On Thursday evening, I had the opportunity to sit and talk with Lizzie and Mike Thrasher, new partners in PAR. Both were easy to talk
with. Basically, I gave some ideas of what we permanent residents of Anna Maria would like to see happen to the island. That being no motels, large residential and retail structures, no buildings that were out of proportion to existing older structures in the city.
They asked what business islanders would like to see. I suggested they
establish a web site that residents could set forth with the ideas and feelings.
Hopefully, such comments by residents would not be of a personal nature, but, rather ideas for futures business.
The overall tone of the meeting was very pleasant and hopefully will
lead to further discussion and the advancement of ideas from islanders for
PAR's consideration.
c
Monday, May 11, 2009
8 comments:
PLEASE NOTE: Our Anna Maria Blog invites significant and thoughtful discussion. It is not, however, a democracy. Comments considered offensive or innappropriate may be removed at the discretion of any one of the blog administators without notice. If the removal of your comment may offend you, it is probably best that you not comment at all. After typing in your comment, click on the "Subscribe by email" link (below, right) to have email alerts sent to your computer whenever a new comment is proffered regarding this post.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Forgive me for being a non believer but we too have had several meetings with the Thrashers. From those conversations we understand they have a 5 - 10 year financial plan here.
ReplyDeleteWith the greatest respect it is irrelevant what businesses the residents of Anna Maria want to see as realistically how are PAR going to insist that parties interested in their properties start such businesses? Asking for our input is total nonsense and is another attempt to engage you in conversation and make you believe they are interested in what you have to say. At the outset Mr Coleman stated that if the residents of Anna Maria did not want to see the changes he proposed to the business district he would forget about it and go and sit on his rocking chair on his front porch. Instead residents have been bombarded by articles in the local papers, emailed personally, and even advertisements taken out by PAR to convince us that this is what we really want. At times it has felt like a master class in brainwashing. Anyone who has attempted to question what they are doing is met with polite and plausible persuasion tactics. Forgive me but nothing has changed except now its the new partners attempting to persuade us. The result is going to be the same. They will keep going until they wear each one of us down or I guess we get fed up fighting it. Or by some miracle will the light go on and they realize that what they are proposing in the long run is likely to devalue the Island. If it ain't broke why fix it as they say. They have everything to gain and we have everything to lose. However you wrap it up the large amount of development they are proposing will result in more publicity, more people, busier roads, busier beaches and inevitably a loss of the peace and quiet we currently enjoy for much of the time. How about some honesty - they are developers - its about the money - plain and simple. They can ask, cajole, and attempt to persuade us but this has nothing to do with improving the lifestyle for the residents or bringing back the old Anna Maria (the old Anna Maria never left!) - its about the big $$$! Whilst Mr Coleman can tell us that 75% of the people at the City Commission Meeting supported PAR what he failed to mention was that for their final 'push' they brought in the heavies from Holmes Beach, Commissioners from Manatee County -heck these people don't even live here! What about the poll in the Sun or Commission Meetings bursting at the seams with the people who do live here and have a vested interest in what happens - more like a 75% vote against what PAR are proposing.
If they were serious about listening to the residents then the idea of the motel/hotel suggested for discussion by the Mayor would be gone for good rather than just on the back burner whilst we all await their next move.
I urge everyone who reads this blog not to forget why it was set up - do not lose sight of their true motives and be sidelined by fairytales. If you want to read PAR PR then you only need open the Sun or Islander.
Lest we should forget Ms Thrasher's own words:
'Hi Mike – putting a bright side to this, it might help if everyone gets agitated
about the potential for the whole street to go Motelsville, if we then present a case
for isolating the evil thing down on the waterfront…They’ve been scared, this
would be less scary…If the more detailed request had been made and then we
were turned down, that might take a lot more un-doing.' LizzieThrasher.
I agree completely with NHunt. I felt from the outset that any attempt by the Thrashers to appear reasonable was disingenuous. They revealed their true feelings about the natives and residents in the news file they didn't expect to be publicized. The "nice nice" is just damage control.
