Old Town Villas

It's on the corner of Simonton and Greene Streets and the address is the mid 100 block of Simonton. It's growing like a mushroom. It's going to be luxury living. 

 From the prospectus:

Old Town Villas at Key West is a Caribbean inspired community in the heart of Key West. These luxurious townhomes are designed to blend the classic Key West Old Town style with a modern upscale atmosphere. Attractively located at the epicenter of Key West living, the Old Town district is recognized as the tourist,entertainment, and shopping center of Key West, with sporting and other recreational water activities merely steps away.

They are listed at prices between $1.5  and $1.75 million so even in Key West these do not rate as affordable housing for worker ants.

On the other side of the coin I am tempted to wonder what someone who plunks down effectively two million dollars for a 2600 square foot townhouse is going to demand in terms of privacy serenity versus the nonchalant scruffiness that is a hallmark of this "epicenter of Key West living." 

I mean these millionaires will be safely gated but outside they will face  bums and spilled beer which is the essence of the epicenter of lower Duval Street a couple of blocks away. Come Fantasy Fest they will have some eye popping views of Key West living in the buff too.

Location location location gets a different meaning in Key West. I have found that people who love Key West  from a distance, on vacation get a bit testy when they choose to live here even part time on extended vacations and discover their high price of entry doesn't guarantee them respite from the daily aggravations of a community that tries, in the face of nationwide conformity, to live and let live.

Tourists in Key West are mostly to be seen wandering the streets in beach clothes and intoxicated to one level or another. This isn't  yet Naples on the west coast of Florida where fashion, good taste and boredom greet visitors to that beach town.

I fear the consequences of more luxury homes in a town that makes almost no effort to provide for the people who not only work here but give the town color and flavor. There used to be no Starbucks and now there are...I've lost count....four with another on the way. Cuban coffee shops  still do well here happily but chain stores of every description supplant local shops. 

Mine is a useless lament. Money talks and the chicken walks, for now.

Do you suppose our twenty new millionaire neighbors want chickens and raggedy eccentrics frightening them? I have my doubts. Even though this parking lot attendant exhibits about as much personality to me as  a stalagmite he has  his place in town. I hope I don't irritate him walking by and saying good morning. I hope this scruffy expensive parking lot survives the transformation and with it his job.

I'm not hopeful. 

Key West City Hall

The new City Hall is arising slowly from the wreckage that was the old Glynn Archer School on White Street. And, as you can see they have had some trouble naming the building.

Glynn Archer was a former school administrator and Josephine Parker was a city clerk of some repute. So much so they also named a street after her. I'm thinking that after a couple of years it will just be "city hall." That will be  after all the various controversies die down. This shot was a panorama down United Street and you can see it's a big chunk of land with lots of parking at the future city hall.

 One controversy relates to the old  tiger that used to roar in front of the school:

The sculpture  was welded by George Carey, a high school instructor and  recently got refurbished and despite  city officials promising it will return some people have been making noises about it. So far there's no sign but construction work is underway still!

There was a wave of opposition to building the city hall here. Some people protested the cost, twenty to twenty five million depending on who is talking. Some people think the location is bad which seems a ludicrous objection to me as right here city hall offers brilliant access to all parts of the city, isn't too far from the police department in the event of a crisis (think hurricane) and the lot is big enough to offer lots of parking. Anyway Mayor Cates got the job done and now we have the city hall that actually looks like a proper city hall. Amazing.

 Then there is the storm in a  teacup over solar panels. Imagine that! Apparently sticking them on the roof was an architecturally poor choice of location. So they stuck the array in the parking lot as part of a car port roof:

Naturally that didn't go over too well and the latest pointless argument brigade has been fixing bayonets over this issue. I'm just glad they are modern enough to include one modest solar array with this project.  Very forward thinking for Key West.

And the work goes on. Some pictures of the old school, just for nostalgia's sake:

I am glad the old school is becoming the new city hall. I think its a good choice all round.

Stock Island Hotel

This was then, at Oceanside Marina:

In 2013 local developer Pritam Singh bought Oceanside Marina from the bank after a local company called Cortex blew up taking several notable quasi-developments with it. Singh told the paper he paid five million for the marina and in 2013 had plans to spend 25 million upgrading the docks.

