Treasure Island should work with developers to get what it wants, says a woman who helped shape West Palm Beach.
By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published March 24, 2004
TREASURE ISLAND - A veteran of development battles on the east coast counseled residents Monday on how to handle change.
Nancy Graham, mayor of West Palm Beach for most of the 1990s, told an audience of about 100 at the Treasure Island Community Center that working with developers usually beats fighting them tooth and nail.
The Treasure Island Partnership, a pro- and anti-development coalition formed by Mayor Mary Maloof, sponsored the event along with the Treasure Island Business Association and the Treasure Island Hotel/Motel Hospitality Association.
Under Graham's watch as mayor from 1991-1998, downtown West Palm Beach lost its industrial look and gained CityPlace, a residential and public complex with shops, cafes, and a performing arts center.
Graham, also a land use attorney, started by asking developers what they feared about downtown. They told her they did not know what to expect for the area and were staying away. She hired urban consultant Andres Duany to help design a plan, then staged forums with residents.
Citizens openly discussed architectural concepts: How does a given building "speak" to the street, or to the ocean? How do buildings speak to each other? Planning with residents helps create predictability - a sense of confidence in what the town will look like for decades to come. It's a quality developers require, Graham said.
"The kind of developers you want will not go into a community that is unpredictable. So then you get stuck with all these other people who may not be what you want to have."
In West Palm Beach, Graham held the line on building height, granting no variances over five stories. But she doubted whether a Treasure Island referendum giving voters the final say on height increases will achieve the desired result.
"It's not going to give you the protection you think it's going to give you," she said.
Instead, she predicted, different decisions will create a different look around the city.
Residents have also tried to prevent residential developments from eating up commercial space by obtaining special exceptions to the zoning codes. Graham suggested that some of that erosion is inevitable, since escalating land prices means fewer store keepers can continue their leases.
Graham recommended that the city create a speaker series emphasizing urban design experts, take field trips to other cities, and draw up an urban design plan.
Residents also heard from Mary Ruffin Hanbury, who directs the southern region of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. After complimenting the architecture of its 1950s-era motels (including the Surf, set to be torn down in May for a hotel-condominium), Hanbury said structures often go through an underappreciated period when their newness has worn off but they do not look historic.
"There was a period in the 1950s and 1960s when people didn't appreciate South Beach and thought about tearing it down," Hanbury said of the Miami Beach hot spot. "(The buildings) weren't historic. So there's a strange danger zone. That may be where Treasure Island is."
