News-Journal/JIM TILLER
Volusia County’s Beachside Redevelopment Committee has provided the blueprint. It’s up to local governments to follow it.

After The News-Journal in April 2017 published “Tarnished Jewel,” reporter Eileen Zaffiro-Kean’s investigative series on beachside blight and stagnation, the county created the BRC to explore solutions. For the last 10 months the committee has conducted public meetings on improving the area that runs from Ormond Beach to Daytona Beach Shores, with an emphasis on the core from Seabreeze Boulevard to Silver Beach Avenue. Last week, the committee approved its final recommendations, which will be presented to the County Council in May, as well as to the Daytona Beach City Commission and other municipalities. (Read the recommendations here.)

Success ultimately rests on how they implement the plan.

Beginning today, The News-Journal’s Opinion page will examine each of the committee’s five priorities, starting with improving East ISB. We will identify what we find most promising, as well as potential pitfalls, in hopes that local officials will treat the BRC report as a call to action, and not as just another white paper to be filed away and forgotten.

Day One: Building a Better Gateway

For most visitors to Daytona Beach’s beachside, it all begins with East International Speedway Boulevard, just over the crest of the bridge. And for many, their first impression is one of disappointment.

The gateway to the “World’s Most Famous Beach” should inspire excitement, anticipation, and awe, not unlike the feelings a family experiences when passing through the main entrance to a theme park. East ISB, however, offers convenience stores, strip clubs, cracked asphalt, drab buildings and vacant, weed-choked lots. More than one local has admitted they are so embarrassed by East ISB that they take guests on alternate routes to the beach that offer a more scenic view.

When the BRC drew up seven possible physical improvements for each road segment it examined — landscaping, hardscaping, medians, lighting, crosswalks, updated signals and underground utilities — East ISB checked every box.

This is not news. Daytona Beach has been talking about improving that area for years, with few results other than an occasional campaign to pick up litter, pull weeds and splash paint on some structures. Finally, though, that stretch of road is poised to make progress.

Wednesday, the City Commission unanimously agreed to buy properties on the corners of State Road A1A and East ISB. It wasn’t cheap — $2.63 million, which was $383,000 above the total appraisals for the properties — but it also was far below the asking price of some owners.

Gaining control of that real estate (without going through a costly and protracted eminent domain fight, if that was even an option) not only eliminates a “gentleman’s club.” It removes major obstacles to the city remaking the terminus of East ISB, and extending improvements, such as the BRC-recommended sidewalks, medians and landscaping, all the way down to the bridge.

That likely will include constructing a roundabout at the busy intersection of ISB and A1A, with funding assistance from the Florida Department of Transportation. Those traffic circles are polarizing to the public — proponents argue they improve safety and aesthetics, while opponents find them confusing and congesting. Planners will have to dispel concerns that a roundabout at the busiest beach access point will cause traffic to back up in several directions.

Still, the fact that the path has been cleared to remodel the gateway represents a major step forward.

It also paves the way to exploring the BRC’s intriguing recommendation to establish a transit system between ISB and Seabreeze Avenue to encourage visitors to patronize other core areas — assuming they also adopt committee recommendations on how to improve their desirability.

A screenshot showing recent open code-enforcement cases in Daytona Beach [City of Daytona Beach website]

Day Two: Cracking down on city codes

In its list of final recommendations to local governments, Volusia County’s Beachside Redevelopment Committee made as its top priority more aggressive code enforcement, particularly within the core area of Daytona Beach. And rightly so.

The most common complaint from beachside residents is that the city does an inadequate job of enforcing its code ordinances. That’s borne out by the city’s own numbers: Last year, Daytona Beach compiled a list of 395 outstanding code violation cases going back to 1997. They totaled a staggering $4.46 million in unpaid liens. Nearly 300 owners owed $10,000 or more.

As a result, far too many beachside properties are in disrepair — they exhibit peeling paint, rotted wood, broken windows and lights; are missing parts of decks, porches and balconies; and have weed-congested yards. That contributes to the blight that depresses the beachside’s livability and discourages new investment (which applies to other neighborhoods, such as Midtown, as well).

That’s why the BRC was justified in making code enforcement job one. Fixing up blighted properties clears the way for virtually everything else the committee envisions for beachside renewal. Without holding owners accountable for the condition of the properties, and allowing slumlords to operate with impunity, that area will continue to struggle to make progress, let alone reach its enormous potential.

The BRC specifically noted that can be achieved by increasing code officers’ presence, reducing the time lag for code compliance, and making sure homestead exemptions are warranted.

Since last year the city has adopted new rules to make it easier and quicker to condemn unsafe and dilapidated properties. That’s important, because sometimes large liens make an older property too expensive to renovate. It’s better off eliminating the structure and creating fresh opportunities for redevelopment. City officials also say they are more strictly enforcing the requirement for landlords to have a rental license, pass code inspections and pay fees before they can lease their property to tenants.

County Property Appraiser Larry Bartlett also is offering local governments another tool at their disposal. Instead of attaching liens to a property’s title, his office can roll them onto annual property-tax bills, then use those collections to reimburse governments for their costs on things such as demolition of unsafe buildings and other property improvements local governments pay for on derelict properties.

