A rewritten ordinance will forbid rooftop bars, dance floors, lounges, or any other public uses on 35-foot-high buildings in Flagler Beach, with the notable exception of the Margaritaville Hotel’s rooftop lounge, whose height city officials permitted by mistake even though it exceeds limits set out in the city charter.
The Flagler Beach City Commission last week sharply rejected a recommendation by its own Planning and Architectural Review Board to approve an ordinance that would have allowed some features on buildings to go as high as 49 feet. Those features in turn would have allowed public uses of rooftops on certain commercial buildings such as hotels and restaurants. (See: “After Flagler Beach’s Margaritaville Hotel Rose Higher Than It Should Have, the City Rewrites Height Ordinance.”)
Commissioners objected.
“This isn’t anti business. This is anti Miami,” said Commissioner Eric Cooley, who led the charge against the planning board’s recommendation. “This is, let’s hold on to what we are, and let’s keep what we’ve done being consistent to avoid that. Because basically there’s no in between.”
The proposed ordinance had architectural and mechanical feature exceptions, and allowances for screening of mechanical elements on roofs, all of which had different maximum heights rising potentially to 49 feet. Certain elements would have had to be set back so that they would not be visible from street level at a 45-degree angle. There were exceptions, as with elevator or stairwell bulkheads, which could be as high as 49 feet, though the bulkhead would have to be screened by some form of architectural feature to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
The proposal surprised members of the commission, who thought they were getting a document that would prevent a repeat of the Margaritaville Hotel mistake, not enshrine the mistake into allowances in the future.
“How did we create a new document or new language that’s going to prevent this from ever happening again?” Mayor Patti King asked. “I don’t understand what we’ve just done, other than make some pretty language.” Commissioner James Sherman also didn’t understand how the 49-foot height got back into the document. “We know that’s not going to be okay,” he said.
“All of this is tied to rooftop use,” City Attorney Drew Smith said. “So if you do not allow rooftop uses, you do not need an elevator bulkhead on the roof. You do not need a stairwell bulkhead on the roof. What’s driving the elevator and stairwell to the roof is public access to the roof. If you allow public access to a roof, you have to allow ADA access to the roof, which means you’re putting an elevator.” (ADA is the Americans with Disabilities Act’s requirements.) To avoid all that means getting away from public rooftop uses.
That’s what Sherman favored, with Cooley spelling out the inadmissibility of the 49-foot proposal.
“Absolutely not okay with the direction that this is heading,” Cooley said. “The polling that I have from hundreds upon hundreds of citizens, almost on a daily basis, is they don’t want four-story buildings that are 50 feet tall. And so we have an ordinance here that’s basically crafting on how to do that.” There may be some allowance to screen certain rooftop elements such as air conditioning units, he said, but going to 49 feet is too high. As written, Cooley said, the ordinance “essentially amounts to a fourth story on top of your roof. This is like dancing around how to get around what the intent of what our citizens want it to be. We’re doing partial walls. We’re doing decorative fencing and gathering spaces and recreational areas.”
Cooley is not opposed to public uses of roofs. He has a flat roof of his own on his house and uses it as a deck, he said. It’s below 35 feet. There are existing businesses that have roof access to the public, but in compliance with the 35-foot rule. Stressing that his stance was not anti-business, he mentioned Johnny D’s, Oceanside Bar and Grill, Golden Lion, Finn’s.
“They’ve all been able to make it work, and they did it well,” he said. “How this kind of spun out of control is people were abusing that, and they were turning architectural elements into functional spaces, which they weren’t supposed to do, which started this whole thing.” He was referring to the Margaritaville Hotel, without mentioning it by name.
The problem, Smith said, is when commercial buildings allow public access to rooftops. If they do, they have to make access accessible for the disabled, which means they have to have an elevator, which means eliminating rising elements well beyond the 35-foot limits is not realistic–unless public rooftop use is itself eliminated. That, in effect, is what the city commission will codify in its ordinance. “If saying you can’t build over a certain height means you can’t have public access up there, then so be it,” Cooley said.
So the only things that may exceed the 35-foot limit on a roof may be a few architectural elements and utilities such as air conditioning units that may reach 45 feet. If there is an architectural feature that exceeds the 35-foot limit and rises to 45 feet, it is limited to just 15 percent of the facade. How will anyone get to the roof, such as workers who need to service a mechanical unit, or roofers? Ladders, Smith said.
The planning board’s chair, Joseph Pozzuoli, an architect, was in the audience as an emissary for the board, which thought it ought to have a voice at the commission meeting should defending its recommendation be necessary. The commission did not call on Pozzuoli to speak nor did Pozzuoli volunteer to speak. It is generally understood that advisory boards’ role stops with their recommendation: commissions are not usually thrilled when members of their advisory boards press beyond that role, though advisory board members can sometimes be miffed when their recommendations are dismissed or overruled.
There will not be yet another ordinance rewrite, nor will the ordinance go before the planning board again. “We’re not making changes that roll it back to square one if it’s simply subtraction,” Smith said. The ordinance was tabled last week to give Smith time to edit it, it will return before commissioners next week for approval with the new limitations.
“You get it,” a resident told Cooley during public comment. “You get it, and I appreciate that.” She the recalled the days when the Aliki high rise was built to the consternation of residents at North 16th Street between North central and North Daytona Avenue. “Everybody in town turned out and said, No more. This is a one time deal.” That goes for commercial buildings too: “We don’t want to be overwhelmed as citizens by commercial buildings that really don’t belong here.”
