Keep in mind that your correspondent has a major conflict of interest in this report. I live in Colee Hammock. So does Fred Grimm, the talented Broward columnist for the Miami Herald, from whom we hear nothing.
There has been an armistice of sorts in the battle between the Colee Hammock Homeowners Association and the First Presbyterian Church on the church's plan to build big on Las Olas Boulevard. Wednesday's hearing at the Fort Lauderdale Planning and Zoning board will not vote on the issue. Reason: There is no quorum. The board has nine members and four recused themselves last month. That leaves five, and one member can't make the meeting. No vote possible.
This works for the benefit of the neighborhood, and is a backfire of the church's effort to force members to recuse last month. The tactics were crude. There was pressure on the city attorney to demand the recusals. The city, of course, denies this. But too many people of strong character will stand up to argue that point. Four board members did recuse; three would have voted against the church. One of those who recused felt pressure from his employer. Word of this is all over town, and the people in adjoining communities – the Las Olas Isles, Victoria Park, Sailboat Bend, even Rio Vista – are realizing that this Planned Unit Development (PUD) can be used on their own turf to permit developers to destroy zoning codes.
It is one hell of a political battle. Dan Christensen, whose Broward Bulldog blog broke the story and is keeping it alive, has lined up people at least as powerful as the church and the developer, Stiles Corporation. That story will break in a timely fashion. Christensen's sources include important members of the church, who are furious at their leadership, and are coming out of the closet, one by one. This is a civil war amid a civil war, much as the real one some 150 years ago. The story has been slow breaking, but breaking it is, and the month's delay before final arguments at P & Z only works to strengthen the numbers of green shirts in the audience.
The green shirts are not Notre Dame's big game jerseys. They say "Colee Hammock 1916," and that says a lot.
The man was riding high. It was 1967 and he had just come back from what appeared to be a career-advancing period in Washington working for the Warren Commission. He was key to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald alone had murdered an American president. He was already high profile as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, and he saw a career in politics. But first, he decided to switch from Democrat to Republican. The Democrats, after a reform period lasting more than a decade, had mired into machine politics. And the Republicans had some rising stars. Arlen Specter decided to be one of them. You could call it political expediency.
It worked. He became district attorney and later ran successfully for the U.S. Senate. This was despite the fact that some people thought a terrible cloud had enveloped the Kansas-born man with a midwestern twang. The cloud was also over the Warren Commission as people actually began to read its report and realize it made no sense. Specter himself had stumbled when he was interviewed by Gaeton Fonzi, a longtime contributor to this magazine, and at the time an investigative reporter in Philadelphia. Fonzi had been briefed on all the contradictions in the Warren Commission Report, especially the details of President John F. Kennedy's wounds. To explain them, Specter had come up with the "magic bullet" – that the same bullet had danced a ballet through the bodies of JFK and Texas Gov. John Connally. But when confronted by Fonzi, he could not explain his own theory. Nobody could. It was impossible.
As has been written here before, students of the assassination have concluded that Specter was too good a prosecutor and too smart not to realize his theory was nonsense. But he was under pressure. We know now more important men than himself wanted the case solved, the blame placed on one nut, to discredit those who were murmuring "conspiracy." Three of the commission members, notably Georgia Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr., had serious doubts about the lone gunmen. They did not want to sign the report, and only did so after they thought their doubts, on the record, would be included in the final draft. They were not. That Specter went along with the game, in fact starred in it, could be chalked up to his wish not to be a foul ball at a time when his career was taking off. You might call it political expediency.
Over the years as the Warren Commission has been discredited by many writers, including Fonzi, who wrote in our pages what later became an iconic book on the subject, Arlen Specter continued to get re-elected in Pennsylvania. His reputation suffered surprisingly little damage from the increasing belief that the government had covered up a president's murder. There were a few bad moments, especially Oliver Stone's riveting film "JFK," but for the most part he seemed to be the perpetual survivor. But recently, in a wave of anti-Washington sentiment, he sensed he could not win as a Republican. So he switched back to the Democrats. You could call it political expediency.Or you could simply say he was always more of a Democrat in the first place. Everything seemed fine. He was way ahead in the polls, although his opponent, Rep. Joe Sestak, had impressed people. He was a career Navy man who wound up an admiral. But most voters did not know that.