That’s not a club to be wielded indiscriminately. The appraiser’s officer would not use those liens against homesteaded properties where the owner is in residence, or go after people who claim exemptions for indigent seniors or people with disabilities. But it will give governments incentive to move more quickly on problem properties, knowing they will get their money back if they invest in maintaining or removing failing properties. It also will send a message to owners that they had better not drag their feet on complying with codes, because cities can move against them faster.

The BRC singled out Daytona Beach for ramping up code enforcement efforts because so many blighted beachside properties fall within its jurisdiction — and because the city in the past hasn’t been as aggressive in pursuing violations as it should. Cleaning up the beachside will require relentless pressure from the City Commission, including a willingness to add or adjust resources to the effort, to ensure the rules are followed and violators are held accountable.

Officials can come up with excuses why the problem is too big and complicated to be fixed. Or they can find ways to solve it.

A vacant lot sits across from the Dunkin Donuts along A1A in Ormond Beach Thursday March 1 , 2018. [News-Journal/Jim Tiller]

Day Three: Thinking big on A1A

You don’t have to search hard to find signs of progress on State Road A1A in Daytona Beach.

The new Hard Rock Hotel, previously the site of the infamous Desert Inn, opened in March. The extensively renovated Streamline Hotel, once a “hive of nefarious activity” according to then-Chief of Police Mike Chitwood, has been restored to its historic glory and had a grand reopening in June 2017. Two new restaurants, the LandShark Bar & Grill and Cocina 214, which share a previously vacant 6-acre beachfront lot, opened in January. Construction continues on Protogroup’s massive Daytona Beach Convention Hotel & Condominiums complex.

Unfortunately, it remains just as easy to spot the empty storefronts, blighted properties, and tired offerings that sully the beachside’s main tourism corridor.

It’s seemingly a case of one step forward, one step back.

Earlier this year, a team of News-Journal staffers walked the length of A1A, from Granada Boulevard in Ormond Beach south to Dunlawton Boulevard in Port Orange, counting and cataloging each vacant lot and empty building on the main thoroughfare and adjoining business avenues. It replicated a survey the newspaper conducted in 2012.

In each case, the newspaper counted more than 200 vacant properties, including 148 on A1A in 2012, and 142 today.

That area must stop spinning its wheels and find traction. That’s why Volusia County’s Beachside Redevelopment Committee made revitalizing A1A one of its key recommendations to local officials.

The BRC broke up A1A into six different segments, evaluating each’s needs by the same criteria. Not every stretch of Atlantic Avenue requires the same solutions (and in one case, members recommended no changes were necessary). However, the committee did suggest “traffic-calming improvements” to A1A that include landscape medians, corner bump-outs, raised pedestrian crossings, reduced travel-lane widths. Those additions would make the area more pedestrian friendly, which might encourage more businesses to open on either side of the road. Visitors might be more inclined to stroll up and down Atlantic, especially at night.

The BRC also envisioned creating a uniform appearance for crosswalks and other road signage up and down A1A, which would contribute to the beachside’s “brand.”

Perhaps the most ambitious goal for the corridor is also one that deserves the most caution. Some committee members would like to see the area between University Boulevard and Silver Beach Avenue become an arts district, replete with galleries, wine bars, craft breweries and bistros.

“If we don’t have things for people to do down there, this area will never change,” said committee member Frank Molnar, a local investor and financial adviser.

He’s absolutely right, and the idea of having trendy, higher-end offerings instead of the same old T-shirt shops is appealing. But that must occur organically. Government can pave the way by eliminating regulatory and tax obstacles to investment, and by removing blight. After that, though, it should step back and allow things to develop on their own, not dictate what comes next. There are countless examples of central planners misreading markets and giving people what they don’t want.

That stretch of A1A may not be suitable for an arts district; another may be a superior location. Then again, the rebirth of the art deco Streamline Hotel in that area suggests the potential exists. Officials can cheerlead for it without forcing it to happen. Better to think big about A1A than to be resigned to its continuing mediocrity.

The emptiness of Main Street in Daytona Beach at high noon September 28, 2017. [News-Journal/Jim Tiller]

Day Four: The future of Main Street

Most local residents and visitors look at Main Street and see a vacant-eyed shell of a neighborhood. There are a few businesses open year-round, but many are papered over with “For Lease” signs. Signs of decay are everywhere, and decorative pavement, wrought-iron lampposts and ornamental palm trees only seem to underscore the emptiness. This is a ghost town — one that only comes roaring to life twice a year when bikers rumble into town.

But the bones are there for something great. Instead of being one of beachside’s biggest problems, Main Street could be one of its biggest success stories.

That doesn’t make it easy. The Beachside Redevelopment Committee found itself hung up, on more than one occasion, over recommendations for the Main Street corridor. There was general agreement that the special events need to be “better managed,” but in its final report the committee chose not to address the fate of the itinerant vendors that crowd the street during bike events and then pack up their tents and close out their short-term leases.

