By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
Right before 4 a.m. Thursday, when the Hollywood City Commission approved agreements to put a private condo tower on a public beach, the few diehard opponents still in the room must have felt crushed.
After six years of residents forcefully opposing their elected officials, the major developer Related Group has secured the city’s blessing to build a 30-story tower called Portofino Hollywood at 1301 S. Ocean Dr.
“We’re excited for the groundbreaking and the future opportunities this new development will have in store,” Related’s lawyer Keith Poliakoff told the Sun Sentinel. On social media he merrily anticipated defeating the residents who are suing Related and the city to stop the project, then making them pay his side’s attorney fees.
Still, it’s too soon for Portofino’s backers to rejoice and break out the champagne.
“The developers’ rush to celebrate is premature, as is the people’s feeling of gloom and doom. The jury is still out. The resolution will come from the courts in due time,” Brenda Lee Chalifour, a retired environmental and land use attorney, told Florida Bulldog.
“It is disheartening that the current city commission voted the way that they did, but not unexpected. This is part of the process where those blinded by developers’ influence side against the people,” she said. Chalifour, a member of Keep Public Lands Public, the nonprofit suing to stop what’s called the 1301 project, spoke for herself, not for the residents’ group.
A judge might eventually cancel the revised deal that adds 84 Live Local workforce rentals to the tower’s 126 market-rate luxury condos. The ongoing lawsuit claims that the original 2022 development agreement between the city and Related didn’t conform to city and county plans. So it was illegal from the start and that illegality can’t be cured by importing Live Local into the agreement.
Also, an issue that came up at Wednesday’s meeting will likely be added to the litigation. The city’s comprehensive plan identifies the 1301 project site as a “community park.” The city’s code says “None of the city parks shall be used exclusively by any person … to the exclusion of the general public.” And the Live Local statute says it doesn’t cover “park and open space districts.”
Meanwhile, Poliakoff’s counting on a helpful trend. “While anyone has a right to challenge any approval, the courts almost always side with the municipality,” the Sun Sentinel quoted him as saying. And the City of Hollywood is Related’s partner in the Portofino venture.
Related’s motion to dismiss says this: “Plaintiffs evidently do not like the project and want to challenge it because –according to them – it will allegedly impair their view, cause traffic and annoy them. The claims are bereft of legal or factual merit.” The motion is pending before Broward Circuit Judge Fabienne Fahnestock.
SHUHAM SLAMS ‘GROSS OVERSTATEMENTS’
The low-lying barrier island where Portofino may one day stand is prone to severe flooding from king tides, not to mention hurricane impacts. A resident said building there means “building on limestone and shifting sand.” Several residents described the traffic chaos recent king tides caused near the beach.
Yet city officials downplay resilience concerns in favor of focusing on the enormous economic benefits expected to flow from the city’s deal with Related over the next century. On Wednesday city staffers presented charts and graphs showing “six streams of value flow to the City.” Ninety-nine years of “the City’s receipts including its tax increment” are supposed to add up to $3.01 billion.
Commissioner Caryl Shuham, a construction lawyer who has the Portofino site in her district, called the projections “gross overstatements” with “no basis in reality.” Shuham is about to leave Hollywood City Hall because she’s been elected to the Broward County Commission.
Neither the county commission nor the city’s planning and development board has welcomed the 1301 project. The last time the planning board considered Portofino, on Sept. 8, it recommended restricting building height to 15 feet, a single story to match the community center currently occupying the site.
The Hollywood commission implicitly rejected that advice at Wednesday’s meeting.
The commission’s 6-1 vote for Portofino is surprising in that Commissioner Idelma Quintana said yes along with Mayor Josh Levy and four others. Shuham opposes the project; Quintana seconded Shuham’s objections to Portofino’s planned “poor doors,” separate entrances for renters and owners, along with different amenities for the two classes.
Quintana said in an interview Thursday afternoon that she would have voted no, but City Attorney Damaris Henlon told her the state Live Local law prevents commissioners from interfering with a builder’s selection of design features such as entranceways.
“If I were able to make a decision more in line with what I believe and still be operating within the law, I would have made a different decision,” Quintana said.
She noted that others argue people make choices based on what they can afford all the time, so what’s the big deal? At the meeting Hollywood Commissioner Peter Hernandez expressed that viewpoint and scorned Shuham’s label for poor doors: “segregation.”
“I said that’s fine if you’re in a private setting, but this is a public building,” Quintana said. “We should not be separating people because of income.” The city is the landlord of the public beach property and Related is the tenant with a 99-year lease.
LAST-MINUTE DOCUMENT DUMP
At the meeting Quintana and Shuham said they hadn’t learned that Wednesday’s agenda listed up or down votes on voluminous new Portofino documents until the previous Thursday, the same day the public got to see the agenda.
When commissioners consider taking significant actions, Quintana said, city lawyers and other staffers brief them about the details. For instance, she said this process helped them decide earlier this year to take several steps to limit stormwater and tidal flooding.
Quintana was briefed about the 185 pages of Portofino documents, but only after asking for help, at the last minute and under deadline pressure, she said.
Shuham said at the meeting she was “shocked” to realize how much material she’d have to master quickly. “I feel rushed and caught off guard,” she said.
Neither Shuham nor Quintana speculated about why they were left out of this particular loop, or why the mayor and other commissioners wouldn’t delay the final Portofino vote as Shuham and several residents requested.
“I don’t think that any of us should have been making these kinds of decisions after 18 hours on the dais,” Quintana said. “For us to be voting on 1301, that had been six years, that had been so much heartache in our community for that project, was really not wise.”
Wednesday began with a 9 a.m. Community Redevelopment Agency meeting, followed by a memorial to mark three years since Hamas attacked Israel, and then a three-part Hollywood commission meeting with few breaks that lasted until almost 4 a.m. Thursday.
By the time the decisive voting on agenda items 29 and 30 began, Quintana looked so exhausted, she was barely able to speak.
“We were all exhausted,” she said. “It was a challenging day for sure.”
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