2012-0301 Special Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Special City Commission Meeting March 1.2012 Sunny Isles Beach, Florida planters because they wanted the landscaping not to only come from the ground up but also from the top down and continue with landscaping for a green-wall effect that is 20+ feet high. Commissioner Gatto said it seems that the Code requirement like on the north side is 20 feet. City Attorney Ottinot said on the first it was under six feet there is no setback requirement, and Mr. Karp said correct, he can put on the property line a wall up to six feet with no setback, and that is what we had on the previous design and we decided we didn't want to do that because we wanted landscaping there with tall and mature growth. At the same time they didn't want to just put the landscaping and uplight it, they wanted the wall to have ivy and another layer of bougainvillea growing on it in a multitude of colors. Commissioner Gatto said she is trying to get a sense of the great discrepancies between variances, what is Code and what is being asked for. Mr. Karp said Code is 5 feet and he is providing 3 to 5 feet on the north side. Commissioner Gatto said she has Code as 20 feet, and City Planner Hasbun clarified that if the pedestal is six feet high, the garage can be built on the property line with zero setback, then for every two feet that the pedestal goes up, they need to go three feet into the setback up to a maximum of20 feet. Commissioner Gatto said they are asking for 3-5 when it should be 20 and so she is challenging that. Commissioner Gatto said on the south side it is less extreme, the Code requires five feet and you are asking for two feet. Then there is the issue of the tower which is Coded 60% of the base and you are asking for 73%. This City is trying to avoid doing wall to wall buildings, and asked him to consider modifying it and rebuilding it to a lower scale, and Mr. Karp said even a building like the Pinnacle has a parking structure behind it with a wall, and the Monaco has cabanas facing the water. Now we don't have the luxury of width, we do have the lot size, we also have a different Code today than we used to have meaning the parking requirements today are a little more strict, and so therefore by definition we had to find a solution that works. We did not want zero setback because we wanted to step in and give landscaping but what that created is a hardship going up that we could not meet the required setback, and so they were someplace in the middle. When they met with staffthey looked at different options and that is how they came up with the smallest volume that they could create for the quantity of parking that they have. They worked with staff over the past 2-3 months to come up with the most luxurious solution from a landscaping and setback standpoint. Commissioner Gatto said then that parking is driving a lot of this design, and Mr. Karp said it is not in a sense that the quantity of units is not maximized, it is actually about 15-20% below what the maximum is. The units are luxury units but the issue is also that we have changed the parking requirement recently and so we have to accommodate that parking requirement. Vice Mayor Thaler said there are not a lot of new apartments available within Sunny Isles Beach, it was mentioned that we had an excess. There was a question asked by Commissioner Gatto that was not answered in terms of narrowing the building, he thinks that is one of the things that she tried to elude to so that you wouldn't have the variances that were needed. Why could it not be a narrower building, and Mr. Karp said because we are adjacent to the Park they created an illusion of the building not being a box, and so they gave the skinny side of the building instead offacing you broad side, and then the wave created an opportunity to really temper away at the volumes so that it doesn't feel so rigid and that is why we needed some variances on it. To create an architectural design and to create the 7