It’s hard to see Main Street coming back to life when property owners have such a strong profit motive to keep lots clear and businesses empty 49 weeks of the year. At the same time, however, it’s clear that bike-related events are woven into this area’s DNA, and Main Street is at the heart of it all. This is a tough issue that can’t simply be side-stepped. If there’s a way to accommodate both history and revitalization, city leaders should find it — perhaps by reinventing Main Street as a “festival space” that caters to different crowds at different times of the year.

Long-term, however, local leaders must face economic reality. Bike Week and Biketoberfest have been drawing smaller (and, let’s face it, grayer) crowds for several years running. Last year, Chris Bowler, vice president of sales for Daytona Beverages and a member of the redevelopment commission, told The News-Journal’s Casmira Harrison that the event gets about 3 percent smaller every year. Those numbers rebounded a bit with the 2017 Biketoberfest, but if these events can’t be re-marketed to a younger crowd, they will eventually fizzle. And there’s a growing spread of bike-related events, with concerts and other events from Ormond Beach to south of Port Orange.

So if the future of Main Street is the future of bike-related events, the outlook is dim. There must be something more.

In its 2011 Master EZone Plan, the city of Daytona Beach offered a vision of what that “something” could be, with redevelopment along the street that blends second-story residential with street-level retail, restaurants and night spots along the eastern stretch of Main Street, with buffers for nearby residential property. The area could also benefit from a proposed “big bite” project on nearby, publicly owned land: A private-public partnership that would blend retail, a convention hotel and badly needed parking (more on that tomorrow).

This vision could — perhaps more than any other — pull plans for a coordinated, vibrant core beachside community together. But it starts with a consensus on how bike-related events are to be managed going forward. That will be a heated, potentially painful discussion, but it can’t be avoided.

Expanding the street’s purpose can start with small steps: cracking down on obvious code violations. Making sure weeds are pulled and paint’s not flaking. But until local officials solve the bike-events conundrum, the status quo may haunt Main Street.

The Ocean Center in Daytona Beach. [Volusia County]

Beachside's big opportunity: Tap potential of area surrounding Ocean Center, Peabody.

Amid the “tarnished jewels” that dot the beachside, Daytona Beach boasts two sparkling ones — the expanded, renovated and increasingly busy Ocean Center and the venerated Peabody Auditorium — right across the street from each other. But in this case, it’s the setting that looks dull, particularly to the west of the Ocean Center. And parking is a perennial problem.

As civic leaders on the county’s Beachside Redevelopment Committee looked at ways to revitalize the beachside, it’s easy to see why they made this zone a priority. Done right, it could polish up quickly — and have a salubrious effect on another big problem spot, the adjacent Main Street corridor (which we addressed Wednesday).

More than any other, this area represents a tangle of interests. It’s a major ingredient of Daytona Beach’s core beachside dynamic, but the Ocean Center is owned by the county and funded by a hefty chunk of the bed taxes levied on the east side from Ormond Beach to Ponce Inlet. Figuring out the right approach will take a combined effort. Much of the attention has focused on a proposed public-private partnership that would bundle a garage, convention hotel, residential space and retail/restaurant space oriented toward Main Street.

The right proposal would move big, publicly owned properties that now serve as parking lots onto the tax rolls, giving the area an infusion of cash for bigger improvements such as placing utilities underground and refurbishing streetscapes. But there are other considerations: What would it take to draw private investment? Is taxpayer backing for a convention hotel justified, with so many other hotels newly open and under construction within an easy distance of the Ocean Center? Should local officials take the adjacent Ocean Walk complex (another public-private partnership, built in 2002 with its own infusion of taxpayer backing) into account as potential competition — or look for uses that would be complementary, such as a strong emphasis on upscale residential space?

It’s a very big bite. Local leaders might do better to focus first on a more immediate fix, such as a smaller garage with retail on the ground floor. That would be achievable, affordable — and, if constructed properly, modular enough to fit into a more ambitious project. Fortunately, the committee’s draft report includes just such a proposal.

With full participation by the city, this zone could be the site of the first big “win” following the redevelopment committee’s recommendations. Or it could be the spot where it all fizzles out.

Don’t wait

When the Beachside Redevelopment Commission’s recommendations are delivered, local officials will face a decision point. Do they move forward, or toss this report on the shelf with all the others? Timing could be key. To that end, the commission’s service could be extended, as a mechanism to preserve momentum against beachside blight.

Unfortunately, the participation of Daytona Beach city officials throughout the BRC's meetings has been underwhelming — attendance by the city’s two representatives, Mayor Derrick Henry and City Commissioner Aaron Delgado, has been spotty, and minutes show at least three meetings where neither were present. That's a bad look.

There won’t be a solution unless Daytona Beach steps up. City leaders should see the potential and take a more active role — as the city already is doing, with its stepped-up emphasis on enforcing city codes and brightening the streetscape. Without their input, movement on the big-picture priorities will sputter.

But make no mistake, this is a countywide issue. The beach is the engine that drives much of Volusia County’s economy — and it’s worth the work to make a better beach a reality.

What do YOU think?

We've had our say on the Beachside Redevelopment Commission's plans. Now it's your turn. Send us your thoughts on the plans at letters@news-jrnl.com or through the comment form here.