Sunday, September 30, 2007

Island 'Offshoots'

As the week ends, we don't want to overlook a depressingly candid remark caught a few days ago by the cameras of local TV station WEAR-TV. In a short segment about two new high-rise hotels planned for Pensacola Beach, hotel designer Jeff Townsend was quoted as saying --
"As the market increases, as our group business builds, we'll just continue to build out our core, and that has to be developed before you look at off-shoots at other parts of the island."
There is a saying in poker that goes something like this: If you don't know who the sucker at the table is, then it's you. On Pensacola Beach, if you don't know whose property is an "offshoot" then it's yours. Or the one next door.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Glad I wasn't the only one to hear (and cringe at) that remark. Pretty telling, I'd say, whether or not the speaker knows of any actual, feasible plan to go after the single family zoned areas for his "off-shoots".

Commissioner Mike Whitehead's freely admitted strategy toward that end was to get rid of the leases and secure fee simple title for the single family leaseholders, then sit back and watch the offers fly. (Despite direct questioning, however, Whitehead never did explain just how he planned to sneak in rezoning to high density without raising the ire of the entire county population other than developers.)

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said...

Any way to permanently block this Costa Rican idiota?

Beach Blogger said...

The post deleted, above, was yet another spamming promotional ad masquerading as a blog comment, courtesy of someone who claims to like Costa Rica.

Warning Keep it up and we'll author a series of articles explaining in detail why the Rough Guide describes Costa Rica as "more boring than Fort Dodge, Iowa."

Anonymous said...

LOL----that is too funny, now let's hope it works.

Anonymous said...

The reference I am sure was to other commercial property not in the core.
Zoning protects residential whether leasehold or fee simple.