From the Key West Citizen, June 13, 2013, an interview Pritam Singh gave:

Rows of boat slips will remain untouched, as the slips were sold to individual owners. Singh said he purchased 8 acres of upland and 4 acres of bay bottom.

He has been working with Monroe County planning staff for the past several months to determine how much development can occur there. But he added that he plans to keep it a sportfishing marina.

"The saying is, 'The legend is back,'" Singh said. "It's beautiful. It's an extraordinary site."

Singh called Stock Island an up-and-coming community with a lot of potential. He cited the success of restaurateur Bobby Mongelli, who owns Hogfish Bar Grill and Roostica on Stock Island.

He also referenced the changes being made on Shrimp Road, on the other side of Safe Harbor, by the owners of Stock Island Marina Village, who have built a dog park and community garden on their property, extended their piers and are looking at building a hotel on Safe Harbor.

"Stock Island is great," Singh said. "It is fabulous."   

That was in 2013 according to the Citizen newspaper. This is now, fabulous or not here comes development:

The old Hickory House restaurant, sold in a  sweetheart deal to Monroe County for several times its true worth is gone. Singh bought it from the county for its true value and the county lost millions. 

Like they say, paradise paved over and a parking lot built:

 Perhaps it wasn't exactly paradise but it had a funky air that somehow appealed, even after the county fenced off the docks as being too dangerous for human consumption:

Now  we are told a hotel in the inimitable "Key West style" is starting to appear where the engine shops at Oceanside marina used to be:

One can only suppose it will end up looking like an extension of Truman Annex. Yesterday:

And today:

 The marina is still functioning behind the construction. Today:

Yesterday:

As has been pointed out to me anyone who rents an expensive resort hotel room here, a couple of miles away from the city of Key West, has a pretty gnarly drive to get through Stock Island. There is not much that's quaint here unless run down trailers and actual commercial fishing rates as "quaint."

There is a lot of light industry on Stock Island including of course all the services that maintain fishing and recreational boats. There are the services that keep the city going, plumbing, iron works, plumbers and so on. None it could be considered scenic or tourist friendly. 

The main road to US Highway One is Maloney Avenue  and its pretty working class.

I just don't know how long this worker housing, old trailers, can last as the development juggernaut finally gets into high gear. It's where housekeepers, waiters, shop clerks and boat captains can afford to live. I envision a future where workers will be imported and housed in dormitories. 

Maloney could use a smooth coat of pavement to get rid of the absurd dips and weaves in the surface currently. And if the plan to draw tourists works that is sure to happen after years of neglect.

The construction at the end of Maloney Avenue is making real the plans and warnings issued repeatedly over the past few years.

Development isn't coming to Stock Island; it's here.

Summer Keys

A few pictures to alleviate the global warming stress or whatever ails you...

 Beware of a dog, either inside or outside...

 The ever entrancing Key West roof line...

 Seen around town for quite a few months, a Vespa 300 registered in France. Hmm...

 The State of Florida has finally moved the traffic lights at the Triangle to where they can be seen...

 The always lovely Seven Mile Bridge...

Hot July

From the inestimable Miami blog this story of catastrophe not noticed mostly... LINK HERE. I have no idea what to do faced with this sort of catastrophic news but one feels an obligation to say something especially when climate change appears to have fallen out of favor with the headline writers. If you have children pay close attention I would say.

EYE ON MIAMI

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Warmest Month In Human History Edition: Why Non-Linear Change Is Your Future ... by gimleteye

For decades, the GOP denied climate change. The party of Donald Trump made non-linear change your future. This is ugly stuff. In November, vote. When you do vote, remember which political party's candidates are to blame and vote accordingly.

August 16, 2016 

Today in Weather & Climate: Warmest month in human history edition (Tuesday, August 16th) 

by sciencebyericholthaus

Hey all,

Days like this are tough for me, I'm not going to lie. A fresh batch of climate data was released, and it looks like last month continued the current streak of 15 consecutive monthly global temperature records. On Twitter, NASA GISS director Gavin Schmidt went a step further and said "July 2016 was absolutely the hottest month since the instrumental records began." (July is usually Earth's warmest month because most of the land is in the northern hemisphere, and land heats up more than ocean does in the summer.)

