Back in 1992, when you were asked to vote to approve (or disapprove) the City's purchase of the Key West Bight for $18.5 million, did you know that the popular Waterfront Market would be forced to move off the water? Did you know that the City planned to take the marina and fuel businesses away from the entrepreneurs who had built those businesses and, then, operate them for the City's profit?
Unless you were a real insider back in '92, the answer to these questions are "no." In most cases, you couldn't have known because City officials and others who were orchestrating this deal purposely didn't tell you— even though those decisions had already been made by a small group of people who had been meeting for months, behind closed doors, out of the Sunshine, to decide how the purchase of the Bight would go down.
That group of people called themselves the Trust For Public Land (TPL) Advisory Council. This group, hand-picked by then-City Commissioner Jimmy Weekley, included some of the most prominent movers and shakers on this island, including soon-to-be State Representative Debbie Horan, bankers Dan Lee and Harry Wooley, Conch Train mogul Ed Swift, Fast Buck Freddie's Tony Falcone, Attorney Bob Feldman, accountant John Parks and others. Then-Assistant City Manager Ron Herron (who has just announced that he is running for State Representative) and then-City Attorney Ginny Stone were also involved in those meetings.
Meeting secretly, banning the press and public, and keeping virtually no records of the proceedings that could be reveiwed by the public, this group developed recommendations for the City Commission as to how the Bight should be purchased and managed. Then, to assure approval, they intensely lobbied each of the Commissioners (none of whom had ever been allowed to attend any of the TPL Council's meetings). And, then, they mounted a slick political-type campaign to convince voters to go along.
Before the referendum, it was important that nothing negative or controversial emerge that might affect voter approval. So you weren't told that one of the most popular grocery stores in town would be forced to move to make way for waterfront shops— like a frozen yogurt store or a store that sells clothes made out of hemp.
You weren't told that the City would be taking over the marina and marine fuel businesses. In fact, what you were told— and what the tenants were told— was that all the tenants around the Bight would have the opportunity to negotiate longterm leases for their businesses.
Ultimately, both State Attorney General Bob Butterworth and our own State Attorney Kirk Zuelch ruled that the meetings of the TPL Advisory Council violated the State Government-in-the-Sunshine Law— a criminal offense! But Zuelch— who is not known for his backbone when it comes to prosecuting somebody who's somebody— said he wouldn't take any action became, he said, "none of the TPL Council members knew they were breaking the law."
We're not making this up.
But now, we are seeing the illegitimate chickens hatched in those secret Bight meetings coming home to roost.
If you have been a regular reader of this newspaper over the years, you know that we questioned, from the very beginning, the need to force Waterfront Market owner Buco Pantelis, one of the original "anchor tenants" at the Bight, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to move off the water, to the back of the building he had refurbished and occupied for years before the City's purchase of the property.
The brush-off answer we always received from the "shopping center experts" was that the side of the building facing the water was "prime real estate"— and it was no place for a grocery store. And how could we be so stupid for even questioning that concept?
But now we know that the City is having great difficulty renting these "prime" spaces. Heck, they're having more than great difficulty. They simply can't rent those suckers! And in fact, last month, the Bight Management Board had to vote to drastically reduce the rent of the two businesses who have rented there to keep them from going out of business!
In other words, the decision to force Waterfront Market off the water was, as our British friends might say, a butt-up. And we have to say: "We told you so."
After the Bight Management Board finally figured that out for themselves, they said, "Hey, Buco, we're going to do you a favor. We're going to let you lease back part of the waterfront for a deli." And that came to pass.
But now, ironically, some Board members are really mad at Buco because he hasn't yet opened that concession. "If he were open, the deli would attract traffic that could help the other two stores," one Bight member said.
In other words, it's now Buco's fault that the merchants who rented some of that "prime waterfront real estate" that he was forced to vacate are now apparently near failure. Go figure.
But Bight Board member Doug Walker spoke the unspeakable this week: "The decision to force Waterfront Market off the water was a bad decision," he said. It was a mistake. It should have never happened. Those waterfront spaces are the Bight's white elephant."
But Walker was not on the original Board that pushed Buco off the water. And, to be fair, not even the original Board members really made that decision. They just rubber stamped the decision that had already been made in those secret Trust For Public Land Council meetings, long before the City even owned the property and long before there even was a Bight Board.
But you didn't know about that decision before you voted, did you? You didn't know because those manipulating the deal kept it a secret. But had all those TPL meetings been open to the public, as is required by law, we all would have known and could have, at least, protested before it became a done deal. That's why there's a Sunshine Law.
You also didn't know, before the vote, that the City planned to take over the private marina and marine fuel businesses to operate for the City's profit. But, like the Waterfront Market decision, those takeover decisions have turned out to be "butt-ups," too.
According to Assistant City Manager John Jones, the City is now considering asking for proposals to "privatize" these businesses— to return them to private management; to get the City out of the day-to-day hassles of management. (See Katha Sheehan's related story on page 1.)
We don't imagine, however, that it would ever occur to anybody concerned with Bight management to admit that a mistake was made— and return the management of those businesses to the original owners. Like the TPL promised before the referendum to buy the Bight.