2015-0416 Regular City Commission Meeting

Home Browse Search

Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting April 16,2015 City of sunny Isles Beach,Florida three(3) inches including the concrete bulkhead and obviously we will introduce the guardrail. He also showed several photographs. Once we pass St. Tropez and we enter into the portion of the site of Parque Towers, here it opens up a lot and it is very comfortable. We have a Boardwalk without counting the concrete seawall of ten (10) feet three (3) inches and so that exceeds the seven (7) feet by quite a lot. At this moment they introduce a lot of landscaping along that edge. Then we get to the other half of the building which is the big challenge and he ended up going to about five (5)different meetings with DERM, and South Florida Water Management District with all sorts of environmental issues. The layout he showed them was precisely plotted by the surveyor under their regulations and that was the line that they allowed them to build the farthest point of the water. He showed them where the property line was and so there is a good amount of property here that is going to be submerged. In the corner it reduces the area by four(4) feet four(4) inches but if we include the concrete Boardwalk we are back up to seven (7) and so this is another area that we are proposingia guardrail. Once around the corner,there is a small amount of walk where we reduced it eight(8)inches and we were explaining that as people drive down the causeway. This corner of Parque Towers is a very prominent corner visually and one thing we did not want to do was to build a blank wall there and so they wanted to play with the architecture so that we could wrap colors and do elements. In the building itself this corner is an architectural element that finishes in a ball with a balcony, it is a very beautiful piece that we are building there. So those eight(8)inches just makes all the difference in the world to make those architectural moves in order to be able to make it special. From the point of view of the architecture we can make it flush but he insisted on building something there so as you drive down the causeway, that becomes an element there in the building. We end up at the corner and we have the seven (7) feet all the way back to Sunny Isles Boulevard and we will have signage and we wilfhave the entrance element there also for the dual entrance to the Boardwalk experience. Cliff Schulman said just to clarify, that portion of property that Ed Castineira said was so difficult through negotiations was not bulkhead, and so we had to apply to get a bulkhead. There were some mangroves and some other wetlands species there and so we had to finagle with the agencies to allow them to go out as far as they could and we even had to agree to put a mangrove plant there and do some mitigation before what they even looked at, if it was wet, it was not supposed to be there and so that was what forced us into that. He noted that Ms. Hasbun had indicated to you a minor change in Condition No. 6. With that, they accept all Conditions as written. Mayor Scholl asked if we have a scheme to tie into that, the park that we.are going to have there, and City Manager Russo said that it will be going back out to the street around the Pump Station and Tank and back into the park area. We will be able to tie in with the exception right now because we have on this property the actual Pump Station or where the tank is. The County has indicated that the tank will be restored for use, and the Pump Station as well. And so we have the parcel just on the left side of the tank through the parking lot that which is going to be turned into a park. Mayor Scholl asked then if the County is going to give us an easement for behind the tank to complete the Boardwalk. City Manager Russo said he had negotiations with them and at this time they are concerned about doing that until they are done with the renovations. The Pump Station is still used, what had been done previously many years ago was that we could eliminate the tank but now with the Consent Decree that the County has from the Federal Government on the sewer line that is required, they need much 5