We know that July 2016 was the warmest month since we've been watching with carefully calibrated thermometers, but it's also quite likely the warmest month in the history of human civilization, dating back at least 10,000 years. Pyramids, agriculture, cities, Beyonce, all of it.

We are risking everything by continuing on this path. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. We can't have a stable and prosperous global society without the basics of water, food, health, and stability. Climate change risks all of these, as well as the ecosystems and other species that makes living on a planet so wonderful.

We're past the point of planting a symbolic tree in your backyard or signing a petition. In an interview the other day, a scientist spoke of her remaining hope as rooted in the possibility of "nonlinear success" when so many are worrying about nonlinear collapse and failure—which leads to despair. Some of my journalist colleagues have faulted me for saying things like this, but we live in a time of blunt language. Our generation risks profound change if the climate models are right, and they have been so far. What are you waiting for to make as much noise as you can about this? What's it going to take?

Thanks for reading,
Eric

Curry Hammock State Park, Marathon

From March 2008,  six  full years ago on this very same blog:

It is said that when Spanish explorers found South Florida Indians living in the mess that they considered the Everglades to be, they asked their hosts, with some perplexity, where they slept. After all, the Spaniards, overdressed in rusting armor could not conceive of people living out their lives in the river of grass, as damp and leaky as it was then, and continues to be to a lesser degree, today. The Indians pointed to clumps of trees and said they slept in the hammocks, and the Spaniards who managed to cock up the meaning of just about everything they came across in their meanderings, thought the Indians were talking about the creepers they stretched between the trees to sleep in, hence the modern use of the word hammock to describe the contraption we use while on vacation to rest in. In fact the Indians were describing the small clumps of dry land which rose a few feet above the river of grass and allowed relatively spacious hardwood trees to grow and provide shelter for the Indians to live in. Thus it is in South Florida that hammocks are places where trees grow (and where for all I know tourists could also be slinging hammocks). And at Curry Hammock State Park one can wander a trail right through something resembling the original meaning of the word hammock.And we even found ourselves a meadow, though appearances can be deceptive.This meadow was covered in stout crab grass, not the lush soft grasses found in more temperate climes.

By some miracle of timing my wife and I both had a day off together and we had no chores to do. So it was only appropriate that we cast off our cares and take to the road, not, I am sorry to say on the Bonneville, but in the eminently more civilized convertible, which my wife converts all the time except when it's parked.

The state park isn't large where it sits on Little Crawl Key, (a name to conjure with) and offers visitors lots of access to the calm waters of the Straits of Florida, on the south side of the island chain. Apparently small children are encouraged to be off their leashes, discriminatory perhaps but rules is rules.

Curry Hammock lies at Mile Marker 56, technically within the city limits of the relatively new city of Marathon, which is no place much to write home about as it is a wide spot in Highway One about 12 miles long, and the second largest city in the Florida Keys. However it does contain more than one thing worth seeing and Curry hammock is one of those. The helpful information board near the sparkling clean, environmentally low flush restrooms, offers a list of the top ten things to do at the park, and I was glad to see "nothing" was rated number one. A piece of advice more than one visitor acted upon, vigorously:

Including the lucky few who filled the park's 28 camping spots next to the day use area:

The weather continues windy as we prepare for another cold front later this week and this state of affairs favored number 9 on the park's lists of activities: kite boarding.

This is a strenuous pastime and doesn't allow for much time to read apparently.There were several brightly colored kites buzzing dementedly back and forth along the waterfront.They were controlled by some very determined men in wetsuits who spun across the horizon doing pirouettes while the older, more sedate visitors stumped around onshore providing a serene foreground for the waterborne madness.And from time to time they would pop up like jackrabbits out of the water and change their direction of travel as though pursued by a farmer with a shotgun.

I thought the kite boarding was an excellent sport, silent, non invasive, non polluting though probably ruinous for their backs when they get to middle age. There were also a few people interested in the more traditional sports associated with Florida Parks. Pastime number five for instance, on the park list:

And though best friends are welcome, on leashes, they aren't allowed on the modest sized beaches, thanks to owners' habits of not picking up, if you follow my drift and leaving unwelcome surprises for bare feet in the sands that mask all defecation:

And thus, tour completed, sunshine enjoyed, water drunk, back to the main road of life, our life in the Keys.