ReplyDeleteNot only did the old Anna Maria never go away
( unless you count the conversion of the IGA grocery store to Ginny and Jane E's, the Sandbar from the Dance grill it was in the old days to the restaurant and wedding business it now is, and Pine Avenue to a real estate strip,)
but it NEVER housed businesses and services in buildings like PAR has built and proposed. While I find the two that have been built attractive esthetically. Anna Maria was never Key West! It was never uniformly anything but eclectic. I hope we never lose that, but I too fear that they are trying to desensitize and wear us down.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Ms. Thrasher (for writing the infamous email that exposed PAR for what it is), to The Sun (for printing it), and to Mr. Coleman (for mistakenly forwarding it to the city's read file). Bless you all!
ReplyDeletePAR’s developer-speak has certainly sucked in some city officials but few residents. Check out any coastal development brochure (and many non-coastal); they're all about restoring the “old Florida feel.” Anna Maria IS the "old Florida feel," totally corroborated by the recent USA Today and Southern Living headlines.
Fortunately for us, the City of Anna Maria DID NOT head down the path of most barrier island communities. When there was only the Cortez Bridge coming out to the island, it was difficult to discern one city from the next, as you traveled the long and winding road to our end of the island. Now, as you happen upon our city, the contrast is stark.
Never forget, it’s all thanks to the courage of many before us that Old Florida Anna Maria remains to this day. The PAR clan's claim to their fulfilling the "vision" of the founders is disingenuous, to say the least, and pure developer-speak at best!
Okay! What do we do with the information that NHunt, C Daniels, Bev and Dune Hugger shared with us? Get Active, get eloquent! Write some letters to the Editors of the Islander and the Sun as well as the Bradenton Herald, that's one thing we could do. It's on my list of things to do. Important things to do!
ReplyDeleteMike Coleman said in his infamous letter and also, I heard, to the AMI Historical Society that PAR wants suggestions as to what to do with the six lots at Pine and North Bay. One person wrote a wonderful reply that it should be made into a Anna Maria City Park and I heard or read that Fran Barford agreed with her and said that she'd pass on the word. I am sorry to say that I thought about it but didn't respond with my agreement to this suggestion. I guess I got to busy or too lazy to reply. Mike Coleman and Lizzie, Ed and PAR can say - down the road when the next IDEA hits them - "we asked the people of Anna Maria for suggestions and we got one reply. So PAR can assume that we are the ones who can decide what to do with the six lots."
Do we want this to happen? I say that you all are going to answer a hardy "NO!". But Mike Coleman and his companions cannot hear us if we just say it in our heads. We need to get on this and let them know that we are as strong in protecting that land's purpose as we were against the "motel" on the premises. If something "positve for the people" is not done with the property it will not lay fallow for long. If not PAR, then it will be some other wolf at our door.
I'm planning to compose and write to the commission, the mayor, the P & Z Board and the newspapers. How about YOU?
Charlie--
ReplyDeleteThanks for opening communication with PAR in a friendly manner and for expressing the concerns of permanent residents so well.
The problem with our tiny, lovely, residential city is that, in order for it to remain a tiny, lovely, residential city, it cannot support businesses that cater to tons of tourists.
That is destroying the essence of our city.
One big concern RESIDENTS have is that Anna Maria is being advertised as a wedding capital. The problem is that such advertising increases the transient tourists population.
All of the noise, traffic and late night partying is fun for bachelor party and wedding participants but NOT fun for RESDIENTS.
This is not to say a reasonable number of tourists are nice. Luckily, many of our tourists are young families.
PAR asks what RESIDENTS want. OK. But remember, we're talking RESIDENTS here, not DEVELOPERS.
Keeping a business-resident balance is difficult because the goals of more business conflicts with what residents are trying to maintain--namely a quiet, small town atmosphere of single-family residences.
So for starters, we want PAR to cease advertising Anna Maria as a wedding capital or any other kind of tourist capital.
