Turquoise Place No. 2 completed

Originally published by the Mobile Press Register

Link: http://www.al.com/news/press-register/baldwin.ssf?/base/news/1248340526290740.xml&coll=3

Developer, City Council come to terms on benefits package

Thursday, July 23, 2009
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH — The second, 30-story, Turquoise Place tower has been completed and its developer, Larry Wireman, said he could send letters to buyers as early as Friday telling them it's time to close on the units, which were sold at prices starting around $1.25 million.

"We should start moving people in by the third or fourth week of August," Wireman said Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, the Orange Beach City Council approved the public benefits package Wireman will give taxpayers in exchange for the special zoning that allowed him to replace a stretch of aging beach houses with a pair of 300-foot-plus luxury condo towers.

The city's approval of the Turquoise Place plans predated Orange Beach's ability to collect an impact fee from the developer, which typically amounts to a cash payment of 1 percent of a building's value used to pace municipal services and infrastructure with growth.

Instead, elected officials, as they often did with major projects before impact fees became the norm, negotiated a package of "public benefits" that Wireman would provide when his towers were complete.

The main elements of Wireman's public benefits package are:

About 6 acres across Ala. 182 from his towers on Cotton Bayou.

A 90-foot-wide public beach access on the west side of his Gulf-front property.

$400,000 to make improvements on both properties.

Kit Alexander, director of Orange Beach's Engineering and Environmental Services Department, said the developer has already paid the $400,000 and the property will be deeded to the city as soon as Wireman receives a certificate of occupancy for the second tower. At the latest, the property will become public Sept. 1, but Alexander said it will likely happen "way before that."

Once the land changes hands, it will be deed-restricted to a narrow list of public uses that include installing park amenities such as a fishing pier, playground or barbecue grills or perhaps building a small police or fire substation, Alexander said.

Originally, Wireman planned to build four Turquoise Place towers, but when those plans were scuttled amid a sluggish real estate market, the public benefits package he had negotiated with elected officials years earlier had to be renegotiated. The primary element tied to the second pair of towers was 10 acres on Cotton Bayou, but the developer will retain those.

Orange Beach's current leadership said they also ran into problems with the original deal because it simply said Wireman would build a firehouse for somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 — which was not enough, city officials learned — to add things such as parking and bike racks to the property.

"The $400,000 in cash is strictly a negotiated amount and I think that was a good number," Mayor Tony Kennon said Tuesday. "Considering there was nothing in contract form to work from, I think we came up with a very fair deal for both sides."