Then Specter, perhaps thinking it politically expedient, attacked Sestak's military background, which was really pretty impressive. It backfired big time. At a time when young men and women are dying for our country, people did not like it, and many voters suddenly realized this little known had pretty good credentials. Looking closer, they saw a younger candidate they liked, especially in contrast with the crusty old Specter. In one of the great poll reversals of our times, Sestak began closing the gap, and just this week appeared to be five points ahead. With the election a week off, that seemed an insurmountable momentum swing.
Barring something unforeseen, and that would be unforeseen squared, Arlen Specter seems to have run out of expediency.
Last week I was honored by the St. Anthony School Foundation for Education at its annual Gentlemen’s Cigar Dinner. As Broward’s oldest Catholic school, St. Anthony has produced, or been associated with, many influential names in town. You can start with Mayor Jack Seiler. There was a lot of clout in that record turnout at the Lauderdale Yacht Club. They contributed a nice piece of change to an endowment that was started in the 1980s and has grown steadily since.
Alas, not all schools are in the same boat as St. Anthony. Located on the east side of town, it serves affluent neighborhoods which have avoided the decline of so many older sections of cities where the original parishes are located. I noted that my old town, Philadelphia, has seen many closings of Catholic schools. As a kid I could have walked to four Catholic schools – the longest walk about 25 minutes – and the one I walked to once had about 1,400 kids. It is closed, as are the other three. They were once free, but with the decline (almost elimination) of religious teachers who worked for God’s wages, tuitions have risen steadily. As neighborhoods went down, costs went up. Mission impossible.
The high schools have followed the grade schools. Some were just too small to justify their existence, but this year a school that once had 5,000 boys is now down to hundreds and is scheduled to close after this year. So is another school that had 6,000 boys and girls, a school that was new when I was a senior in high school.
Broward and Dade counties have also seen school closings in recent months. Monsignor Vincent Kelly introduced the foundation concept at St. Thomas Aquinas almost 30 years ago, and it spread to all diocesan schools. But some inner city schools never had a chance. The foundation concept came too late.
Preoccupied as I was last week, I missed a story roaring by in the opposite direction. It took a Wall Street Journal piece, emailed by my brother in California, to get my attention. And what a story it potentially could be. While test scores and merit pay for teachers dominated the news, Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law a scholarship program that could transform Florida education, and as a by-product save many of the old Catholic schools.
It dramatically increases the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which uses money donated by businesses to fund vouchers for low-income families to attend private schools. According to writer Adam B. Schaeffer, it now includes almost 28,000 kids. The program isn’t total altruism. Businesses get tax credits for their donations. Schaeffer, an educational policy analyst, observes that this concept was not popular when introduced in 2001, but received overwhelming support from both Florida houses. The reason: It works in a twofold way. The state can save millions in tax payer money while improving the overall educational level. It is established that poorer kids do better in private schools.
The reasons are obvious. Lower overall administrative expense. Discipline and a tradition of respect. Kids who want to learn can learn without the distraction of peers who don’t give a damn. A sociologist might argue that those who opt for private schools have a built-in advantage – even if they don't live with both parents, somebody in their family cares enough to put them there.
Now here’s the drama. Schaeffer estimates that if this program grows as planned, “a girl born in Florida today might find that a third or more of her peers are being educated in private schools by the time she sets foot in high school.”
And many of those private schools don’t need to be built. They are here, and more than a few are struggling to survive. Florida’s legislature may just have done more than save our children. It could also have saved a school system that has long proved its right to exist.
Tomorrow night, April 21, one of the most interesting and potentially far-reaching zoning battles in Fort Lauderdale history will commence at the Planning and Zoning Board. The First Presbyterian Church is asking for a Planned Unit Development designation (PUD) for its expansion along east Las Olas Boulevard and a nearby section of the historic Colee Hammock neighborhood. We have called it the Civil War on Las Olas. To date, it has indeed been civil, for people on the two sides know and for the most part respect each other.