Then, RESIDENTS could use a small, REAL grocery with fresh produce (maybe from Geraldson's Organic Farm).
RESIDENTS might not mind a small business operated out of a home, as long as clients do not come to the home, or the business does not create more traffic or in any way negatively affect our infrastructure and ambience.
Such businesses might include information technology, accounting, law, finance or a SMALL medical office.
The overall concept is to develop something low-key and consistent with traveling to the dead end of a barrier island.
For RESIDENTS truly want Anna Maria to be a single-family residence town with a reasonable (read "smaller than we currently have",) number of tourists.
Periwinkle has the right idea. Never forget that the mass outpouring over the motel issue made the difference. Do what you can to follow this blog, because it is here that you likely will be alerted to similar circumstances. Never let go of the idea that it is "Our Anna Maria," not PAR's.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there is some confusion over how the Thrasher email got into the city reading file. Some (Dune Hugger, above) say Coleman accidentally did it; others, and I think the email headers bear this out, say Lizzie did it, mistakingly hitting Reply All in response to Coleman's memo to the Commission. Doesn't matter does it?
There was a recent letter to the editor in The Islander from former commissioner Christopher T. Collins. He stated that he had a cash analysis flow survey done for the city a few years ago. The results were basically that there was not sufficient retail business potential for anything other than doctors, lawyers, etc at our end of the island.
ReplyDeleteIt seems apparent to me that the only way there can be enough traffic to support a Pine Avenue district would be to make it a destination point.
And what might that be? What does the Pine Avenue group have in mind.
I heard one conversation referring to having sreet lamps installed a la a gas light district.
Who is expected to visit and why? Night clubs? Bars? A mini Ritz Carleton?
Another issue hat has not been discussed is that of taxes. It wasn't long ago that business were feeling a terrible pinch over taxes, that business revenues were not sufficient to both pay taxes and generate a profit.
What has changed?
It would seem logical to ask that the entire vision for Pine Avenue be presented to the citizens. Perhaps it is too frightening.
So many great points have been raised by the previous commenters and many truths spoken. This blog is exactly the vehicle that we need and I’m very excited about it!
ReplyDeleteLizzie Thrasher says that she’s “interested in hearing what the people have to say.” In my opinion, Lizzie and Mike Thrasher and the other PAR partners should already be well aware of what the resident majority want and don’t want in our city when it comes to uses in our commercial districts (C-1 and Residential/Office/Retail (ROR)). It should be crystal clear from the recent, enormous outpouring of fury and opposition to the idea of motel/ hotel/ bed & breakfast/ guesthouse/ inn, etc. development in our city. There were so many opinions given in dozens of letters that flooded in to City Hall that surely the Thrashers and team PAR must have picked up a few clues. Surely they know by now that the majority of residents don’t want more congestion produced by any form of new multi-family or multi-unit lodging situations in any building or by promoting our city as a shopping destination or a wedding mecca.
Lizzie Thrasher wrote the words that she wrote to PAR developer Coleman in her infamous email of April 10th. What can one say to that? She may spin away with all kinds of fabulous ‘greentalk’ but it’s not going to matter now.
I’ll add that if Ms. Thrasher is truly ‘green’ she won’t promote Pine Ave. as a destination point. The last thing our environment needs is more polluting cars travelling to Anna Maria and then idling behind the fume spewing trolley-bus on the way to Pine Ave.
Residents want the peace and quiet of their residential community protected and maintained and any businesses introduced should fit accordingly (as other commenters have said, low-key office uses, small ‘no-impact’ and resident serving). We don’t want a boisterous or busy business area. We don’t want it promoted as a destination point. We don’t want ‘promenades’ of more tourists. What is wrong with these PAR developers that they can’t seem to get it? Oh, wait a minute, they do get it and they know exactly what they are doing. I don’t think that it’s a good idea to engage in games with them as they already know what the residents want. I do think it is a good idea, however, for us to voice our opinions about our city’s development to the commissioners, mayor, papers, etc. at every opportunity.