No deal on Hidden Harbour dock variance
By HARLAN WEIKLE
Article published on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008  |
INDIAN ROCKS BEACH – Hidden Harbour, one of the last developments to grow along the shores of Indian Rocks Beach, lost its bid on Aug. 12 to furbish its waterfront with a new dock.
By a unanimous vote, the City Commission said no to the upscale community of waterfront homeowners who had sought a variance to extend their current single access dock, built almost 20 years ago. The existing dock extends into an inlet west of the Intracoastal bordered on three sides by Hidden Harbour, a villa community to the north, and single family homes along East Gulf Boulevard to the west and La Hacienda Drive on the south.
To an audience of 100 plus residents, Dunedin-based Woods Consulting presented its findings in support of Hidden Harbours’ variance request that would replace the existing dock, which cuts through approximately 30 feet of mangrove to reach a 750 square foot perpendicular dock.
The variance would have added two additional 4-foot wide access walkways through the mangrove and extended the dock to 3,828 square feet, room enough for 33 wet slips.
More significantly, opponents claimed the new structure required extending the walkways 32 feet beyond the 50 foot limitation under Indian Rocks Beach code. The resulting 82-foot incursion into the open channel, while still within the set limitations of 25 percent or less of the open channel, would impair adjacent property owner views.
Dressed in red, opponents, one after another, rose to express their concern that the proposed new multi-residential dock was either inappropriate in size, 450 feet long, or a threat to sensitive seagrass beds, habitat for clams, sea grass and fry who rely on the mangrove for shelter.
Proponents of the dock structure, some dressed in blue, argued they had the same riparian rights as their neighbors to boat slips, access to the Intracoastal Waterway and the ability to improve their property. Dianne Hio of Woods Consulting said they would build a better dock than the one previously agreed to by the city, but which would not have been approved by seven other agencies overseeing Florida’s waterways.
Those agencies: Pinellas County, Department of Environmetal Protection, Florida Fish and Wildlife, The Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, National Marine Fisheries and the U.S Coast Guard, she said, would have categorically denied a longer dock proposed earlier, which extended further east into submerged seagrass beds and had as many as 19 individual access ways through the mangrove.
Opponents read a letter from the Save the Manatee Club recommending against the construction, citing evidence that such an increase in boat facilities inevitably leads to an increase in manatee injuries. Hio countered that this was a “standard letter” sent by the club regarding any proposed improvement to boating access in Florida and had no basis in scientific fact.
After more than a score of community members expressed their vehement opposition to the variance request, many citing concerns for environmental protection, light pollution and increased boating traffic, a unanimous commission denied the variance.
Mayor R.B. Johnson, in an effort to make the board’s decision reconcile with the development history of Indian Rocks Beach, suggested that Hidden Harbour was never perceived as possessing such a dock facility.
“A variance of 32 feet is so beyond what the code allows and the owners of the properties have known since that code was set that they didn’t have the ability to have anything more than the dock they already have.”
“It’s an emotional situation on both sides,” Johnson added.
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Article published on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008
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