Yet in another sense it is a civil war, for the Colee Hammock residents see the church’s plan as a threat to their way of life, and potentially to all the neighborhoods surrounding Fort Lauderdale’s downtown. And most people have no idea what it is about. In fact, they don’t even know what a PUD is. Why should they? It is a planning vehicle that pretty much gives a developer the freedom to ignore existing zoning. It was designed for combinations of residential, open space, recreation and business – sort of like putting together a new self-contained community. But developers recently have seen it as a way to avoid existing zoning altogether. If it is granted in this case, it alters the game, setting a precedent that could affect neighborhoods such as the Las Olas Isles, Rio Vista, Victoria Park – all of which adjoin Colee Hammock.
And most of the people living in those sections haven’t a clue. Considering its possible impact, this fight has received little press. Dan Christensen’s blog, Broward Bulldog, was picked up two weeks ago in a heavily edited way by the Sun Sentinel, but that’s about it. No Miami Herald coverage, no community newspaper coverage and aside from Christensen’s work, not even the blogs. That seems odd, for Bob Norman at New Times savors stories of power struggles, especially with such strong political undercurrents. And there are heavyweights on each side of this one.
Of course, this column counts as a blog, and is written by someone admitting a conflict of interest. It is my neighborhood being threatened. But my conflict of interest is no different from anybody else involved in this, including the church and its builder. Their conflict is with anybody opposing their interest.
The neighbors see the church as conflicted in a moral sense, between its duty to be a good neighbor and its apparent desire to basically become a business – owning retail shops and a parking garage, possibly expanding to a school, taking residential land off the tax rolls and on and on. They see the economics this way: their property values and quality of life versus a church wanting to grow in a big way. All this will be expressed tomorrow.
Mostly the citizens of Colee Hammock, who bought there because of its charm (it’s like a village on the edge of a city), are appalled at the sheer size of this proposal. It is two large buildings, one with a five-story parking garage, which will dramatically alter their neighborhood in terms of traffic, views of homeowners, overall ambience, every which way. One resident, who will be heard from at the hearing, went to some trouble to illustrate the size of this project. She went on a survey trip and found that in square feet – and that means height as well as linear dimensions – it is larger than the downtown Home Depot and bigger than the north Federal Highway Office Depot and Toys "R" Us combined. The developer will likely point to other tall buildings, but those are almost all in the business district blocks down Las Olas. The busy shopping area, shown above, consists of mostly one-story structures, although some have offices above.
The neighbors think if other neighborhoods understood what this could mean in rewriting our zoning rules, permitting similar intrusions in residential sections, public opinion would be irresistibly on their side. It seems to be already. Broward Bulldog, which did not get many comments until the Sun Sentinel piece, exploded to about six times its normal volume of response. Of the 33 responses to date, 31 are against the PUD. Obviously there are interesting dynamics at work in such contests. Those on defense tend to be the loudest. But this does not appear to be even close. It is the opinion of the Colee Hammock homeowners that the church’s leadership may be fired up, but the overall membership is lukewarm at best, not caring that much one way or the other. But the homeowners sure care. Listen up.
Back in the 1980s, when Bob Cox was Fort Lauderdale’s mayor, the city made a decision to protect some of its older neighborhoods by closing off some streets and taking other measures to reduce busy traffic on what had once been quiet lanes on the edge of downtown. The first neighborhood to get such treatment was Colee Hammock, the community located in an oak forest just east of what was then the redeveloping center city.
Colee Hammock is named after one of the city’s pioneer families, who had the misfortune of being massacred by Indians back around 1840. It developed as a residential neighborhood before the Las Olas Isles appeared on its eastern side, and the beach began to change character from small hotels to high-rise hotels and condos. Colee Hammock was caught in the middle, and its streets became raceways as traffic coming off the beach on Las Olas crossed to Broward Boulevard. Most cars were going west to the new suburbs, but a lot headed through Victoria Park to the newly developed Sunrise Boulevard, including the Galleria Mall.
Then, under Bob Cox, the city acted. We made a mistake years ago, Cox said at the time. Now all we are doing is correcting that mistake.
