THE TALE OF BEACH ACCESS #4

 

Originally published 29 Feb 2020

The issue of the public’s access to the beach seems to be a perennial topic in Escambia County, as well as most of the rest of Florida, and frankly in most coastal communities around the country. When you live in Florida being able to freely access the beach just seems like a natural right. However, that access has value and anytime there’s a commodity with value, people are going to try and profit from it. Here in Escambia county we have two world class beaches, and although each have access issues, the beaches on Perdido Key are the topic of this article. The beaches on Perdido Key have a complicated patchwork of private, county, state, and federal ownership. The federal and state-owned beaches are open to the public but there’s an entrance fee to visit these locations. The county owned beaches are free but are quite small and border private beaches with “no trespassing” signs posted. There have been attempts to expand the county-owned free beaches for several years, however there has been soap opera level drama complete with secret negotiations, greedy condo owners, feuding politicians and the ever-present threat of lawsuits. Many have seen news accounts about these developments, but the stories usually don’t capture the entirety of the story. As a result, a lot of folks know there is something going on out on Perdido Key concerning attempts to expand access to the beach, but don’t understand exactly what. This is an attempt to tell that story.

In some ways I’m an odd person to be telling this story, I’m relatively new to the area and frankly not really a beach person. However, this issue happened to blow up in the middle of my unsuccessful run for the County Commission in 2018 and I quickly became quite knowledgeable on the topic. The effort to expand the county’s beach access on Perdido Key began innocently enough back in 2013 under the prior Escambia County Commissioner for district 2, Gene Valentino. The county partnered with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) to buy a 4-acre parcel of beachfront property to be used as wildlife habitat for the endangered Perdido Key Beach Mouse and for public beach access. 

The parcel was the former site of the Sundown Condominium that was destroyed in hurricane Ivan in 2004 and had sat abandoned for about a decade. Under the deal the county paid $765,000 and the FWC picked up the remaining $2.36 million with the understanding that county could use the footprint of the old condo’s parking lot for beach access and the approximately 74% of the parcel that is grassy sand dunes would be wildlife habitat. Also factoring into the decision was the availability of funds from the BP oil spill settlement which would be awarded under the Restore Act. A grant from the Restore Act could be used to renovate the parking lot, put in restrooms, build a walk over from the parking lot to the beach and other amenities.

This should have been easy. There was nothing controversial in the plan, it was a win-win for everyone. Increased wildlife habitat and a more than doubling of the county-owned beaches for residents and tourists.  All this for less than $800k from local taxes. The existing parking lot on the site had 50 spaces and at over 300 feet wide it would be by far the largest free beach access on the island. That was seven years ago and yet here we are with the property still chained off from the public.

The future problems weren’t immediately obvious. The land was formally acquired in early 2014, but because of the process that was put in place for awarding Restore Act grants it was going to take some time to develop plans, allow public comment and submit the county’s projects for initial approval. So, as work began on developing the project proposal Commissioner Valentino lost his re-election bid and Doug Underhill became the new District 2 Commissioner. Still there wasn’t any reason to believe the project wasn’t on track. The lengthy process of taking public input and developing the initial ten projects to be paid for using the Restore Act funds was finally completed in 2017 and all the projects received initial approval, including the Perdido Key beach access. The approved project was a two page summary that described the location and the nature of the work but wasn’t a detailed construction plan. All the county needed to do was work out the final details and submit the grant request to receive the actual funding and for work to begin. This is where things start to go sideways.

Enough time had gone by that the project wasn’t being actively reported on and it gradually fell out of the public’s eye. But for those who were paying close attention Commissioner Underhill was sending mixed messages. He’d discuss vague plans for expanding beach access in other parts of Perdido Key but appeared to avoid discussing the former Sundown Condo site the county had already purchased.

Commissioner Underhill has had a habit of saying different things to different audiences and has made public statements that are at odds with the facts. This makes it difficult to say with certainty what his real intentions and motivations are. However, one consistent theme of Underhill’s time in office has been a desire to keep Perdido Key a nice little beach community. His number one issue when running for office was to kill the plan to widen the only road onto the Key. Since then he’s moved to transfer Perdido Key Drive from being a state highway to a county road, allowing him to reduce traffic capacity and discourage day visitors. These actions coupled with his off-hand remarks about the white-trash using "their" beaches seems to demonstrate that, despite his statements to the contrary, his goal is to keep Perdido Key beaches for Perdido Key residents. Seen in this light, his actions to keep closed the former Sundown Condo site, now known as Beach Access #4, starts to make sense.

