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Marco planning board not sold on shopping center’s proposed changes
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A Marco Island shopping center received a chilly reception in front of the city’s planning board Friday, its first review by a city advisory committee since scores of code violations were discovered in May.
LESLIE WILLIAMS / Eagle staff
Marco Walk owner Leon Agami is back at square one after being denied leniency on planning board requirements to submit a parking study, reduce outdoor seating and build a proposed glass elevator. At Friday's meeting, planning board members accused Agami of "flaunting" city ordinances.
The owner of Marco Walk, the center located at 599 S. Collier Blvd., requested more lenient city code exceptions than the plaza received in 2005, including the elimination of a required glass elevator and traffic studies and an increase in outdoor seating for Marco Walk’s six restaurants.
Bob Mulhere, the agent representing owner Leon Agami, spent most of the afternoon speaking about the plaza’s desires for the future, not its troubled past.
“This is a beautiful center,” he said. “We’re willing to live up to reasonable requirements.”
But the planning board had varying levels of venom for what board member Bill Patterson called “flaunting the requirements” of the city.
“You agreed to have an elevator and now you’re not going to put in an elevator?” board member Vince Magee asked. “It’s outlandish.”
“You’re not a good neighbor,” Magee said later to Agami. “There’s no way I’m approving this.”
Board member Monte Lazarus echoed Magee’s comments.
“I’m very troubled by this continuing pattern of violations,” he said. “At this point I am not willing to reward somebody for the continual flaunting of the rules of the City of Marco Island.”
A Daily News investigation published in May showed at least seven instances in which Agami disregarded city rules or supplied conflicting data to the city. For instance, Agami was required to submit in-season parking studies every year starting in 2005 but has not done any. City staff failed to catch any of the compliance problems until this spring.
Most notably, the city allowed five separate restaurant expansions — totaling more than 5,000 square feet of restaurant space — when code conditions required certain improvements be made before any increase in restaurant square footage. Three of those expansions were granted to Brien Spina, the owner of Captain Brien’s restaurant and son-in-law of former City Manager Bill Moss.
Moss recused himself from deliberations leading up to the 2005 vote on the city’s code exceptions for Marco Walk and stayed out of compliance concerns, deferring the situation to the community development department.
During Friday’s planning board meeting, Community Development Director Steve Olmsted said the restaurant increases were “permitted inadvertently.” Olmsted added his department is purchasing sophisticated building permitting software that would automatically block building approvals until certain conditions are met.
City data currently shows the plaza out of compliance with the amount of restaurant space allowed. Restaurant square footage is important because of restaurants’ demand on parking.
When the tenor of the meeting became clear, Mulhere requested a continuance for at least 60 days to determine an elevator’s feasibility and to addressing numerous discrepancies in listings of restaurant square footage. The board unanimously granted the request.
While Agami regroups, Olmsted said the city will hold the plaza to the 2005 variance conditions. The plaza will go before the city’s code enforcement board for an overage in outdoor seating and it will not be allowed to increase seating above the current standards — 120 seats — until they are amended.
Olmsted said he believed that when one restaurant’s lease expires at the end of the month, it will solve the plaza’s problems with restaurant square footage. If it doesn’t, Olmsted said, the plaza will be cited. Olmsted added the city would allow Agami to work out plans for an elevator before citing the plaza for noncompliance on that issue.
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