Public Peary Court

What was a few years ago Navy Housing may soon become sort-of-affordable housing is the city commission agrees to put their latest plan up for public vote. The commission meets tonight and considers adding a two part referendum to the March elections. Happily I live in the county so I shan't have to vote but I wonder about this plan.

This was what the place used to look like when it was actual Navy Housing, guard hut and all. The Navy decided a few years ago they would rather have housing completely on base and declared Peary Court surplus to requirements. Then  a funny thing happened, the housing was taken over by a civilian contractor who also rented to civilians at $2,000 a house. The city decided they owed property taxes but lost that argument in court so what was effectively not-Navy-housing was still treated as tax exempt by a court ruling worthy of Alice in Wonderland judgement. The city lost about eleven million dollars in back taxes no longer owed...

Peary Court has always been controversial. I remember walking across it as seen below in this historical picture I found on the web. It was a rather scruff park and a useful short cut to Duval Street from Garrison Bight where I landed my dinghy (I lived on a boat anchored out). You can see one entrance at Eisenhower at the left, a loop road around the baseball diamond and a straight shot to Southard Street and the tall armory building on the right. 

When the Navy declared it wanted the land back from the city's informal use of the property there was an outcry and a former city commissioner locked himself in a trailer with some explosives and demanded the decision be reviewed. He ended up in jail and the transformation of what had been a rather pleasant open space...

...became rather drab but useful housing with proper streets, car ports and all modern conveniences. 

A developer bought the property a couple of years ago for thirty five million dollars and offered to turn the property into a sort of gated community "in the Key West style." That plan went over like a lead balloon with neighbors who protested long enough and loud enough the developers threw up their hands and now the city wants to get a mortgage and buy the exact same property from them for twenty million dollars more! Nice work if you can get it...

The idea would be to use Peary Court as affordable housing which is not a bad idea, depending on how you define "affordable" in this crazy city. In any event the plan requires two votes of approval from city voters to support the plan and then the financing as well.  Honestly I don't know what to think. The price seems outrageous but the outcome could be helpful in a city with no decent housing at a decent price for working stiffs. If this helps who will feel like opposing this fifty five million dollar plan? We shall see no doubt because everyone in Key West has an opinion and has no fear of expressing it if they have a private income and nothing to lose.

And yes, some residents will no doubt not be displaced...

Peary Court Redux

What the Navy giveth the Navy, from time to time, taketh away... There are a lot contradictions in the relationship in the US between the military and civilians and it doesn't always seem that both groups are pulling in the same direction. Sentimentally speaking everyone cheers the people in uniform and some think that putting a magnet ribbon on their car signifies support for the troops but when it come's down to the almighty dollar, all bets are off. When the Navy announced the closure of the Outer Mole basin to civilian vessels the first thought wasn't support the troops by helping them complete their mission; no, the first thought was this will have a negative impact on tourism dollars in Key West. The almighty dollar is now interfering at the former Navy housing at Peary Court.

If you ever saw the movie CrissCross, arguably one of the best movies set in Key West, there is a scene showing a baseball game in an open space YouTube caught momentarily in this preview, which shows Peary Court as it once was. I used to walk across Peary Court from the informal dinghy landing on North Roosevelt to downtown Key West before the 29 acres were built up. I didn't feel as strongly as the protestor Molly Logan who fought the Navy by chaining herself to a tree for five days. The Navy prevailed. And now things are changing again, however a return to open space is not in the planning.

City planners recently rejected the latest proposal from civilian developers to turn the former Navy Housing into 200 civilian homes. The idea is that fifty of them should be "low income" affordable whatever that means in this crazy real estate market, but city representatives who saw the plans told the newspaper they didn't like what they saw because the houses were too cookie cutter for Key West. As though developers suddenly sould be able t recreate the genteel chaos of say Shavers Lane to order...

However Peary Court's status as a trouble maker is secure for the time being as there is also a dispute going on between the Monroe County property appraiser's office and the civilian company managing the land since 2007. Navy property is exempt form property taxes but Monroe County argues civilian management isn't. However it just so happens there's a state legislator from Pensacola who happens to agree, quite by coincidence you understand, with the the British owned management company.

