As far as lots in life go, Greg Taylor has a pretty damned good one.His job is to hit the beach all day, every day. (Disclosure: Taylor is a former neighbor of this reporter, but that is not how we stumbled on this story.)
The 300 blue-and-yellow beach cabanas that line much of the northern half of Treasure Island are his, as are a number of standup paddle boards and umbrellas. He and a few employees — two of them his kids — rent these out to beachgoers along the shoreline stretching from the wide beachfront mid-island up to Sunshine Beach. Since chatting with tourists is part of the gig, it’s a job that suits his friendly nature.
His business, which he inherited from his father, turns 60 this year; Taylor has run it for 33 of those years.
He’s seen a lot in that time, and has become something of a surrogate lifeguard and maintenance man, picking up after untidy beachgoers and even saving lives of endangered swimmers.
“Over my years out here I’ve had five rescues,” he said. “My dad had nine and [so did] some of our operators and people who have worked for us in the past, we have a total of 24, now, rescues. So, lives saved.”
But fallout from a local contretemps that had nothing to do with Taylor is making life quite difficult for him at the moment.
Taylor’s ability to run his business efficiently has hinged on the large white pickup truck he has driven up and down the beachfront, hauling equipment and storing litter for later disposal.
But now, an ongoing legal battle between the city and three hoteliers has affected all motor vehicles on the beach, including Taylor’s.
The hotel owners object to the practice of parking cars directly on the beach during special events. That's legal in Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach, but illegal everywhere else in the state.
The city lost the lawsuit, and is appealing the decision, which was handed down in November. Since then, city officials have resorted to a strict interpretation of the ruling.
The only vehicular traffic exceptions outlined in state statute are cleanup, repair and public safety.
And city officials don’t think Taylor’s work falls into any of those categories.
“That’s just simply providing a convenience for the beachgoers,” said Treasure Island City Manager Reid Silverboard. “So we were forced to stop him from having a vehicle out there, and manage his 4,000-foot-long concession area on foot. And we understand that it’s hard and difficult...that was an unintended consequence of this injunction.”
Taylor was dragged into the drama immediately after the judge's decision on beach parking was announced.
“I had seven police officers who came out and surrounded me on the beach at 5 o’clock the day the judge’s order came out. They escorted me off the beach. You’d think I’d done something [wrong],” he said. “Now I’m restricted from even driving out on the beach, with the threat of being arrested, and also they changed my license agreement to say that they can basically terminate my agreement.”
So since November, Taylor and his employees have had to lug equipment and cleaning supplies to and from the cabanas on foot, and can only drive on the sand if there’s a tornado watch or hurricane warning.
So it’s been a pretty big pain.
“It’s difficult. I had to change my business model,” he said. “What used to be a one-man operation is now a three-man operation. Getting new equipment on the beach, getting broken equipment off the beach is a challenge. A huge challenge... We can’t even use an electric golf cart.’”
Taylor thinks the city could easily make an exception for him, and argues his work ought to make him eligible, given that he does a good amount of beach cleanup — not to mention the rescues. He said he’d even renew his CPR certification if the city were inclined to let him drive on the beach under one of the exceptions.
The three hoteliers who sued the city didn’t mean to impact Taylor’s work, said Arthur Czyszczon, general manager of Page Terrace, a citrus-hued, three-story boutique hotel that sits along the beachfront.
Their intent, Czyszczon said, was to protect their businesses, protect the beach, and respond to the complaints of their customers, whose hotel stays are adversely affected by the influx of cars.
Treasure Island, though low-key in many respects, has been drawing thousands in recent years with events like Sanding Ovations, a wildly popular family-friendly sand-sculpting competition, and Bands on the Sand, a multi-day music festival. All occur on a swath of beach lined with hotels, including those belonging to the plaintiffs. Each year the events seem to get bigger.
And each year lots of people show up and needing places to park.
Beachgoers taking in the festivities don’t want to haul their chairs and umbrellas more than a few blocks. Musical acts
need to get their gear to the stage, which is built on the beach from materials that have to get out there somehow. Beer trucks and vendors — revenue sources for the city — also park on the sand.
