Crystal Beach residents lock horns with BeachWalk Cafe

BeachWalk Cafe may have enough parking to meet Destin rules, a Crystal Beach homeowner says, but the rules don’t reflect the facts on the ground.

“We’re concerned about the neighborhood and the street,” Bob Buehner of the Waters’ Edge Homeowners Association told The Log this week, because the city code underestimates the size of BeachWalk Cafe, which means the restaurant doesn’t have enough parking available.

Buehner said the association wants the City Council to delay settling a six-year-old code enforcement dispute with BeachWalk until the actual size of the restaurant is taken into account.

Because of an old lawsuit, BeachWalk isn’t supposed to take up more than 1,500 square feet inside the Inn at Crystal Beach, but the restaurant has never conformed to that limit. The Crystal Beach Homeowners Association, which leases space to the restaurant, has been negotiating with the city for more than five years to revise the agreement that settled the lawsuit, though the restaurant has remained open throughout that time.

The “outstanding issue” was parking: The city Engineering Department said in 2002 that Beach Walk only had enough parking for 1,500 square feet, and the restaurant was actually 5,664 square feet.

Community Development Director Jerry Mucci told The Log this week that the city and BeachWalk have settled on a size of roughly 3,100 square feet, but that doesn’t include dining on the restaurant deck or special events on the beach, since the city code doesn’t require that those figure into the parking formula.

“We think this misstates the real size of the restaurant,” Buehner said. “We think the city should include the inside of the restaurant, the patio and any beach activities in their assessment.”

Monday, the council decided to postpone amending the settlement agreement until the Crystal Beach Owners Association had finished negotiating a new lease with BeachWalk. Councilor Dewey Destin said there was no point in a new agreement if it turned out the association and the restaurant couldn’t agree to a lease based on them.

“It would behoove us to put this off until they get their lease agreement done,” Councilor Destin said. “That would give the restaurant time to scout around and find some parking they could hire — even though the city code doesn’t require that.”

“We don’t see any reason it won’t be signed, probably this week,” BeachWalk’s Tim Creehan said. “We’re doing our best to comply and make everything work.”

Creehan told the council the parking problems had been exaggerated: Seating on the deck has been cut to 85 places, the office has been moved out of the Inn to reduce the need for parking, and the parking needed for beach events is a small percentage of what other beach activities require.

“We are just one small group of a lot of people doing services on the beach that use those parking spaces,” Creehan said.

Councilor Tom Weidenhamer said homeowners around the Inn had told him that BeachWalk employees are easing the parking crunch by using public parking spaces on Scenic Hwy. 98. City Manager Greg Kisela said the city had no authority to keep someone from using public parking — though it might be able to set a time limit — and that BeachWalk wasn’t the only business to do so.

“It’s first-come, first-served,” Kisela said. “I don’t want anyone thinking we may have some enforcement power.”

Waters Edge attorney David Theriaque said the association doesn’t want BeachWalk closed, but did want the parking questions resolved before the settlement was signed: “This trades off one set of problems for another ... You’re dumping all these cards in the neighborhood and that’s not fair.”

Hardy Roberts, the attorney for the Inn’s homeowners association, told the Council that the agreement was a reasonable compromise for everyone and that parking would not be the disaster Theriaque predicted.

The council voted 4-3 to postpone a vote until the BeachWalk lease was signed, with Councilors Destin, Weidenhamer, Kelly Windes and Jim

Bagby voting yes and Sandy Trammell, Jim Wood and Sam Seevers voting no.