2005 0609 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting June 9, 2005 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida be flat, they actually stepped it back an additional 34-feet as well to make it less visible even though they added the height. Planning and Zoning Administrator Vera asked Mr. Sieger what the actual height with the pool deck with the variance request, and Mr. Sieger said with the variance request it would be 36-feet to the top surface and there are no planters on top of that pool deck. Mayor Ede1cup said that years ago the City passed liberal zoning laws and have spent many hours accommodating the needs of the developers and the people and what eventually evolved was one of the most liberal codes in all South Florida. He said we have to continuously balance the needs of the developers with the needs of the neighboring people, even though they are saying it is a better building for the people living in it, but as Commissioners we have to look at it and determined if it is a better building for not only the people that live in it but for the people that live around it. He said in coming up with a liberal code they tried to meet the requirements up front so we would not be confronted with variances. He noted as we all learned in the Omnipoint case, variances have to meet all the conditions of a hardship and there really is no hardship when you have acquired as much property here and you can't turn to that land and say that land has created a hardship, it is a self-induced hardship and not anything other than that. Mayor Ede1cup said that this land has enough space on it to provide for many different designs, and are surprised that they came forward with a plan that requires a variance because in the past, they have dealt with many of their projects without a variance and they have all turned out to be beautiful buildings. Commissioner Brezin said that the aim is to prevent structures from creating a mass scale that would prohibit beach accesses and block the ocean view. She said that the requested variances is the result of the applicant's acquisition and aggregation of five separate parcels to create one development site with a 900-foot frontage on Collins Avenue. She said what it represents to her as she sees it is that it would be economically feasible for them to do that, but as she views this, they are creating the very thing that this Commission was against from the very beginning. Commissioner Iglesias said he doesn't like this variance. He said he does agree that sometimes a variance makes a building better but as the Mayor said, we have a series of standards for variances that we have to abide by, by law unless it is a hardship, he doesn't see approving it. He said he works with variances all the time and if we didn't have variances we wouldn't have any landscape on Collins Avenue, but he would suggest to go to plan B where you lower your pedestal, have no variances, and you move forward. Vice Mayor Thaler said he concurs with the prior statements, and what the key word here is the view corridors, he feels that they have taken them away from the City by raising it up even on the 850-foot length/width, and they must go back and rethink this project. He said he feels that they have taken away the view corridors from the ground level. Commissioner Goodman said that they have to make some changes and noted when we first became a City we said everybody that builds on Collins A venue has to give us a beach access and there are three buildings with two beach accesses. He said pertaining to traffic and parking, he noted that FDOT gave'them permission but the entrances and exits don't line up on Collins Avenue, there is 158th Street and 159th Street, and we are concerned about traffic 4