Truman Park Bahama Village Plan

By Pru Sowers

Konk Life Staff Writer

A preliminary plan calling for a 75-room hotel, retail stores and 168 rental homes and townhouses to be built on a six-acre parcel inside of Truman Waterfront Park has drawn a very mixed response.

Like the park itself, the commercial development plan has been years in the making and is intended specifically to connect next-door Bahama Village to the new park as well as create economic opportunities for the low-income neighborhood. But the size and scope of the 6.6-acre development, which would stretch along the western edge of Bahama Village where it butts up against what is currently a recreational playing field as well as the abandoned Keys Energy plant on Fort Street, was a concern for some members of the Truman Waterfront Advisory Board, which heard City Planner Thaddeus Cohen lay out the plan at the board’s Feb. 29 meeting.

Cohen’s diagram showed Petronia Street extending into the lower edge of Truman Waterfront Park, which began construction two months ago after 15 years of planning, and dead-ending at a 75-room “boutique” hotel. Surrounding the hotel would be 138 residential homes and 30 low-rise townhomes. Retail stores would take up about 31,000 square feet and another almost 28,000 square feet would be set aside in the former Keys Energy plant for educational institutions to open satellite campuses.

“We’re kind of excited about the conversation,” Cohen said about the preliminary plan. “That’s what conceptual designs do, hopefully: Get people thinking about what the opportunities are.”

“I’m excited by it,” said Waterfront Advisory Board Member Rev. Randy Becker. “I think the idea that this is an economic engine at the end of Petronia [St.] that will help the rest of Petronia and Bahama Village is an appropriate use of that space.”

When the idea of creating a public park along the Truman Waterfront turned into a serious discussion about 10 years ago, voters approved a referendum calling for a portion of the area to be set aside to create tax incremental funding (TIF) – money from tax-generating businesses within a specific community redevelopment area – that would go back into Bahama Village to help it reduce blight in the neighborhood. City Commissioner Clayton Lopez reminded the Waterfront Advisory Board at its Feb. 29 meeting that while the specifics of a proposed development plan were left open, the 6.6-acre parcel was always supposed to be used for economic opportunities benefiting Bahama Village.

“You’re seeing an update of a plan that was put in place years ago,” Lopez said. “I agree the proposed buildings should blend better within the community but this is just a concept. Otherwise, this is exactly what the people voted for.”

That didn’t sway some members of the advisory board. Board member Albert Sullivan said if put to a vote today, the concept plan “would get hammered” by people who do not want to see commercial development inside the Truman Waterfront Park.

“There was a huge outcry in this community that they wanted a park, not development,” Sullivan said.

And advisory board member Ricky Arnold, Jr., said the proposed design was “the complete opposite” of what he expected to see built on the 6.6 acres. The townhouse, home and hotel designs do not maintain the special character of Key West that attracts tourists with its Caribbean-flavored architecture, he said.

“This is going to look like the city that they came from,” Arnold said. “Every time we build some big thing like that, we’re losing the character we have that makes people want to come back here.”

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