A multi-faceted and multi-year showdown between the owners of the South Seas Resort and Sanibel and Captiva islanders and civic groups continued Friday on Day 1 of the zoning hearing.
It’s anticipated that the hearing will take many days over the course of the next few weeks.
At issue is the resorts desire to build a much bigger and taller resort on the northern one-third of Captiva Island.
For decades South Seas offered a 107-room hotel, employee housing and quaint amenities. It now wants to quadruple the number of hotel rooms and replace employee housing with private condominiums.
The resort is situated among more than a dozen clusters off privately-owned community associations. Collectively they made up some 900 different dwelling units. For decades there’s been a cap not to exceed 912.
But South Seas would like to change that.
The employee housing and hotel has been torn down. In their place, the owners would like to build two hotels consisting of 435 rooms. In addition, it would like to build another 193 dwelling units for guests. This would exceed the 912 limit by hundreds of units.
“We do acknowledge that when you combine our residential unit count with hotel unit count we are increasing the units by 356 and those would be hotel rooms unit increases,” Alexis Crespo told a hearing officer Friday.
Crespo is vice president for RVi Planning and working on behalf of South Seas.
Where Crespo and others differ significantly is she does not believe that hotel units fall under the same strict adherence capping the number of residential units to 912. Rather, she said, hotel rooms within a planned development are subject to a different set of development standards.
A judge recently ruled otherwise, saying South Seas resort must adhere to the cap of no more than 912 units for the entire resort that includes the private residences and rentals.
Prior to the start of the hearing, South Seas spokeswoman Holly Boldrin said South Seas was appealing the judge's decision and would continue to bring plans forward asking for a density change.
The resort and private villas make up 304-acres. Since the 1970s there’s been a long-standing rule that there could be no more than 3 ½ units per acre on the property. Of note, it was the resort’s former owners that voluntarily lowered the density threshold.
Day 2 and 3 of the zoning hearing are scheduled for Feb. 20 and 21.
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