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| August 08, 2008 |
By: Terry Sheridan |
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nthony and Louise Vaccaro aren’t boaters, but their riverfront home across from the Lauderdale Marine Center in Fort Lauderdale gives them plenty of opportunity to watch a boatyard at work.
Alone with the sight of luxury yachts passing by, the Vaccaros complain they have a clear view of a seven-story boat shed they and their River Oaks neighbors call an eyesore.
They also say it was built without proper approvals. And they want it torn down.
It’s a story that is increasingly familiar as Broward County’s boatyards — many operating along or near the New River in Fort Lauderdale, Davie and Dania Beach — struggle to survive in the midst of an economic slowdown that has dramatically hurt the marine industry.
“We don’t have expensive marinas like Bahia Mar [on Fort Lauderdale’s beachfront] where you couldn’t paint a boat — we have boatyards,” said Margaret Croxton, executive director of the Marina Mile Association, a trade group of 70 marine-related businesses and boatyards along and near State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale, Davie and Dania Beach. Boatyards try to be good neighbors and still stay in business, she said.
Without boat sheds — essentially covered docks that accommodate mega-yachts — or work sheds that allow sanding, painting and other maintenance to be done on the yachts, the yards couldn’t attract the business.
Boatyard owners say they need the sheds to shield nearby residents from paint and dust.
Lauderdale Marine’s steel structure was put up without proper permitting and without a site-plan review by the city’s Development Review Committee and Planning & Zoning Board, residents complain.
The boatyard ignored a city stop-work order on the shed, and built the structural framework within nine days in April, said resident Bianca Bryant.
She contends the shed ruins her view of the skyline from the front porch of her home on Southwest 20th Street.
Bryant said the marine center used an old survey that indicated an existing building — since burned down — made it easier to obtain a building permit because a new shed would simply be replacing an existing structure and require less planning.
The 38-acre Lauderdale Marine, with more than 1,600 feet of dockage on the New River and 110 slips, is considered one of the most prominent yacht-service centers in the country, Croxton said.
Lauderdale Marine is owned by Selvin Passen, a retired pathologist, who also is a principal in the Baltimore Marine Center in Baltimore.
The boatyard’s attorney, Don Hall of Gunster Yoakley in Fort Lauderdale, said the River Oaks residents are partly correct.
The fact that the shed was built without a plan review was “an error on our part, our client’s part and the city’s part,” he said.
The plans were not reviewed by the city’s planning board and Development Review Committee, yet the city issued a building permit. When the shed was almost complete, the error was discovered and a stop-work order was issued, Hall said.
As for Bryant’s claim that the stop-work order was ignored, “that is astonishingly false,” he said. The shed looked as it does now when the stop-work order was issued, Hall said, though some additional work was done to make it hurricane-resistant.
Anthony Vaccaro voices a broader complaint about the shed’s effect on the neighborhood.
“Property values are going to drop,” he said. “[A neighbor across the river] had a buyer who walked in back of the house, saw the building and left.”
Lauderdale Marine Center general manager Mark Pratt said Thursday that he’s heard the argument about the shed’s impact on property values before and doesn’t agree.
The Lauderdale Marine site has been used as a boatyard since the 1940s — long before any homes were built, he said.
Residents knew what kind of area they were moving into, and those who complain about the shed are a handful of the homeowners, Pratt said.
“The property is zoned [for a height of] 150 feet and we’re only asking for 71.5 feet,” he said. “And right across the river at the new Pier 17 project — the site of the old Summerfield’s [boatyard] — a shed has been approved for 65 feet.”
The shed not only is compatible with others at the boatyard, it’s compatible with the neighborhood, Pratt said.
At a meeting Tuesday night with several River Oaks residents, city planner Anthony Fajardo acknowledged the project hadn’t received the required reviews and couldn’t explain why. The shed’s presence near a residential area needs more scrutiny, he said.
Lauderdale Marine Center, which built another shed near the incomplete one, has not received certificates of occupancy on either structure, Fajardo said.
“We’re telling them that, because they changed the design of the site plan, this has to be resolved first [before the certificates will be issued],” he said.
The city is monitoring the sheds to ensure they aren’t used before questions about the site plan are resolved, Fajardo said.
No one disagrees that the certificate can’t be granted until the site plan is resolved on the incomplete shed, Hall said. But there’s no reason to withhold occupancy approval for the completed shed, which was properly permitted and planned, he said.
“That would expose the city to liability,” Hall said.
The Lauderdale Marine project now is scheduled to go before the Planning & Zoning Board Aug. 20.
The boatyard and residents have been neighbors for years. But the boatyard’s latest shed is too obtrusive, said Robert Gargano, a River Oaks resident and real estate agent who specializes in waterfront property.
“What we had before was not offensive,” he said.
At what point a boatyard becomes an eyesore isn’t clear, Croxton said.
“The whole area is a boatyard neighborhood and that’s what we’re known for,” she said.
Many residents who gripe have lived near the boatyards for years. So it may be that the business-boosting tactics of work sheds are what raises residents’ ire, she said.
Roscioli Yachting at 3201 State Road 84 in Davie encountered similar opposition to its expansion from nearby Lauderdale Isles residents.
The neighbors’ opposition to a paint shed added at least half a million dollars to the $17 million project, Roscioli said.
The delays in arranging contractors, legal fees and construction costs that steadily rose during two years of neighborhood negotiations took a toll, he said.
“All because a guy riding the river in his boat said he could see the tip of the work shed we put up,” Roscioli said. “It’s a 50-foot shed and we have 45-foot-tall trees in front of it. It’s set back 100 feet from the river.”
The project included more than 100,000 square feet of offices and sheds. Though it recently was completed, Roscioli remains frustrated by the experience.
“This shipyard has been in the area for over 50 years,” he said. “We don’t work on weekends. We don’t work until midnight with jackhammers. It’s a quiet operation.”
Terry Sheridan can be reached at (954) 468-2614.
Anthony Vaccaro photo by Melanie Bell
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