LBK Club and the Tower of Babel
RICHARD HERSHATTER
Contributing Columnist
hershatter@lbknews.com
Now you see it; now you don’t;
It will be built, or it won’t;
Round and round the town it goes,
But where it stops, nobody knows.
“And it came to pass that the whole earth had one language, and men found a plain in the land of Shinar and decided to settle there.
“And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us build a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves…”
“And the Lord came down and was displeased that the tower was not built for the worship of God, but for the glory of man, and so He confused their language so that they could not understand one another’s speech and scattered them over the face of the earth.”
And that is why today, we must press one for English and two for Spanish.
And it also may explain the process currently under way between and among the New York conglomerate that owns the Longboat Key Club and the Town Commission and the Commission’s staff and the Club Road Association and the Islandside Property Owners Coalition (IPOC).
The Old Testament’s Book of Genesis would have had a field day with what has been going on in the various meetings, sub-meetings, conferences and quasi-judicial hearings taking place within and without Longboat Key’s Temple Beth Israel, but it would be clear that the participants are not all speaking with the same tongue and definitely have trouble understanding each other.
(In all fairness, it should be noted that even when the Commissioners are meeting alone, they frequently have difficulty understanding one another, but you can’t blame that one on the Lord.)
Last Friday’s session was supposed to have been the definitive session, where all the ducks were metaphorically to be placed in a row and the Commission was finally to be able to deliberate and vote yes or no.
The Club began by serving breakfast to anyone who promised to support their plans and denying sustenance to citizens who remained non-committal. Club spokesmen then advised the Commission that they had made further changes to their original presentation, including adding yet more floors to the proposed five star hotel, topping it with 42 condominium units.
The matter was then continued to February 19, to give the town’s planner an opportunity for review and comment.
It should be noted that under normal circumstances, a developer does its research in advance and then comes before the authorities with a complete site plan, which is either accepted or rejected or accepted with conditions.
Coming before the Commission with an incomplete plan and asking the town, in effect, to complete the plan is akin to putting the cart before the horse. As a matter of fact, in the case of the Longboat Key Club, it seems that the cart and the horse are rambling along, alongside each other.
Although the latest “rearrangement” does reduce the overall “footprint” on what was open space, it does not satisfy the density complaint of the Islandside Property Owners Coalition.
One citizen has suggested that all objections could be met by concentrating all the projected improvements into one massive structure, incorporating the meeting center, spa-fitness facilities, 18 town houses and 164 condominiums, all sitting atop the hotel, which should qualify it for something more than five stars – possibly ten diamond-studded stars.
Such an edifice would tower over anything presently existing on Longboat Key – indeed it would rival anything in Sarasota County. It would attract tourists from all over the world, including pilgrims from Dubai.
Dubai, of course, has neither a Town Commission, nor a Planning and Zoning Board.
The troubled Gulf city-state has recently dedicated the world’s tallest skyscraper, which was launched by Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, and is 2,717 feet high, over a thousand feet higher than any other occupied building in the world. It contains more than 1,000 apartments, a hotel and offices up to the 160th floor. Financed largely with Arabian oil money, it is a prime example of what developers can do when there is no IPOC around to challenge it.
The builder was an American company – the Chicago skyscraper firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill – which would undoubtedly be available to perform similarly on Longboat Key.
Longboat could well host the modern day equivalent of the Town of Babel, and it would not be necessary to call upon the Lord to impose confusion.
It already exists.
Richard L. Hershatter is a retired Connecticut lawyer and novelist who writes an occasional column of interest to Floridians. He can be reached at hershatter@lbknews.com.
