Higher hotel density may rejuvenate tourism
By LESTER R. DAILEY
Article published on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008  |
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![[Image]](/content_images/022008_cit-03.jpg) |
| Photo by LESTER DAILEY |
| Clearwater’s planning director, Michael Delk, answers residents’ questions. |
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CLEARWATER – Developers know that it takes 150 to 210 hotel rooms per acre to be profitable, but it only takes 30 condominium units.
That’s why the condo-building boom of the last few years has resulted in a shortage of affordable hotel rooms on Clearwater Beach and a subsequent decline in tourism.
“Tourism is what drives the engine in Clearwater and many of our gulf-side communities; this is a tourist destination,” Sheila Cole, executive director of the Clearwater Beach Chamber of Commerce, told the audience at a meeting in the Clearwater Beach Recreation Center on Feb. 13 to address the problem. “It’s important to the economic viability of the area that tourism remain its number one industry … (But) we are short about 1,200 rooms. How do you tell people that there’s no room at the inn?”
Last fall, the Pinellas Planning Council agreed to allow Pinellas cities to increase the density in areas zoned tourist or commercial from the previous 50 units per acre to 75 units on parcels of one acre or less, 100 units on parcels of 1-3 acres or 125 units per acre on parcels of three or more acres. Next month, Clearwater planners will likely ask the City Council to adopt the new PPC guidelines.
In addition, the city’s Planning Department has come up with a proposal to create a density pool of 1,385 rooms that can be given to developers as an incentive to build mid-size, mid-price hotels that would otherwise be barred by density restrictions.
“The pool issue would apply only to the area covered by Beach by Design,” said Michael Delk, Clearwater’s planning director. “It would not apply anywhere else in the city.”
But several Sand Key residents either thought the plan would apply to their island or feared the spillover effect if nearby Clearwater Beach is more densely developed. So many of them denounced the plan that one Clearwater Beach resident complained that Sand Key residents were hogging the microphone.
“I want Clearwater Beach to be a resort,” Sand Key resident Gene Gillespie said. “I think everybody on Sand Key deplores the loss of hotel rooms here.”
But he and other Sand Key residents expressed fear that the density pool would destroy the residential ambiance of their island and drive up the taxable values of properties on both Clearwater Beach and Sand Key.
Belk reiterated that the density pool would not apply to Sand Key, and the new PPC density limits, if adopted by Clearwater, would apply only to the island’s two hotels.
The Shoppes on Sand Key would not be affected unless the city both adopts the PPC limits and grants the owner’s request to rezone the shopping center to tourist.
The reaction to the proposed density pool was mixed.
“I’d like to be able to get on and off the island,” Clearwater Beach Neighborhood Association member Allen Avery told the planners. “But we do need those replaced hotel units. I think the formula you’ve come up with is about the best you can do, and I support it.”
Former Clearwater Councilman David Hemerick disagreed.
“I think it is a terrible idea to increase the density on Clearwater Beach,” Hemerick said, adding that increased density would “create a disparity, not parity.”
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Article published on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008
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