jorge Perez’s $100 million, high-rise Beachwalk project

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org

June 7, 2012 AT 12:39 AM,

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/06/hallandale-commissioners-like-condo-king-jorge-perezs-100-million-high-rise-beachwalk-project/

Miami Herald

Proposed hotel gets tentative approval in Hallandale Beach

Miami developer Jorge Pérez gained preliminary approval from the Hallandale Beach commission to build a more than $90 million project on the Intracoastal Waterway

By Carli Teproff

Posted June 7, 2012

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/07/2838243/proposed-hotel-gets-tentative.html

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Hallandale considers 31-story hotel/condo

By Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel

6:27 p.m. EDT, June 7, 2012

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-hallandale-beachwalk-project-20120607,0,6092598.story

Just for the record, I remind anyone reading this who may not know: I'm in favor of the property being used as a hotel, and the reason for that could not be any clearer: we need another first-class hotel in this city to meet the demand that is currently using Hollywood hotels.

But I'm NOT in favor of the 84 condo units component that the developer is asking for now, which they are not legally entitled to build without the city's approval.

My own experience of living in Hallandale Beach for over eight years now, plus everything I know and have learned and read about human behavior and parking spaces, tells me that having that many condos located in that location, next to a bridge, on top of the hotel rooms in a 31-story building, will clearly exacerbate the area's already completely-inadequate parking situation, where it's not uncommon for some residents during "the Season" to have to park 3-4 blocks away at night.


Parking so far from where you live is, unfortunately, something I have experience with from the few months I lived in the popular and highly-educated Rogers Park area of Chicago, right off of Lake Michigan, in the mid-1980's. The neighborhood's #1 complaint was the perennial search for a parking spot at night that was not too far away -and lack of a visible police presence.

Despite what The Related Group says and has promised, I believe their current plan for a five-story garage with mandatory valet parking is still inadequate. 
If anything, their parking lot structure needs to be larger.

I also remain firmly OPPOSED to the idea of having the future of this city's invaluable resource,  the public beach -the North Beach park and the adjacent parking garage- coupled with the approval of this development project.


Doing that completely lets the city's elected officials and administrators off-the-hook for being so egregiously irresponsible and negligent for YEARS for not only what has been allowed to happen there, but also for what its actual future might be.

I'm not willing to turn that responsibility over to a third-party with no experience in doing that, especially for an initial period that is thirty years in length.

The present Hallandale Beach Mayor, Joy Cooper, the present City Commission as well as its predecessor, and the present and previous City Managers, have stood on the sidelines for YEARS and done nothing as the North Beach area has been allowed to become a regional running joke in SE Broward/NE Miami-Dade.

It's gotten demonstrably more physically run-down and dirty by the year, which is something that anyone who has spent any amount of time over there knows is true, much less, someone like me, who has been there hundreds of times over the past few years alone, as this blog has documented, with my camera and video-cam in-tow to accurately record the neglect.

I've recorded the decline alright, and unlike HB elected officials and Dept. heads who are actually responsible for the problem, I've actually spoken to other regular beach-goers and the Jeff Ellis lifeguards about what THEY thought about the beach's sad decline, what they've heard, and what they wanted to see in the way of improvements.

Let's be perfectly serious. 

HB City Manager Mark Antonio lives in North Miami Beach, not here.
He is never seen around here on weekends nor at the beach.
Given that, why would what he thinks actually matter to people who are there all the time, and who actually know a thing or two about its current declining state, especially given his own hand at letting that occur on his watch the past two years despite constantly hearing about how bad it was?
Even the mayor's pals who are in favor of the project and spoke that night, felt it necessary to say what a mess it had become.
That should tell you something!

June 2, 2012 photo of Hallandale Beach's North Beach, looking south from the The Apogee construction site, in Hollywood, by South Beach Hoosier

In my opinion, City Manager Antonio has actually been less-than-useless on this subject, and has actually become an actual obstacle and additional problem to deal with in resolving it, given his ostrich-like behavior and unwillingness to put pressure on the city's employees and engineers who work for him to get on top of things and actually hold them accountable.
Antonio has no reasonable explanation for why he has continually failed the citizens of this city on this crucial subject.


Trust me, in this city, you NEVER see this mayor, this city manager, the DPW manager and 4/5ths of the city commission over at the beach on weekends, not even for even an hour, even though it's an invaluable asset.

That studied avoidance explains a lot -it shows they didn't want to know.

And now, we're supposed to believe these same irresponsible people with power when they claim they're suddenly interested in the actual experience of beach-goers? No.

We're supposed to believe them when they say that if this project is approved as currently drawn-up, they'll put pressure on the developer in the future to fix things when they themselves were totally unresponsive to citizens about maintenance issues and aesthetics when THEY were in charge?

It's simply NOT believable.
NO SALE!

June 2, 2012 photo of Hallandale Beach's North Beach, looking east from Surf Road, late on an overcast afternoon, by South Beach Hoosier

I tried but failed to send many of you reading this a copy of the FLIP video I made of Related's attorney Debbie Orshefsky's presentation, but it was 34 minutes in length, too long to be sent under the FLIP parameters, which is about 15 minutes.

In retrospect, I should have stopped recording after about 15 minutes and then re-started, and then sent it in two or thee parts, but it didn't occur to me at the time.

I may download it to my computer and then re-edit it to put on YouTube soon, but I'm in no hurry to do that since that meeting was only the First of two Readings.

If I do, I'll let you know here on the blog beforehand.

My reason for wanting to send the video was simple  -to show you that I was 100% accurate when I mentioned to some of you during the break around 10:15 p.m. that in The Related Group's presentation, when they showed their rendering of how attractive they could make North Beach look, complete with fancy cushioned chairs -but what about the rest of us- they never showed the already-approved Beach One Resort project north of the HB Water Tower in the rendering.

Or, the under-construction The Apogee, also owned by The Related Group, just north of that.nstead, they waited 'till towards the very end when they showed the lineup of properties along the beach in HB and Hollywood from the ocean's perspective, and it was only then that you could see the distinctive sail design of what was then called Beach One Resort, and I'm pretty sure they showed The Apogee being much smaller than it is scheduled to be.

From where I sat in the Comm. Chambers, directly opposite the Power Point presentation,  they made it seem like The Apogee is short-and-squat; it's not. 
It's 20-stories.

http://apogeebeachcondos.com/

Here are some renderings and posts of mine from four years ago re what was then called Beach One Resort, which has already been approved by the City of Hollywood to be 40 stories.
Reminder: I attended 95% of the meetings on this project in Hollywood, which has that iconic design which will be the southern entrance to Hollywood Beach :

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/naming-names-herald-style-beach-one.html

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/beach-one-resorts-approval-in-hollywood.html

Here's an update on what's going on with that project, which has largely been ignored by the news media:
http://therealdeal.com/miami/blog/2012/03/05/developer-of-40-story-waterfront-project-in-hollywood-beach-seeks-partner/


As for the clearly negative shade effects of these two towers -plus, The Beach Club towers- on HB's North Beach, you'll notice that nobody-but-nobody said anything about that!

Surprise!

Well, as long as you're at North Beach before 2 p.m., you'll get some sun, but after that, forget about it!

In my next post, the second of two on this subject, with many more sure to follow, I will be discussing this development proposal, the role of the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce in it and share some interesting facts about it and its president Carole Pumpian. 

Those future posts will include questions never asked or answered Wednesday night that would have shed more light on some important facts about the project that local citizen taxpayers need to know about so they can see whether or not the City Commission is really looking out for YOUR best interests -or theirs.


The Second Reading is Wednesday June 20th at 6:30 p.m.