August 2017 – Major Project Revisions to Army Corps

The two CZM permits approved by the St John CZM Committee in 2014 began to seriously unravel in 2017.  Summers End Group had multiple problems they needed to address in order to move the project forward:

  • The extensive list of deficiencies identified by the Army Corps in 2015
  • Loss of two central parcels in the marina footprint in 2016
  • BLUA’s order to “consolidate” the separate Land and Water permits

In an effort to address as much of this as possible, SEG sent a MAJOR RESUBMISSION of their project proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers in August 2017, ironically just weeks before Hurricane Irma decimated the entirety of Coral Bay.

The 2017 resubmission touched virtually every aspect of the project.  The marina structures were redesigned by a new engineering firm, reducing the number of pilings while dramatically reducing the design wind speed of the marina itself.  Removal of two parcels divided the footprint into two disconnected pieces, requiring the addition of a 400′ shoreline boardwalk to keep pedestrian traffic off of the roadway.

There were changes to infrastructure – relocation of potable and waste water cisterns, relocation of fuel lines, and reconfiguration of parking.  The 400′ shoreline boardwalk would not only block access to the water, but it would also present a major risk of undermining the roadway due to the impacts for wind and wave action on the pilings supporting it in a velocity hazard zone (the pale yellow is the existing shoreline road, the light grey is the new boardwalk proposed in 2017 – never reviewed by CZM.

The entire stormwater management system – a MAJOR MITIGATION proposed to CZM to “sell” the project – had to be redesigned since the storm drainage gut flows across the parcels which were removed.  In the redesign the capacity of the storm water detention ended up being a fraction of the original proposal, essentially rendering it unable to fulfill its original potential to eliminate land based runoff into Coral Harbor.

These and other changes too numerous to enumerate were all contained in the revised marina plans submitted to the Army Corps in August 2017.  The 2017 submission documents are all on the Save Coral Bay website here.

But for reasons known only by the principals and advisors of the Summers End Group, NONE OF THE MAJOR MODIFICATIONS IN 2017 WERE EVER SUBMITTED TO DPNR OR CZM FOR REVIEW.