The effect on Colee Hammock was immediate. It had been an older community, with some houses looking their age, but young families and single people began buying and fixing up homes that go back 70 years and more. Some of the vernacular (architect’s word) houses were razed and replaced by much larger and modern homes. Some, such as the one pictured above, are spectacular examples of old southern design. Moreover, the idea of protecting neighborhoods by shutting off streets spread throughout the city.
Last week we reported on the Civil War on Las Olas, which is an effort by Colee Hammock homeowners to stop a church expansion that they think would reverse all the good work done over the last 25 years. Dan Christensen’s Broward Bulldog blog could be described as the Bull Run of this war – the shot that started the first big battle of the campaign to stop First Presbyterian Church from getting a Planned Unit Development (PUD) to permit two large buildings on and just off Las Olas.
The homeowners' argument is that the PUD subverts existing zoning, which would not permit this scale development. The Sun Sentinel picked up the story and the blogosphere saw round after round of messages, almost all against the church plan. The church denies it, but the plan looks like a school, or something that could easily turn into one. Classrooms, a gym, cafeteria, administrative offices. And a five-story parking garage fronting Las Olas in a block of mostly one-story buildings. The Planning and Zoning Board hearing is April 21, and its members, along with the city commission, are being bombarded by messages as the potential impact of this PUD becomes known on the Las Olas Isles and the beach. The residents say it opens the gates to a flood of large-scale development along east Las Olas and sets a precedent that could affect neighborhoods, such as Rio Vista, which are close to downtown.
The church has piously pointed to its mission to serve. Equally piously, and somewhat cynically, the neighbors say a church serving God would not destroy a neighborhood. Back to the Civil War – the real one. Abraham Lincoln mused that both the North and the South prayed to the same God and invoked his blessing upon their noble causes. Yet, Lincoln noted, God could not be on both sides at once.
The neighbors against God’s good church aren’t taking any chances. They are wearing dark green T-shirts saying Colee Hammock 1916, have spattered the neighborhood with signs opposing the PUD, and are enlisting the support of other neighborhood associations which might face similar threats in the future. Perhaps most important, they have raised $18,000 of In God We Trust greenbacks as a start for a possible legal fight if they lose at the city level.
Devoutly, however, they hope the government of the people, by the people, for the people has not perished from the earth.
Unlike elected officials, it is legal for me to admit conflict of interest. I do so now. My conflict is that I live in one of the greatest neighborhoods in Florida and want to keep it that way. It is Colee Hammock, that shaded high ridge where the former marsh (now known as the Las Olas Isles) gives way to firm ground, where once the Indians had their rest and recreation, where more than 100 years ago Mary Brickell valued the section so much that she forced the powerful Henry Flagler to divert his FEC railroad to the west. She maintained that one day it would be a lovely residential neighborhood. She was right.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, between the First Presbyterian Church and almost everybody who lives in Colee Hammock. At a recent homeowners meeting, the vote was 100 percent against the church’s efforts to get a Planned Unit Development (PUD) designation for land it owns along Las Olas Boulevard and extending two blocks south toward the New River.
In a larger sense, it is not a fight between neighbors and the church. The church members and the neighbors have been friends for years, have done business, like each other. Many of our children attended Happyland, the church’s pre-school. Friendships made among small children endure generations later. This is why this is one of the most arresting zoning contests the city has seen. This is no outside developer trying to use the charm of the neighborhood to make money with a building hugely out of scale, and character, with that part of Las Olas. This is a church in place for decades, with numerous influential members.
Dan Christensen, in his Broward Bulldog blog, threw out some of the names involved on both sides. You can start with Huizenga. And Stiles Construction, which would build the complex. Everybody likes Terry Stiles, the class act of local builders, and in this economy the firm needs some work. The notice above is posted on the open land on Las Olas that most people take for granted. Some, not noticing the First Presbyterian sign, even think it is a public park.
The church says it only seeks to expand its ministry. The neighbors say it is a huge intrusion, which will not only draw traffic to an already congested section, and destroy property values of some very expensive homes nearby, but most importantly will set a precedent for every property owner near it to clamor for the same treatment. That is the way it works, and you can bet at the April 21 planning and zoning board meeting that those property owners along three blocks will be vocal in supporting the church, not because it is a good idea for Colee Hammock, but because it is good for numero uno. It happens every spring.
