By Steve Plunkett
Almost six years after being denied permission to erect a duplex on the beach and 12 days after an advisory panel gave a thumbs-down to a scaled-back plan, the owners of an undeveloped parcel east of State Road A1A won their long-sought OK.
The Boca Raton City Council voted 4-1 on Oct. 8 to grant property owner Azure Development LLC a variance to build a single-family home on the sand east of the city’s Coastal Construction Control Line at 2600 N. Ocean Blvd.
“I feel like we’re finally being given our constitutional rights,” Azure partner Brian Grossberg said after the decision.
The lone vote against the proposal came without elaboration from Council member Andy Thomson, who also said no in February 2019.
The city’s Environmental Advisory Board unanimously recommended against the project in late September.
Calling the council vote “an unpleasant moment for me,” Mayor Scott Singer, who also opposed the project the first time it came before the council, noted that Azure had reduced the building size, and an updated staff report said the impacts on nesting sea turtles had been reduced. “I don’t think … going back a third time and a fourth time and getting them to negotiate down foot by foot, piece by piece is something reasonable,” he said.
More than a dozen neighbors urged the council to deny the variance, with many of them arguing that Azure bought the parcel knowing that it is east of the CCCL and that, as one said, “they could never build there.”
But Azure’s attorney, Robert Sweetapple, said the CCCL did not prohibit construction seaward of the line. “This property came with the right to seek a variance. That’s part of its bundle of rights,” he said.
The city’s Development Services Department had recommended that the variance be approved after attaching 17 conditions for Azure to meet, including that the building’s windows transmit no more than 31% of any interior lighting onto the beach, which is nesting habitat for protected sea turtles.
The home will still have four stories but will be approximately 38 feet tall and have 6,931 square feet of enclosed space, down from the originally proposed nearly 49-foot height and 14,270 square feet.
Azure must now get an OK from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection before obtaining an actual building permit from Boca Raton.
The property is one of two remaining undeveloped parcels on the beach. A federal judge in March ruled that the owner of 2500 N. Ocean Blvd., two lots south of 2600, had a “vested right” to build on its property.
In August, the city and Azure agreed to pause two contentious lawsuits and to decide within 90 days whether to allow the home to go up on the beachfront.
The agreement also called for the developer and Boca Raton to pay their own attorneys’ fees and costs. Sweetapple has said the legal tab on Azure’s side is more than $1 million.
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