Latitude Management Real Estate Investors, owners of the Belleview Biltmore Resort, plan a 38-room hotel and restaurant at the Cabana Club site on Sand Key.
BELLEAIR – In a 15-page ruling, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Feb. 26 upheld the decision of an administrative judge in a lawsuit challenging the Clearwater Community Development Board’s approval of plans for a 38-room hotel and restaurant at the Belleview Biltmore’s Cabana Club on Sand Key.
Robert E. Meale, the administrative law judge appointed by Clearwater to review that board’s decision to grant parking code variances to Latitude Management Real Estate Investors for the facility, ruled that the city had acted within its authority.
In a unanimous decision, the panel of three appellate judges upheld Meale’s ruling. The exception will allow the proposed changes to the Cabana Club without increasing the number of parking spaces.
A group of local residents, Save Our Neighborhood, filed the suit claiming that increased traffic and the subsequent change in usage violated the city’s existing code. Their Petition for Writ of Certiorari contended that by code the hotel required 38 parking spaces, one for each room and an additional 75 parking spaces for the restaurant; the property as planned has room for just 56 cars. LMREI said it intends to provide a valet service which will increase the parking capacity to 67 vehicles.
Plans for the restoration and reopening of the Belleview Biltmore Resort and Spa have been held back for nearly a year by challenges from first a group of residents of Belleair who brought suit against the town over similar code enforcement
concessions – that suit was settled late last year – and the recent suit by Save Our Neighborhood.
That group claimed increased commercialization of the Biltmore annex would adversely impact the value of local residential properties by more than $8 million.
“It’s not clear to us how a 38-room annex can be such a vital economic component of the much larger development in Belleair,” said one of the plaintiffs, attorney Cynthia Remley, in an earlier interview.
Reached at his office Monday, Tom Reynolds, the attorney for LMREI, said the ruling was anticipated and he felt there should be no further obstacles to commencing with the project. LMREI closed the Biltmore in May of last year. The announced reopening date for the $100 million restoration is scheduled for 2012.
“The owners are very pleased with this decision,” Reynolds said.
Messages to Joe Penner, spokesman for Latitude Management Real Estate Investors, requesting reaction to the court ruling, were not returned by press time.
Attorney Alan Zimmit for the petitioners said Tuesday his clients had not yet had time to consider whether or not they would file an appeal. The attorney added however that he felt, “the court had made two glaring errors in rendering its opinion: first they cut short my cross examination of the city’s parking expert Vicky Gagliano.”
Zimmit had tried to cross examine the witness on similar testimony she had provided in the Belleair suit, however, according to the court’s ruling, the testimony had to be suppressed because the city’s board had no opportunity to properly evaluate the previous testimony in that case.
Zimmit said the court also erred by disregarding evidence that the Cabana Club was not designed as an annex to the main hotel in Belleair, but rather should be considered a second principle use of the property in that it offered guests an opportunity to reside at a gulf-front venue with its own restaurant.
Belleair Town Commissioners greeted the court decision Tuesday as good news, “anticipating that the owners would now be able to start getting financing together and get the project started,” said Town Attorney David Ottinger.
In a related matter, LMREI has filed an appeal over the town’s imposition of a $250 a day fine for code violations involving the deteriorated condition of the Biltmore’s roof structure. The court granted LMREI 30 days to file a brief for that appeal.
“They have about two weeks to respond,” Ottinger said.
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