The debate, if you can call it that, is over two buildings, one five stories, the other smaller, on two large pieces of land the church owns. The piece fronting Las Olas would have retail, which the neighbors would accept, and a five-story parking garage, which they abhor. Current zoning will not permit it. A PUD throws out all the rules. With a PUD you can build damn near anything. A block to the south, the second structure, which the church describes as a family center, includes six classrooms, a gym and a kitchen. Or do they mean cafeteria? The plans, which go back some years, have always been vague, to the annoyance of the neighbors.
To this untrained eye, this proposal sounds suspiciously like a school, or something that could easily turn into one. Can you imagine Las Olas, near the famous Floridian, with 15 mph yellow blinkers, with cops and their radar guns lurking down the boulevard (if they can find a place to park) and impatient drivers cutting over to Broward Boulevard, along cross streets where residents already complain about speeding cut-through traffic, only to face the same thing on Broward as parents arrive with students for Virginia Shuman Young and Saint Anthony schools.
If it is not a school, what is it? Obviously the church would not build “a family center” of such size if it did not intend to use it for something, and use it a lot. Either way, it is a game changer, and a historic neighborhood should not be a game.
Spies – and there are many of both sides – report that the church is divided on the entire plan. The leadership wants it; many of the congregation, some of whom are Colee Hammock residents, do not. They worry about the cost, estimated at $25 million, and some even think of the impact on a neighborhood filled with friends. One summed up what appears to be the game. “This is an ego trip,” the source said. “It’s the leadership. They just want to win.”
Think Hoosiers, leaves blowing across an Indiana road in the fall. Think Boston and Maine, crossing New England inlets town after town, where once fishermen died by the hundreds in the unforgiving Atlantic. Think South Florida in the pioneer days, Henry Flagler bringing the iron horse south to Key West, crossing an azure sea, key by key. Think of those wild Oklahoma mornings where the wind came pounding down the range. Think the Panama Canal, where 25,000 (5,000 Americans) died to build a path to the seas. Think of it all – Lewis and Clark, Brandywine Creek, the Little Bighorn, Gettysburg, the Halls of Montezuma, Iwo Jima, the Tet Offensive. Think Washington Irving, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Salinger. Think American history.
That helps explain why it will take an awful lot to avoid a long, anxious summer for Democratic candidates. Studies are showing that Florida is filled with voters who don’t like what just happened in Washington. One poll showed a sharp spike for Attorney General Bill McCollum, Republican candidate for governor. He’s one of the attorney generals suing the government over the health care legislation.
The national press has given Florida much attention on this matter. Many people are saying that seniors and retirees, often but not always the same people, are defending their turf – seeing little in this bill for them, and possibly costing them money. Selfishness, you might say.
That’s probably one motive, but there may be something more going on here... something more fundamental to American values. Almost by definition, people who have retired in Florida, or own second homes, fall into the category of responsible citizens. Otherwise, they most likely could not have afforded to be here in the first place. Some years back our state was a cheap place to live, but that’s not true today.
Thus, those older people who are here have mostly lived reasonably carefully and conservatively – saving money, having decent insurance, and generally valuing the institutions that have governed their lives. They may not know all the details, but they have a sense of the history, which they inherited, and have, in manner large or small, helped preserve and shape.
They don’t usually hate insurance companies, or feel exploited by the system. Until now. Even if they don’t worry about deficits and what it will do to their grandchildren, and many obviously do, they sense something fundamentally wrong with a bill that turns the concept of insurance upside down.
They nod in agreement with the critics who scoff at the notion that you can get around to having property insurance only when your house burns down. Or get medical insurance only when you get sick. Or watch younger generations growing up with an attitude of “What, me worry?” Not when government is a backstop to solve problems that these older people had to solve for themselves. They are not upset when right wing commentators call this socialism. Democrats call that notion nonsense. Florida isn’t so sure.
