Showing posts with label The Apogee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Apogee. Show all posts

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Latest news re The Hyde Beach Resort project on Hollywood Beach -the former Beach One Resort- right next to the Hallandale Beach Water Tower on State Road A1A: goes to the Hollywood Planning & Development Board on Thursday February 13th at 6 p.m.

Inline image 1

Notice that the artist's rendering of the project above, to the right, which I snapped at Hollywood's Planning Dept. this week -a plan which is completely different in design and scope from the original plan approved by the Hollywood City Comm. for the Beach One Resort, which was truly beautiful- does NOT show the Apogee right next to it 
And also does NOT show the effect of The Related Group's North Beach plans for a building where the old Beachside Cafe was located.

(Which the City of HB had ZERO renderings of at the beach for residents and visitors to see at both its groundbreaking weeks ago or at any point since then, contrary to common sense or any sense of getting the community to buy into it.)

Also NOT shown -the iconic HB Water Tower.
That's THREE neighbors NOT shown in one rendering.

But then the rendering for Apogee wasn't so accurate back in 2012 either, were they?
Just saying.

Below, from February 2012.


February 10, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

My previous blog posts on this very important parcel on A1A are here:


June 2008 Artist rendering of aerial view of Beach One Resort, Hollywood, FL
Carlos A. Ott, Architect from submitted documents to the City of Hollywood Development Review Board. September 11, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier

October 4, 2008

Naming Names Herald-style -Beach One Resort Hotel in Hollywood Passes Round One 

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



October 18, 2008
Beach One Resort's Approval in Hollywood Provokes Wrath and Harsh Words at Hallandale Beach City Commission
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/beach-one-resorts-approval-in-hollywood.html


October 21, 2008
Cleavage Grows Larger b/w City of Hallandale Beach and Hollywood After Beach One Resort Approved


December 5, 2008
Sue-happy Hallandale Beach vs. Hollywood re Beach One Resort
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/first-shoes-drop-sue-happy-hallandale.html


JUNE 15, 2012 
Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's old threats & lawsuits re-emerge as Hollywood's Beach One Resort sues over its access to the beach, the latest shoe to drop in The Related Group's Beachwalk project that'd make HB's North Beach a de facto private beach for The Related Group's properties, NOT a public beach for HB residents
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/hallandale-beach-mayor-joy-coopers-old.html

Friday, June 15, 2012

Thinking out-loud about what we really saw at last week's meeting re The Related Group and their Beachwalk project in Hallandale Beach; What North Beach may really be like in future if city foolishly makes that a de facto 'Related' boutique beach; What are the ethics of HB CoC's involvement with these development deals?


Greenberg Traurig attorney Debbie Orshefsky at the lectern making the formal Power Point presentation to the Hallandale Beach City Commission last Wednesday night for her client, The Related Group, on behalf of their Beachwalk development project on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, with their army of professional hired hands and lobbyists seated in the first thee rows. June 6, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

I really hadn't planned on adding any more today to what I has posted earlier this afternoon re the Beachwalk project from The Related Group, but... 
I chose to send out an email to the usual concerned folks in South Florida letting them know that since I first sent them that email early Thursday morning which was the template or First Draft of my blog post today, I'd added some factual odds and ends, so I sent them the link to the new-and-improved version here on the blog.

And then I thought of some other things I should've added in the first place, so...here's what I just sent out.
Reminder: I'm in favor of the hotel, but NOT the 84 condos there, and I'm strongly against any coupling of this deal with Related or any of their subsidiaries with the use of the public beach, North Beach.

Now excuse me, but I have to run because I have a pending date with an iced coffee in our fair city because it's still brutally hot, even with all the rain.
(It was only about 97 degrees yesterday outside my kitchen window.)

------
On the blog post I just posted online, I added a few more revealing photos and pithy facts since
my email of early Thursday morning.

I spent a few hours on Thursday afternoon in the conference room of the Planning Dept. at Hollywood City Hall looking thru banker boxes of the submitted documents, renderings, surveys and other odds and ends for Beach One Resort and The Apogee, mostly looking at parking info and easements. I'll probably be back there on Monday, too.

I hope to add some of the facts I unearthed to the public conversation early next week, because it's not just a question of access to the public beach -and what kind of beach and under whose de facto control?- but also how many -if any- public parking spaces will be available at next door Beach One Resort hotel or at The Apogee hotel/condo, since if there aren't enough, imagine the resulting chaos if the City of Hallandale Beach goes ahead and makes this colossal blunder by falling for the sweet nothings and siren song of Jorge Perez & Co.

