Shrimp Farm high-density development is a bad idea, say neighbors and their attorneys

Shrimp Farm developer Joe Walsh recently said he’s going back to the drawing board with his efforts to turn the environmentally-sensitive former Shrimp Farm property on Summerland Key into a high-density residential complex.  But according to Matthew Fowler and Caron Balkany, attorneys for a group of Summerland Key residents opposing this development, the project has so many legal and regulatory obstacles, would cause so many traffic problems, and is so unsuited to the environmentally sensitive property in a rural community that it’s virtually impossible to “fix” back at the drawing board.  

 

  • It isn’t restricted to worker housing, despite the developers’ claims.

 

“The developers claim the project is worker housing for two wage-earner employee households. But the application doesn’t say this. Given the history of developer boondoggles with projects claiming to be for affordable housing which weren’t, no one should listen to a claim about affordable housing or worker housing until it’s in writing, and binding,” says Don Demaria, one of the group of Summerland residents opposing the project.

 

  • It would push out other projects designed for land that isn’t environmentally sensitive like Shrimp Farm.

 

Perhaps the worst thing about this project is that it would use up a large portion of the County’s last remaining affordable housing building allocations, and taxpayer-funded tax credits, to build a high-density project on environmentally sensitive lands, contrary to all existing zoning laws and land use requirements, when there are other affordable housing projects in the pipeline located in areas which are properly zoned for them and which are near the employment areas and thus have reduced traffic impacts.  Projects which need those building allocations and tax credits.

 

  • It’s on environmentally sensitive land, critical habitat for endangered species, part of a wildlife corridor, and surrounded by State conservation lands.

 

The developers struggle to have the property re-zoned “disturbed uplands” so they can fill ponds and build a massively out of scale project- nine large buildings, four stories with one level of parking and three levels of 115 apartments units and 230 parking spaces. But the property has intact critical habitat for endangered species, coastal mangrove fringes and mangrove fringes around existing ponds as well as saltmarsh. It’s environmentally sensitive and part of a wildlife corridor, surrounded by State conservation lands.

 

  • It faces so many regulatory and legal obstacles – designed to prevent exactly what the developers are trying to do – that it’s unlikely to ever be approved or to withstand legal challenge

 

“Shrimp Farm developers’ site plan requires locating the driveway on adjoining land owned by the State, not by the developers,” said Fowler, who is an architect as well as an attorney. “The developers first would have to acquire the adjoining parcel (unlikely, because it would allow a private for-profit development to benefit from State-owned public lands and because it is State conservation land). If developers somehow were able to acquire it, they still would have to obtain a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers (unlikely because of the wetlands and the fact that there is an alternative – the existing driveway) and receive approval from the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Economic Opportunity, which is opposed to re-zoning of Native land for high-density development. And then also get approval to build a driveway on the State-owned property which allows no driveways and requires 100% open space, and which the State just spent a great deal of taxpayer money restoring to functioning wetlands,” Fowler added.

“That’s just to get approval to build the driveway,” stated Fowler. “They have to get re-zoning of the Native lands they want to build the project on as well.”

“There’s a reason there are so many complications to this project, why the developers would need so many zoning changes and special permissions: the project is contrary to all of the zoning and land use laws in Monroe County protecting low-density rural community character and environmentally sensitive lands. And it would face a lengthy legal battle if approved,” Fowler added.

“It’s really very very wrong of these developers to try to push ahead of the thoughtfully planned affordable housing projects already in the pipeline and in planning which need the limited building allocations and tax credits available for real worker housing,” added Balkany. “Mr. Walsh has been actively exploring development of the Shrimp Farm as an aquaculture project. The community would wholeheartedly support that, because the zoning is proper, the environmentally sensitive character of the property would be maintained, and there would not be a significant increase in traffic. We respectfully request that he pursue that as an appropriate development and not use up so much of the remaining affordable housing building allocations which the County desperately needs on this ill-suited, ill-sited and over-built project.  The proposed  high-density development stinks like old shrimp.”

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