Controversial Mallory Square restaurant plan coming down to the wire. Or not?

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

A torturous eight-year battle to allow local businessman Joe Walsh to develop a restaurant and museum in Mallory Square could be finalized next month. However, at least one city commissioner is proposing that the development deal be cancelled and rebid.

Walsh has redesigned the project several times over those years to address concerns from city planners and commissioners about the size and scope of the 156-seat restaurant. However, the Historic Architectural Review Commission (HARC) denied the project twice, the last time in May 2017 after Walsh’s company, Tropical Soup, had revised the project to address HARC concerns. After the second HARC denial, Walsh appealed the decision and a special magistrate ruled in Tropical Soup’s favor in August 2017. The city appealed that decision but the special magistrate reaffirmed his ruling in February this year.

There the project has sat. Walsh says he has court-ordered approval and a lease contract to build an open-air pavilion bar and restaurant that would involve rehabilitating one of the two cable huts along the west side of Mallory Square. He also plans to build a Mallory Square historical museum in the adjacent “hospitality hut.” But city Attorney Sean Smith told commissioners at their Sept. 5 meeting that no contract was ever negotiated with Walsh and Smith is exploring whether the “material changes” Walsh made to the project design to accommodate planning board concerns may punt the project back to HARC for a new review.

“I think that [planning board design changes] would obviate the need for any sort of court hearing because that decision by HARC and the special magistrate would be rendered meaningless by an amended application,” Smith said.

That possibility and the length of time the project has already taken without breaking ground prompted Commissioner Jimmy Weekley to question whether the development of the cable huts should go back out to bid. The deteriorated condition of the three structures in one of Key West’s most-visited tourist areas has several commissioners concerned.

“It’s been going on for a number of years. If either party hasn’t come together on a contract, then I think maybe we ought to look at starting from square one again and go out for proposals again,” Weekley said.

“To add to that, my concern is the buildings have been sitting there in disrepair because we’re not sure if there’s going to be a development there,” added Mayor Craig Cates. “We get complaints constantly about the cable hut buildings down there and the income that the city has lost for the taxpayers.”

As part of the contract to restore two of the three dilapidated buildings in Mallory Square, Walsh would pay rent to the city for use of the city-owned property. Other restaurants operating on city property usually pay a base rent plus a percentage of their revenue.

Reached after the commission meeting, Walsh, who is president of Tropical Soup and operates several other restaurants in Key West, said he expects his proposed development plan to be on the city commission meeting agenda on October 2. He pointed out that the project has received approval from the city planning department, the planning board, the tree commission and with the special magistrate ruling, HARC. The last step would be approval by city commissioners. And while there may be some people in City Hall who are against his project, “those people don’t work in the planning department,” Walsh said.

“Tropical Soup and the city have had a contract in place since May 2010.  My company promised to re-develop several parcels at the western end of the square (we proposed a design at the time) and to pay the city rent for the updated restaurant.  The city promised to work in good faith to allow my company to do that.  My company has won several legal arguments, and has successfully petitioned and changed the flood zone for that part of Mallory Square,” Walsh said in an email to Konk Life.

Regardless of the outcome of the legal argument, the city has to take steps to project the cable huts, said Commissioner Sam Kaufman.

“Because every day that goes by, every big rain, every big wind, those structures are deteriorating more and more,” he said.

The cable huts, also known as cable tanks because part of the structures were built underwater to preserve the gutta-percha cables, are considered historic structures in Key West; the first built in 1921 and the second in 1930 to store the telephone cables that were first laid in in the early 1920’s and opened communication between Cuba and the mainland for the first time. The history of the huts is also connected to several commercial schooners in Key West, including the Western Union Schooner, which helped lay cable along the ocean bottom to Cuba. The huts are a resource listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

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