After all, we all know from experience and to our own sorrow how easily duped the HB City Commission is.
How they are almost reflexively unable to ask the sorts of savvy questions that show originality and a degree of familiarity with the submitted documents that most of us would act if we were in their seats, and supposed to be looking at the BIG PICTURE for all of HB's citizens.
But listening to them, you'd think Related was guaranteeing the city $60 million a year for ta proposed restaurant, not $60,000.
That's embarrassing!

Good luck trying to find the respective shade studies that will show what the cumulative effect will be on North Beach after Noon when those two properties -plus The Beach Club- are finally built.

As I stated previously, their attorney, Debbie Orshefsky won't show that to you -even if she had itand while she was willing to show via a rendering what the beach would look like from the ocean when all the properties are present, she never showed an accurate one that was from the perspective of someone actually ON THE BEACH.
Ever been in the bottom of a canyon?

Inline image 1

And did you also notice how few people it showed present on the beach, even though we're
talking about the addition of hundreds and hundreds of hotel rooms and condos? 
I know that I did.

Inline image 1

Notice anything missing in this rendering from last Wednesday, the only one they presented
of the beach from a beach-goer's perspective?
Correct, they "forgot" to actually show the 41-story Beach One Resort property in it, since
it'd clearly be present in this particular shot above if it was done based on actual known facts.

Tell me, do you really think they forgot, or do you think they didn't want HB residents -and the
very incurious HB City Commissioners -to think about it, much less, the adjoining
20-story Apogee condo/hotel, also owned by The Related Group?

I want the beach to change, but for the better for all of us, who finally deserve to have a nice beach after so many years of truly embarrassing third-rate beach conditions and aesthetics, not for the MUCH WORSE, which will surely be its fate if The Related Group gets its hands on it and treats it like a boutique beach in order to market it to prospective buyers of their condos.

I trust that I will see many more of you present in person on Wednesday night than for last week's First Reading, considering it's such a critical moment in this city's future about such an invaluable resource -and there's no conflict with a Heat-Thunder ballgame, either!

Now I have something for all of you to think about over the weekend, given what we've seen for years here about who sits with whom at these meetings re development issues.
Or, more recently, last Wednesday night, when Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce president Carole Pumpian sat in the second row next to Related's PR person and Chamber Board member Suzanne Friedman, and was surrounded by the army of professional hired hands working for Related to get this bad idea passed.


Yes, as usual, Carole Pompian, dressed in pink above, WASN'T sitting with just regular Hallandale Beach citizens. 
Hmm-m... is Pumpian actually working for Related or one of its associated parties to get this passed? 
I can't say with any certainty since, unfortunately, the city's current list of lobbyists hasn't been updated since March 16th.

She certainly hasn't publicly declared that she's lobbying for them at the Commission meetings, but then again, look where she's sitting. 
Everyone else in those three rows is working to pass this very bad idea.

So here's my question: Under the City of Hallandale Beach's rules on lobbying and ethjics, are people receiving a benefit other than money from developers (or their team) who work or speak on behalf of an issue like Beachwalk before the City Commission required to publicly disclose that pertinent fact?

For instance, hypothetically(!), if The Related Group takes a few well-known HB Chamber of Commerce people with connections to the HB City Commission out to lunch or dinner to brainstorm over a strategy to persuade the HB City Commission to approve the plan, and then those same people from the CoC speak in favor of it -or, if Related writes a check out to the HB CoC to thank them after such a 'working meal"ethically, don't the parties who speak need to publicly disclose this arrangement to the Commission, even if they aren't required to register as lobbyists, per se?
Hmm-m...

Well, here's your answer according to the city itself.

Lobbying means communicating directly or indirectly, in person, by telephone, by letter, or by any other form of communication, on behalf of any other with any City Commissioner, any member of any decision-making body under the jurisdiction of the Commission/Board, or any City employee, where the lobbyist seeks to influence a decision to me made by the Commission or Board, a decision to be made any decision-making body under the jurisdiction of the Commission or Board, or a final procurement decision to be made by a City employee.

Lobbyist is defined as any individual who engages in lobbying, as defined above, regardless of whether he or she receives any compensation for such lobbying.

I added that red highlight above for your careful consideration.

I'll be asking for that updated lobbyist list from the HB City Clerk on Monday.

FYI: On Saturday I'll finally be posting "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"


Sunday, June 10, 2012

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,

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

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Hallandale considers 31-story hotel/condo
By Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel
6:27 p.m. EDT, June 7, 2012

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 soonbut 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 Apogeealso 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.


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 :

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.