Hundreds of cars can fit on the widest section of the beach, and the city can make a good chunk of money from charging to let attendees park there, money that in turn helps fund events. And there's precious little parking elsewhere in the city for event attendees.
“We’d set up a stage, we’d have music, we’d have vendors, we’d sell food and beverages, including beer, and usually thousands of people would attend,” Silverboard said. “And we would park about maybe 500 vehicles in an area of the beach that we have specially designated.”
To the city, beach parking may not have been the prettiest solution, but it was better than having people spend half the day looking for parking.
It was a 2013 Rotary Club event, a full-blown carnival over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, that really upset the hoteliers, Czyszczon said.
The festivities included carnival rides and carnival food, bands and a beer truck — even a ferris wheel in the sand. And tons of cars parking on the beach.
“Literally it was like the fairgrounds, like the Florida State Fair on the beach, but a little bit smaller in size,” he said.
For perennial hotel guests accustomed to a relatively quiet beach environment, the event was a turn-off.
“We did lose customers because we had families that would save all year long for their two vacations a year, and then no one wants to stay at a carnival or fairground for 10 days [including setup and breakdown],” he said. “It was a total of 10 days where you couldn’t see the ocean.”
He said he and the two other parties to the lawsuit — the Thunderbird Beach Resort and the Windjammer — also had environmental concerns (though it should be noted that Thunderbird owner David King, in his capacity as a Treasure Island Chamber of Commerce official, supported a sandsculpting festival, which would have likely used beach parking, that was supposed to coincide with the 2012 Republican National Convention — an event that was canceled due to concerns over public safety).
The hotels' attempts to negotiate with the city fell apart, so they filed suit.
The aim wasn’t to stop all events, just the driving-on-the-beach aspect.
“We’re not against events. We never were,” Czyszczon said. “[The] only events we’re opposed to [are] the ones involving parking and driving on the beach, which would be the carnival and a car show they would have.”
The judge granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, and read the state statute pertaining cars on the beach for good measure.
But city officials are sure that they’ll prevail on appeal.
Silverboard maintains that the city was acting well within the law.
“All of our events, through all these years, have always had every permit that they needed to have from the state, from DEP, from Fish and Wildlife, from everybody,” Silverboard said. “There’s never been an issue. There’s never been a complaint that we have somehow damaged anything out there, that we have destroyed anything. So as far as the state’s concerned, they haven’t had any problems with it. They issued us permits after the suit was filed.”
It’s unclear when the appeal will be heard, but city officials are planning on carrying on with Sanding Ovations in
November, though the issue of where people will park remains unsolved.
Even though the case’s pending status has put a hold on the judge’s order to stop nearly all vehicle traffic on the beach, the city has complied with it anyway out of concern for any consequences that might arise if they go back to business as usual, Silverboard said. They’re not taking any chances.
Enter another unintended consequence: the vehicle that the city uses to rake and fluff the sand, preventing overgrowth of vegetation, hasn’t raked the sand in months.
The vehicle needs repairs, for one thing. City Commission minutes from a February meeting suggest city officials had considered paying for repairs, but ultimately opted to do nothing because of the litigation.
“We have traditionally raked the beach here, as many other communities do, to fluff the sand as well as to control the vegetation,” Silverboard said. “And so now we can no longer rake the beach, and now we are getting complaints every day.”
Parts of the beach are overgrown with vegetation, something the hoteliers say they don’t want. Tourists have also begun to complain about the excessive sand spurs they encounter as they walk out to the beach on narrow trails that weave through the new patches of green.
“Once this all grows up they’re going to have to build walkovers through here because it’s going to get so thick that people can’t walk through the trails,” Taylor said. “So you’re going to have walkovers coming out to a very small, thin little beach out in the front. Talk about a crowded beach. There’s not going to be a lot of room to throw frisbees, throw footballs, things of that nature.”
Taylor and Czyszczon say this is another instance in which the city could probably still keep up its routine, but is refraining from doing so because of a strict take on the judge’s order.
“I think the city’s misinterpreted the judge’s order, which is to prohibit public parking and driving on the beach and had nothing to do with me, had nothing to do with the beach raking, had nothing to do with support vehicles for the event itself,” Taylor said.