Workers deliver drainage pipe to the Ocean Boulevard property. The latest delay is an inability to get water and electricity without going under the road. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
By Larry Barszewski
The owner of an Ocean Ridge home already under construction for eight years needs even more time because contractors have not been able to get water and electricity connected to his oceanfront property at 6273 N. Ocean Blvd.
Town commissioners agreed at their June 5 meeting to extend the permit, set to expire July 6, for only four additional days, until their scheduled July 10 meeting, to give them time to gather more information about whether any extension should be given.
Neighbors are exasperated over living in a construction zone for close to a decade. The house is derisively called “the parking garage house” because its front was allowed to be built without windows. The owner, listed as Oceandell Holdings LLC, has now agreed to put windows in, but that has done little to mollify neighbors.
“Who takes over eight years to build a single-family home?” asked Jill Shibles, who lives next door to the construction site. “This whole situation is absolutely absurd and very disturbing for our community as a whole.
“And the worst thing is, it is still ongoing. We have one excuse after another excuse after another excuse from the owner and — over the last several years — from our town as well, as to why this house hasn’t been completed.”
Lisa Ritota, who lives a few doors away across State Road A1A on Hudson Avenue, is also fed up.
“I’m sick of this. Eight years,” Ritota said. “This is an eyesore. It just needs to be bulldozed back down to the ground and be gone, be done with it. They’ve gotten away with too much for too long.”
Attorney Stanley Price, representing the property owner, said construction plans had called for the home to be linked to utilities already on the east side of A1A, but that’s no longer possible because of additional demands placed on water and electricity from other new homes, additions and renovations that have been built along the beach in recent years.
Electricity and water must now come to the home from the west side of A1A, with lines bored underneath A1A. That work requires extra time for permitting from the state Department of Transportation. The owner can’t occupy the home until it has water and power. And without power, installing the planned bamboo floors and wood cabinets would only lead to their being ruined by the humidity from the ocean and needing to be replaced.
Town officials aren’t sure if the structure even meets the town’s code requirements, although that may be due in part to concessions the town has agreed to in the past.
“There were a lot of mistakes made along the way, but they were signed off on,” Vice Mayor Steve Coz said.
Commissioners were reluctant to grant another extension for the construction, but agreed to an extension until their July 10 meeting, so that staff could investigate the utility claims and determine if any parts of the construction fail to meet the town’s code requirements.
Beach signage
Anyone putting up “No Trespassing” or “Private Beach” signs on the beach in town may soon have to adhere to a new set of rules that will make the signs less visible and less intimidating to beach visitors.
Town commissioners have been working for months on the issue after complaints arose about the Private Beach signs erected by the Turtle Beach of Ocean Ridge condominium community.
Officials were concerned the signs and their locations would not only discourage trespassing, but also scare people away from public portions of the beach where they should be allowed.
The new rules being considered will have limitations on the size of any beach signage — 18-inch square — and where the signs can be located. Under the current proposal, they could only be placed at the toe line of the dune, not closer to the water. Once the rules are approved, any property with beach signs would have 30 days to come into compliance.
Commissioners said they want the signs to be limited to facing east or west, where people walking along the shoreline would have to turn their heads to see them. The proposed ordinance would apply to all beach signs, though the concern has been about those that mention trespassing or a private beach area.
“We had two signs that they stuck right in the middle of the darn beach. And the problem is we need to do something about that. That literally affects the common enjoyment of the beach because now I’m being told that I can’t walk” on the beach, Mayor Geoff Pugh said.
“And where those signs were, if you actually went down there, they were east of the wrack line,” the area where debris from the ocean is deposited at high tide.
Commissioners expect to take up the first reading of the proposed ordinance at their July 10 meeting.
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