2004 0506 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting May 6, 2004 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida parking spaces in their garage for people going to the Park. City Manager Russo said that in the approval for the access agreement it states that once the improvements were made by the developer for their access, the City would then take it over, for maybe two more years. Commissioner Brezin said then you would be giving us $200,000.00, and asked about the 29 parking spaces. Mr. Price said the 29 spaces are over and above the required parking of the building, and have doubled the parking for that Park. Commissioner Thaler said it is just the service not the revenue from those 29 spaces. Mr. Price gave an historical respective, when they came in there were several re-zonings on this piece of property, and when Cornerstone entered the picture, they down-zoned this property putting in substantial less units than was previously approved, lowering the height of the building, at the suggestion of the City they changed the vehicular movement where in the past service vehicles that came to the site, accessed the hotel from the Park area, they separated that and moved all the truck traffic to the northern portion of their building assuring the City that only regular car traffic and local postal trucks that would come in to service the building would come through the Park, and in addition, at the time this Commission negotiated a deal where Mayor Samson suggested as a further incentive, to pay for a lifeguard for a couple of years, they agreed to that, and that period has expired. Dr. Cornfeld's group received enumeration of $2,000.00 for that indiscretion and the next thing you know it is translating into $775,000.00 now reduced to $450,000.00, and there is no correlation between lifeguards. Mr. Price said that they are on record that they don't think the City had the right to terminate that agreement but they want to go forward, the City is holding over $1.5 Million in impact fees, his client cannot develop a building that would create taxes for this City, the City is getting 29 parking spaces, a better traffic flow into this property, reduced density and height, a building that had no variances, and that is what they have done for this City. Vice Mayor Goodman asked how the lifeguard service came up, and City Manager Russo said it came up during negotiations with Mr. Lamondin, Mr. Price, and Dr. Cornfeld in his office, a new agreement with new terms, the 29 parking spaces for which we collect the revenue is a dedicated City-owned Park, the City has a right to the revenues generated for the taxpayers on public property. He said they violated that agreement, and so the City took over the operation of the Park, and at the time of negotiations, we wanted something that would benefit the City and the lifeguard tower would benefit the City. Mr. Price said that for the last 50 years that Park has been a paved asphalt parking lot and as part of the incentive they gave the City, as part of the rezoning, that they are transferring that Park into a lush green area and they agreed to a landscaping plan which the City accepted, and the City also asked for bathrooms at the Park. After discussion it was the consensus of the Commission to have Dr. Cornfeld pay $150,000.00 for one lifeguard, and Dr. Cornfeld agreed. City Attorney Dannheisser clarified that they are approving the original agreement in the agenda package not the revised one that was handed out. 16