As the Margarita Hotel rose to its final height in downtown Flagler Beach some months ago, so did residents’ howls. They complained to city officials that the hotel was higher than it should be, higher than it was allowed to be.
They were right about the first part. The city charter limits heights of core building structures to 35 feet. They were not entirely wrong wrong about the second part. City code allowed some flexibility with certain architectural elements rising past the 35-foot limit–elevator shafts, bellfries, air handlers. But city planning staff allowed more height for elements that went beyond those exceptions than they should have.
It wasn’t the hotel’s fault. It was an error in oversight or interpretation: somewhere between the plans the city Commission approved and the building plans the administration signed of on, something grew. Now it can’t be undone.
“If they were to build something that wasn’t approved, then you go after that,” Drew Smith, the city attorney, said. “But right now as far as I’ve heard, everything I’ve heard, they’ve built what was approved.”
To keep that from happening again, the city is rewriting its height ordinance, specifying heights down to architectural elements. The city’s planning board reviewed the proposal on Tuesday and liked what it saw. (The city commission has had an informal look but hasn’t had its first reading of the ordinance yet.) “Overall, I really liked the verbiage, the narrative,” Joseph Pozzuoli, an architect and the chair of the planning board, said.
The board unanimously recommended approval of the ordinance, with three technical modifications. It now goes to the City Commission for two readings.
The proposal addresses commercial and residential construction. In non-residential areas of the city, the 35-foot limit set in the charter’s stone may be exceeded by such architectural elements as ornamental spires, towers, and belfries that are not designed or used for human occupancy. The overall height of the structure, including any of those elements, may not go beyond 45 feet. That height is to be measured from the finished grade of the property, at its center-front end. In other words, if the building sits on 6 feet of fill, that fill height does not count against the building height. The size of the element that’s exceeding the 35-foot limit must also not exceed 15 percent of the topmost floor’s linear surface area.
Mechanical elements may also exceed the 35-foot limit in those buildings in non-residential areas. Those include elevator and stairwell bulkheads, water towers, gas tanks, communications equipment, and air conditioning units, though that’s not an exhaustive list: the ordinance does not specify every element. That equipment may not go higher than 43 feet overall. The ordinance also requires those elements to be set back from view in such a way that it minimizes what people can see from the ground.
Parapet walls–those barriers that rise at the edges of roofs and balconies or terraces–may also rise up to 6 feet on the roof’s lowest point to hide mechanical elements, and may not be more than 41 feet above ground (or grade) level. Parapet walls will also be required to be set back to minimize their visibility from ground level. Naturally, a builder o architect designing all these elements will be required to submit the plans to city planning staff for approval.
The central tenet of the height ordinance that elements exceeding the the 35-foot limit must not be designed for human occupancy has its own exceptions. The proposal leaves room for “gathering spaces, amenities, and other recreation areas,” with conditions. The hotel will have a rooftop bar, for example. But it cant take up more than 50 percent of the roof area nor can it be fully enclosed. Partial walls built as protection have to be set back from the edge of the building, and can’t be higher than 6 feet.
While such areas may not be fully enclosed, they may be roofed or shaded, with the roofing allowed to be up to 49 feet above grade at ground level, or 14 feet above the floor of the roof area, with eaves limited to 10 feet above that floor.
The proposed ordinance does not change the land development regulations addressing residential homes. Judging from comments before the planning board on Tuesday, that’s the kind of questions it may face: where does the 35-foot height of a house begin? Where are baselines? Where’s the grade? How is fill calculated in? Smith attempted to put some of those questions to rest. “The height regulations do not dictate the Fill that’s brought in that would be the Fill ordinance itself,” he said. “The highest grade that finished grade could be is the highest grade you lawfully can bring fill in, to bring it up to. So it’s going to work in tandem with your fill ordinance. But this is not going to say nor does it say how much fill you can bring it.”
As one of the members of the public noted to the planning board, enforcement will be the issue. But that’s a different story that the City Commission is still grappling with.
The planning board also agreed to send a spokesperson to speak for what the board agreed to because, as one member of the public put it, “we don’t have the PAR board at the meetings to defend what they’re suggesting and recommending.” (The planning board is known by its acronym, PAR
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