2014-0116 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular CinCommission Meeting January 16. 2014 City of Sunny Isles Beach. Florida provides for. It does not provide for you to come in at a later date and change the design of the wall. Mr. Amselem said then in other words what you are telling me is that we gave an easement to the City and we have no input as to what happens in front of our building. Mayor Edelcup said you had the input at that meeting. and you didn't have to give the easement at that point if you disagreed. ivir. Amselem said the project was not presented accordingly and they have talked to the City Manager many times requesting that the Commission hear their position. Mayor Edelcup said if we have an easement from you that we legally have we will proceed with the wall that we have designed, if we don't have a legal easement then we won't do anything there. Mr. Amselem said they will continue further and discuss it with their membership to make sure they understand that. Vice Mayor Aelion asked if they had a rendering of how it would look with the consistency that the Commission at the time passed compared to the rendering. and he understands that the issue is a coral wall. City Manager Russo said when Mr. Amselem came to him, he understood and believed even'thing he said about what had transpired. City Manager Russo said several months ago he brought the whole issue with the plans that were developed back to the Commission and we signed off on the design that they have now. not the oriuinal commitments that Mr. Amselem said were made to them. We are now ready to go out to bid with the plans. We recently had another meeting where we went through everything again as Mr. Amselem is doing here, and he is going to take it a step further. As much as they were never fully happy with the whole direction of it, we did have a discussion about what he could possibly bring back to the Commission at this late point since he did bring the whole issue back to the Commission when this was all discussed with him and prior to us getting to this point with the plans that we are just about ready to go out to bid with. We had a discussion in our recent meeting that one of the areas that he could possibly bring back to this Commission was the color of the coral stone. They wanted a more contemporary look, and he was willing to entertain that in terms of a lighter color. Vice Mayor Aelion said a concern to the fact that we have entrances to the City that is the southern entrance to the City and so could that be because we are talking with an architectural opinion notjust to a residential opinion that he thought should be given some weight. City Manager Russo said we can deal with the stone at this point but he cannot deal with redesigning it. Mr. Amselem said they don't like the coral and they don't think an organization look has to match all along Collins Avenue. We were not included in the design aspect of the wall. We were told that this is what we are doing and we reached out to the City a few times and requested to change the mind of the City because we were not happy with it. Everything that was presented to us and every time we met, we were given some sort of hope but never finalized and that is why he is here today because for a City to design something without its residents that are giving an easement he finds that to be unacceptable. Commissioner Scholl asked when it came back before us was the Arlen House noticed? City Manager Russo said some of them are here. Mr. Amselem said he has not been invited to come in and speak. Mayor Edelcup said our City Manager has tried to work a compromise with you and he suggests again to meet with the City Manager and try to reach that compromise. When we designed that whole concept of the Intracoastal Parks System it was to create a unified look from Haulover all the way to Sunny Isles Boulevard. That unified look was a complement of coral rock plus the white wall and with the lighting effects that E