It’s not just one thing, but a bunch of irritants that cluster into moods of anger. The idea of illegal immigrants milking the system, moving here to have children who then become citizens, or use emergency rooms for what others use doctors. It’s people driving without insurance, or even licenses. It includes the bailouts and the reckless government policies that caused the mortgage mess. These seniors may be for the most part secure, but they know their children may be feeling the painful effects of the economy. They have a disdain for comparing Social Security to the new health care legislation. These people paid Social Security since they were teenagers, and many are still working and paying. To them, who have lived long enough, and many have not, it is called a return on investment.
But in the largest sense, it is that cloudy but sweet emotion rooted in our history, the stuff of the opening graph, hard to put in neat terms, but always there. You can call it patriotism. Or people simply remembering where they came from, and worrying about where we are going. Although it may not qualify medically, you might also call it a pre-existing condition.
As we were going to press, both The Miami Herald and Sun-Sentinel ran pieces on the state’s acquisition of U.S. Sugar's land to help restore the natural flow of water to the Everglades. So did the New York Times. The Herald and Times’ pieces were particularly long. All three stories emphasized cost, wondering if the price was right in the first place, and if in hard times the state could afford to purchase this land. There were the usual quotes from lawyers from interests trying to block the plan, as well as environmentalists and spokesmen for the Crist administration. The latter are determined to see this deal through as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to correct a mistake that never should have been in the first place.
We know something about this subject from some research last year for Gulfstream Media Group’s magazines on the Treasure Coast, Stuart Magazine and Jupiter Magazine. We quoted some people who have been involved in environmental efforts for many years. Among them is Karl Wickstrom, editor of Florida Sportsman, the best man in our business I have met over 40 years. Wickstrom came out of The Miami Herald, during the day when all growth was good and the environmental be damned. In 1969, he launched Florida Sportsman and turned it into one of the best magazines of its kind. The outdoors are his beat, and for as long as his magazine has existed, it has crusaded to correct policies that damage the environment.
One of the greatest mistakes goes back 60 years. Then, as now, agricultural interests all but owned many Florida politicians. Thus they were able to largely shut off what we now know is a great river, flowing from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. Imagine blocking off a major river, and channeling the huge amount of water into a massive lake and canals. That’s what they did to the River of Grass.
The result is to store up huge amounts of water in Lake Okeechobee until the lake gets so high that it threatens to break through its dike. Fearing a breach in the dike and a disastrous flood – such as the one that killed thousands of people in the 1920s – water managers let the water run off. And not south to the Glades as nature intended, but into rivers east and west, to the estuaries along the coasts, Fort Myers to the west, Stuart to the east. Nice idea, except that the water from the lake is polluted. Polluted by nutrients poured into it by run-off from heavily fertilized farms, much of it sugar cane. The effect of that polluted water is devastating, killing all forms of wildlife, including fish and birds.
This does not happen every year. Sometimes the lake is very low, and we worry about water shortages. But it happens often enough that every time the environmentalists manage to get wildlife back close to a natural state, the discharges kill off their work. People in Stuart and Fort Myers know this well. They see the diseased and dead fish, and the remains of the birds which feed on them. For areas whose economy is closely tied to a healthy estuary system, it is a recurring disaster.
I would take Karl Wickstrom’s opinion over that of the lawyers and polluters.
“This is it,” Wickstrom says. “We either do this or we lose out. If we miss this it’s like we drive and see different properties that we could have bought for a song. And it’ll come back in spades to get us. There is no other way to restore the sheet flow. It’s not perfect, but only alternative we have.
“This is a giant opportunity. People are for it. Polls show that. They have a bad feeling about the government subsidizing Big Sugar and they are making hundreds of millions and they turn around and cause pollution. Huge areas south of Lake Okeechobee, as large as the lake itself, have been drained to keep the polluters making money. Mother nature wanted that to be wet. Draining it out to the estuaries reduces ground water. When you do have dry years you have no sponge effect.
“The people fighting this all have conflicts of interest; they are lawyers for polluters or polluters themselves. I call it the pollution establishment because that’s what is. People want to make a lot of money with the status quo, and not worry about the horrible ruination it causes. It’s such a shame. We remember rivers and estuaries that were pure and filled with fish and birds. Now we suffer with toilets. This is the public good versus private profit makers. True, sugar is getting a good price. I say so what? It is not worth jeopardizing this opportunity.”
That’s what you don’t read in newspapers. The truth.
