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Dear Commissioner LoCastro:
“The more things change, the more they stay the same” – About ten years ago developers recognized the large profit potential along the narrow strip called Vanderbilt Beach. With their
encouragement the Land Development Code was changed numerous times without any input from the public. The building heights, density and scale increased. Residents complained of a closed-in
feeling, like being at the bottom of a canyon. As a result, the neighborhood associations told the county commissioners – Enough.
The commissioners passed a building moratorium in January 2002. Community visioning meetings were held. The consensus – restrict future development to preserve Gulf, Lagoon and sky vistas.
Reduce building heights to reduce canyon effect. County staff resisted the community’s vision and consistently leaned toward the developer’s wants.
Finally, the planning commission recommended: bring building heights down to a level consistent with the community character, reduce density as required in the County’s growth management
plan, increase green space, etc.
In January 2004 the County Commission adopted rules limiting development in Vanderbilt Beach. It took two years, more than $50,000 and countless hours of volunteer citizen time to preserve
our neighborhood.
Here we are again, a new scheme, a new developer – Naples One. The resolution to this neighborhood conflict – simply comply with the Land Development Code with no variances. It’s fair
and it’s legal.
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Dear Commissioner LoCastro,
I am writing you today to express my opposition to the Stock Development One Naples as it is currently proposed. I was encouraged by the action of the Planning Commission and their inability
to recommend approval not only of the current Stock plan, but of a watered-down version that reduced the outrageous tower heights by almost 25%, and extremely diminished setbacks. They
did their job, protecting the community.
Now it’s your turn. Planning Commissioner Frye said it best when he asked the other Commissioners how they could ignore the outpouring of sentiment from the community. These are your
constituents, your voters. Isn’t it your responsibility to listen to those who will live with this atrocity for decades to come and to vehemently deny the developer the right to build
it?
If hundreds of emails exhorting you to deny the project are not enough, if more than eighty people who signed up to speak against the project at the Planning Commission are not enough,
if the 1,100 members of Save Vanderbilt Beach, forty percent of whom have contributed almost $100,000 to engage experts and fight the development are not enough, what exactly will be
enough to persuade you to do the right thing?
Please, when it comes before you, vote to deny the project as it is currently proposed.
In hopes of a more reasonable project, I am respectfully,
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