It seems weird doesn't it, for a Florida legislator to be in the pocket of a foreign corporation and opposed to legitimate claims of Florida County Official. The claims are legitimate because the lawmaker wants to change the law to give Balfour Beatty a retroactive tax break to 2007... And thus deny Monroe County more than eleven million bucks in tax money. So much for working for the people of Florida! With lawmakers like these we need to start printing magnet ribbons saying we support local communities.

So the open space was transformed into crappy housing that it turns out the Navy never really did need. Imagine this: the navy is now building new housing on their own land on a piece of Fleming Key overlooking Garrison Bight. Why they couldn't have built there in the first place who knows.

There is some sort of obdurate pride at work amongst our leaders sometimes that in retrospect makes anyone who looks too closely scratch their heads in puzzlement. What were they thinking? Why did the Navy demand this land be returned fr housing they seemed never to really need? Would this open space just have become bum central? Now we are stuck with these homes which have been renting for two grand a month to civilians ever since the Navy shut shop here. Yet these homes aren't enough and must be replaced with two hundred do-overs.

But the city says a gated community look created in Truman Annex and similar to this Key West Style at the Golf Course is not appropriate for the future Peary Court. Why? I haven't a clue. Apparently it doesn't look real enough or something.

I was wandering Simonton Street last week with Cheyenne, and we got an eyeful of the real Key West, not, most likely what anyone wants to see in the new housing

I have to say I was quite ashamed of the passed out bundles of abandoned human wrecks lying like post apocalyptic victims of some plague lying on the beach. The Asian tourists who were fascinated by my furry bundle of joy and wanted to pet her, as indifferent as she was, took it in good part, affecting not to notice the shambles of passed out drunks looking like basking sea lions on a California strand.

I am so confused. I hope someone out there has the vision thing sorted for the future of this town on the cusp of some new reincarnation of itself.

Posted with Blogsy

Peary Court

The 19th century Navy Garrison at this location consisted of wooden barracks which were torn down, according to J Wills Burke's Streets of Key West and declared surplus in the 1970s. The city leased the land for a dollar a year and I well remember using Peary Court as a short cut from my dinghy in Garrison Bight to my breakfast at the El Cacique greasy spoon downtown. The free range chickens of Key West have made their home in Peary Court since the Navy reclaimed the land in the 1980s and planned to build housing on the land when the city's lease expired in 1990. This area used to be recreational in nature, with grass and a softball court beautifully captured in the film "Criss Cross" a film set in Key west with Goldie Hawn and well worth a screening. The Associated Press reported in 1991 on a 21 year old woman called Molly Logan who tied herself into a tree for five days to protest the changes planned for Peary Court. She slowed them down but now the 29 acre site holds 160 homes.More changes are in the works for Peary Court. The guard shack off White Street is empty and the homes are to be offered to people who are not Department of Defense personnel:City of key west employees have been offered a chance to rent these homes for the not unreasonable sum of $2,000 a month. They look like nice homes with decent facilities but it's not exactly affordable housing for anyone below the rank of manager. It felt decidedly odd to cycle onto the former base without so much as a by-your-leave, past the old signs:The old military cemetery lies alongside White Street past the fence. By my calculations the boat is parked roughly where the old softball diamond used to be:Most of the houses I saw are what are known to Americans as "town homes" and are known to the English as "semi-detached" homes:

Another curiosity is the bank, used by civilians but that found itself surrounded by Navy property. Keys Federal Credit Union, existed as an enclave inside the base but accessible to the world outside by a winding, fenced-in street that leads to Palm Avenue on the other side of Peary Court. The pedestrian gate to Peary Court is still locked:Peary Court is named for the Arctic explorer, Robert Peary, who was according to J Wills Burke a "one time key west resident." It so happens Judge Peary Fowler in Key West is a great-granddaughter of the explorer.

It would be odd living in this neat suburban semi-gated community in the middle of Key West, so unlike any other area of the city, and so very similar to so many self contained communities across the United States.