2014-0116 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular Cin, Commission Meeting Januan I6. 2014 Cin, of Sunny Isles Beach. Florida project happening throughout Sunny Isles Beach as you were reaching closer to his residence he made a point to contact the City and set up an appointment to discuss what is going to happen since we never met and since part of the agreement in good faith was to communicate and hear us out as to what we would like to see out in front of our house. That meant the height of the wall, whatever we were going to put on top of it, the types of lighting we were going to put throughout the wall, all of those things had to be discussed. The City did not get a blank check on our easement to do whatever they felt they wanted without our input. His question to the Commission is again if the decision was made prior to; because you had intentions of matching the entire Island of Sunny Isles Beach, then where were we involved and why were Nye presented with yes you have all these options and then none were given? Mayor Edelcup said he thinks what Mr. Amselem is holding on to is the fact that we said you would have input, it didn't necessarily mean we would turn over the entire design to you. Some of the input has been that we raised the wall. some of the input was that we agreed to do some landscaping at the front end, some of that input at your request again was to move the wall closer to the street so that we were not taking as wide of an easement as we initially did. And so there were inputs from you that were adopted when we designed this, and again there was a hearing; you may or may not have been here for it. We are where we are at, at this point. the City Manager is ready to go, and Public Works is ready to go. Our design concept was initially started on the basis of when we first went to you for the easement is would you like the City to do this; and the answer apparently came back yes because we got the easement. If you didn't want the City to do it, if you wanted to design your own, the answer at that point would have been that we should go our own way. Freddie Vivas said he is a resident of Arlen House as well as an architect. He was part of that first meeting with City Manager Rick Conner at the time and he had showed a schematic desien of what the wall and landscaping would look like. Actually we were delighted to work with the City to beautify that part of the building because we also understood that was the southern entrance to Sunny Isles Beach. From the beginning the City Manager informed us that the plan was to do a wall to match the rest of the park, and we said in order to keep the continuity, and he as an architect can tell you that we don't need to mimic the same wall in every single spot. He understood and said in order to achieve the continuity let's work with some stuff that you presented on the plan like the landscaping of the date palms, the shrub. etc. but the architectural feature of the wall needs to be matching our building. We can keep the same height as the rest of the park, we can keep the same concept of having lights but maybe in a modem way. but we need to have some kind of relation between the Arlen House and the wall. He said in his opinion as an architect and a City Planner. that is not going to interfere or disrupt the continuity of the City. After the first meeting we had several meetings with the City, we met with City Engineer Helen Gray, City Manager Chris Russo. and Assistant City Manager Bill Evans for maybe over a year. We were trving to reach them because we thought they were the solution in order to start getting some input. Actually when they came to us with the design they were at 10% schematic design, and now it is finished and we have been trying to contact them since then to avoid what is happening right now. Also you need to think not just of the Arlen House but you need to think as the City. It is the entrance to Sunny Isles Beach. and you should welcome even, resident and visitor from the southern entrance. IS