Longboat Observer 08.02.12

Page 1

bserver O LONGBOAT

You. Your neighbors. Your neighborhood.

OUR TOWN + Hitting a high note Charles Chocallo is a 2007 graduate of Pineview and his parents, Chris and Bill Chocallo are Longboat Key residents. Charles is a 2011 graduate of Cleveland Institute with Chocallo a degree in piano performance, and he is in the graduate program there in the studio of Sergei Babayan. This summer, Chocallo is attending Verbier Music Festival in Switzerland as one of eight pianists selected from around the world. It is the second year he has been invited to the program, in which the students take master classes, play chamber music and exchange creative ideas.

Rachel S. O’Hara

+ Violin vacation on the Key Stephanie Bork, 23, from Ann Arbor, Mich., performed Saturday, July 28, on St. Armands Circle, while on vacation in Sarasota. “I did this two years ago and just had a lot of fun,” said Bork. The recent graduate from the University of Michigan is a member of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra and also teaches violin.

Turtle tracks Week of July 22 through July 29

Nests...............................36 False crawls.....................29 2012 2011 Nests 601 256 False crawls 444 225

free • Thursday, AUGUST 2, 2012

INSIDE

DIVERSIONS

IN MEMORIAM

Longboat Key lovebirds marry on the beach. PAGE 15A

New principal puts the ‘Sara’ in Sarasota Ballet. INSIDE

Longtime Key Club chef concierge had many family ties. PAGE 3A

ticking clock

by Robin Hartill | City Editor

Association seeks extension

The Colony Beach & Tennis Resort Association is petitioning the Town Commission to seek an 18-month extension of a Dec. 31 deadline for re-opening the resort.

The Colony Beach & Tennis Resort has until Dec. 31 to become an operational resort or risk losing the grandfathered status that allows 237 units to exist on just less than 18 acres. But the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort Association is now seeking an 18-month extension to the deadline the Longboat Key Town

Commission set in March 2011 in granting the first extension, according to a 20-page letter sent last week by Don Hemke, the Association’s attorney for planning and zoning issues, to the town’s Planning Zoning & Building Director Robin Meyer. Without the first extension, the town would have considered the

ONLINE: Read Don Hemke’s letter to PZ&B Director Robin Meyer at YourObserver.com. tourism use of the property abandoned Aug. 15, 2011 — one year after the resort closed. If the tourism use is deemed abandoned, the property could be limited to six

units per acre on 15 acres, or just 90 units. The letter states that Colony Lender, which holds a 15% interest on the property’s three recreational acres and the mortgage on longtime Colony owner Dr. Murray “Murf” Klauber-related enti-

SEE COLONY / PAGE 2A

ALL HANDS ON DECK Rachel S. O’Hara

Lilly Lazar, Lucy Dellosso, Mia Hanes, Owen Heinz and Hanah Wadud reach out and try to touch a buoy Friday, July 27, at the Sarasota Youth Sailing Program’s annual summer camp. For more photos, see pages 22A and 23A.

IT’S A WASH

by Robin Hartill | City Editor

Seaweed surfaces on beaches The town doesn’t rake the beaches when seaweed like the current clumps on the beach wash ashore. Enough already, Debby. She took much-needed sand from the north end’s beach and gave it to Beer Can Island. She kept us from the beaches, parks and golf courses for days. She flooded homes and businesses

and even destroyed turtle nests. And the tropical storm, now technically more than a month behind us, is responsible for the latest unsightly appearance on Longboat Key’s beaches: lots and lots of seaweed.

Public Works Director Juan Florensa said that the town has gotten a couple of calls during the past few days about the seaweed that recently began washing ashore. Seaweed is always floating in the Gulf of Mexico, but the

Robin Hartill

Clumps of seaweed lined the beach access near North Shore Road Monday SEE SEAWEED / PAGE 2A evening.

INDEX Bridge Bites....... 24A Briefs....................4A

Classifieds ........ 26A Cops Corner....... 14A

Crossword.......... 25A Opinion.................8A

Real Estate........ 18A Weather............. 25A

Vol. 35, No. 2 | Two sections YourObserver.com


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