Historic Board’s denial of Gilchrist CoA heard by HEX examiner
The case of the property at 161/181 Gilchrist Avenue went before the Lee County Hearing Examiner on Tuesday, Sept. 12, with a full house in the audience and two attorneys giving their sides of the story.
Donna Marie Collins, Esq. heard Attorney Megan Strayhorn, representing the property owners, gave her presentation first. She outlined the facts of the April meeting of the Boca Grande Historic Preservation Board and explained that while the COA in front of the board was to approve the building of a home and several accessory buildings on the two-strap property, controversy about the Whispering Bench took precedent over the matter at hand.
The Whispering Bench was located on an easement granted to the property owners next door to the south, but was still on the 161/181 property. Though many members of the community had written letters and expressed concern over the fate of what was, by many, considered an historical structure. Island matriarch Louise du Pont Crowninshield had the acoustical anomaly built next to the Gulf on her property by a quite famous female architect, after seeing such benches in places like Central Park. It remained on the property until this spring, when it was taken down by the property owner. It had not yet been deemed an historical aspect of the island at the time of its demise.
Strayhorn explained that the Boca Grande Historic Preservation Board failed to apply the correct law by applying the incorrect burden and standard of proof and that the board applied the incorrect law because they read the Boca Grande guidelines to be inconsistent with the legislative scheme.
“The board erred in basing the denial on the bench, because the bench was not part of the application to begin with,” Strayhorn said. “There was long public comment pertaining to the bench, and Assistant County Attorney Amanda Swindle explained to the board that there was no special significance to the bench, it was located on a non-contributing parcel and there was no special historic significance or designation.”
The second part of Strayhorn’s argument against the Historic Board’s ruling was that the special COA application presented to the board solely pertained to construction of a two-story residence at 161 and accessory structures on 181. The board was comparing the mass and scale of the project to other homes on single lots around it, such as the one to the north which is, according to Strayhorn and the property owner’s attorneys, very similar. In fact, there were several homes on the surrounding block that were shown at the spring meeting to be relatively consistent in mass and scale with the proposed 161/181 Gilchrist property.
In essence, Strayhorn’s argument eluded to the fact that the Whispering Bench situation had completely changed the tone of several Historic Board members’ feeling toward the project, and that they were looking at the mass and scale of the proposed structures in a way that was not conducive to correctly reading the size numbers.
County Attorney Amanda Swindle’s argument was relatively to the point when it came to the Whispering Bench, in that she made no bones about the fact it wasn’t historically designated or protected in any way and that she had advised the BGHPB members of that. She also agreed it was well within the property owner’s right to take the bench down.
She did say, though, that because it was the first thing presented to the Board by the appellant, it obviously pulled some weight in their eyes. She also cited a passage in the Florida Land Development Code that pertains to encouraging landowners to preserve unique and potentially historic structures on their property, but also said that it was a moot point in this case.
Swindle said that even though the appellant was treating the land in question as one space, it was, in fact, two strap numbers. By looking at the strap number that 161 Gilchrist sits on as a separate entity, it potentially or does exceed the lawful lot coverage.
Swindle also said that if you take a page from the appellant’s own architect’s playbook, you will find that he said in the spring meeting that gross square footage should be considered and not as much just the living space involved. If that was the case, Swindle said, it appeared that the proposed property was 24 percent larger than 211 Banyan and 29 percent larger than 200 Banyan.
Strayhorn had a chance for rebuttal after Swindle concluded, and said the reason that the two straps weren’t – and couldn’t – be combined was because one was contributing and one was non-contributing. She also refuted Swindle’s comment about one of the neighboring homes being smaller in scale that the proposed project, when in fact it was approximately 11,000 square feet.
Collins said she had been thoroughly versed in this case, had read through the information provided to her and said she should have a ruling within the next few weeks.