But what about his plans to expand beach access elsewhere on Perdido Key. Well, he’s been Commissioner for 6 years and he’s consistently failed to acquire any additional land. In fact, it appears he low-balled the county’s offer on a beach parcel he publicly tried to purchase to sabotage the effort. This gave him cover to blame market forces for his inability to deliver what he had promised. All the while the 4-acre parcel the county already owned sat abandoned. 

It was at this same time that local resident Randy Cudd got a tip that Underhill was negotiating to sell the Beach Access #4 property to the neighboring condo. When Mr. Cudd got the opportunity to confront Underhill about this allegation, he emphatically denied the charge. However, shortly after this confrontation a public records request revealed emails in which Commissioner Underhill pushed hard to sell the property to the neighboring Seafarer Condo. The proposed price would have resulted a significant loss to the county. It was only a legal decision from the county lawyer that prevented the deal from going through. If the sale had been completed it would have turned the property into a private beach for the residents of the condo, who not surprisingly were big supporters of Underhill’s campaign.

Underhill continued to fight opening the property to the public with an invented argument that it was impossible to have both a wildlife habitat and beach access on the same property.  This despite the fact that the FWC agreed that there was nothing preventing the dual use. Underhill even tried to make the argument that if the site was opened to the public at most there would be parking for 12 cars, even though he was aware there was already a 50-car parking lot on the premises. Fortunately for the citizens of Escambia County, the District 1 Commissioner Jeff Bergosh was willing to take up the cause and led the effort to get the site opened for public use. Even though the property is in Underhill’s district, the other 4 commissioners voted on several occasions to start the process of developing the site for public use.

Then shortly before the election another big revelation came to light. A Perdido Key condo owner who was so thoroughly disgusted with Underhill’s attempt to keep the public off the beaches that he showed up at my house one day to tell me that Underhill was planning to shut down one of the existing beach access points on Perdido Key. I subsequently found video of Underhill telling the Perdido Key Association that not only did he oppose opening a new beach access point but was in fact planning to close Beach Access #1 because it was too close to condos. So instead of expanding the beach access points from three to four, he was actually trying to reduce them down to just two.

Despite all of Commissioner Underhill’s efforts to the contrary, now with 4 of the 5 commissioners on board it seemed everything was set to move forward with the new beach access. But of course, a new obstacle emerged just as they were about to start making progress. The same Seafarer Condominium that had previously tried to purchase the property at a bargain price and turn it into a private beach filed a lawsuit to prevent the needed work from commencing. The lawsuit was without merit and was just an attempt to delay the project hoping the county would decide to back down. It was effective at delaying the project, but unsurprisingly they lost at every turn.

So now, seven years after the County Commissioners originally tried to expand the public’s access to the beach it looks like something might actually happen. The lawsuit appears to be dead and at the last County Commission meeting they voted 4-0 (Underhill was conveniently absent from that meeting) to allocate $228,000 for the project. Apparently so much time has gone by we can’t use the Restore Act funds without needing to resubmit the project which would further delay its opening. The good news is the county staff has determined replacing the parking lot will be less expensive than originally feared, meaning the current funding may be enough to finish the project. The county has a set of plans that they’ve worked with the FWC to develop which includes a water permeable parking lot, 31 regular spots and 4 handicap spots, room for restrooms and a shower area, expanded wildlife habitat and a wheelchair accessible path from the parking lot to the beach. There’s still a threat of an additional lawsuit, but it appears at this point with funding in hand and a set plans ready to go that work is likely to begin in the near future and sunbathers may be lathering on the sunblock as early as this summer.

UPDATE 1 Aug 22: Well a funny thing happened on the way to the beach.  When this was originally written the beach was expected to open in the summer of 2020.  The combination of COVID and legal challenges delayed the opening, but finally on 4 March 2022 the beach was officially opened to the public.  Commissioner Underhill was redistricted out of his district following the 2020 census and will be leaving office in November.  Even without the redistricting, Underhill faces multiple ethics charges and may be removed from office even before then. Ironically, Commissioner Bergosh who championed the opening of Beach Access #4 is now the commissioner for Perdido Key after redistricting. Like I said, I’m not much of a beach person, but it’s clear the long awaited Beach Access #4 is now the premiere free beach on the west side of Escambia County.