Update on Gulfstream Appeal

One of the other items heard by the City Commission at their special meeting last Wednesday was the appeal of the variances issued by the Planning and Zoning Board related to the Gulfstream Hotel expansion. Mr. Charles Celi, who lives in the Gulfstream Towers, immediately to the south of the property, filed an appeal within 30 days after the decision. That brought him before the City Commission a couple of months ago. There were a total of four decision he was appealing.

At the initial City Commission meeting, Attorney Karns gave little direction to the Commission as to what to look for in deciding in favor or against the appeal. The burden of prof was on Mr. Celi to prove that the Planning and Zoning Board did not have enough competent or substantial evidence by which to make a decision. In order to do this effectively, he needed a complete transcript of the meeting - which was not available when it was first heard by the Commission. The discussion then focused on the merits of the series of variances themselves - which was not the charge of the Commission. If you attended this meeting, you probably left in an equally or more confused state than the Mayor and Commission did. However, it was very clear the direction that Mr. Celi was given at that meeting - we cannot determine the validity of the appeal if you don't provide us with a complete transcript of the meeting. The Commission did end up denying one of the appeals related to a Certificate of Appropriateness for the historic hotel at the first meeting.

So, fast forward to last Wednesday night. In the back-up material provided to the Commission, there was about a 30 page "transcript" of the proceedings which took place at the May 30th City Commission meeting. There was some initial discussion about how long Mr. Celi would have to present his case, with the Commission settling on ten minutes for all three items. Attorney Karns reminded the Commission that there were only to determine through review of the transcript if they thought that the Planning and Zoning Board had enough information to render a decision.

Mr. Celi gave some rambling testimony - talking a lot about unity of title issues and how the parking had a long standing parking problem and referred little to the transcript he provided. When the attorney representing the Gulfstream responded, he presented an affadavit from the court reporter that prepared the "transcript" of the Planning and Zoning meeting. The court reporter indicated that she was told only to supply a transcript based upon sections of the tape that Mr. Celi told her to provide. The attorney rightly referred to this as a "cherry picked" version of the transcript that was not reflective of the meeting and that the Commission couldn't rightly decide whether an appeal was merited based on this partial record. It turns out that there were almost 300 pages of transcript - so what was given to the Commission represented 10% of the meeting!

Two of the Commissioners (care to guess which ones?) grasped at straws trying to find a way to overturn the Planning and Zoning Board decision. Commissioner Jennings was willing to give Mr. Celi another chance to come back with a full transcript. Commissioner Golden thought (get this!) that the Planning and Zoning Board had too much information, the meeting went on too long and therefore couldn't make a worthy decision. She also asked for a definition of "verbatim". When it finally dawned on them that they didn't have the required information to determine the validity of the appeal, all the appeals were turned down unanimously! In fact, an initial motion made by Commissioner Jennings and seconded by Commissioner Golden to approve the appeal failed on a 5-0 vote.

This is another hurdle jumped for the Gulfstream. I understand that they are in front of the Building Board of Appeals now on a permitting/code matter related to work on the historic hotel. I'll do a little research and see if I can find out what is going on there. But, besides these distractions and delays, the project is inching forward.

For your information, the following are properties in Palm Beach County are owned by Charles Celi - the highlighted ones being in the City of Lake Worth: