http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/jul/03/murky_permit_question_keeps_mud_flying_new_collier/Murky permit question keeps mud from flying at new Collier park By Jeremy Cox
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
No one is really certain when a park four years in the making in Collier County will open its gates to the obscenely large tires of swamp buggies and other mud-friendly machines.
“I don’t know what day we’ll end up getting out there,” said Marla Ramsey, who, as the county’s public services administrator, normally is in a position to know such things.
The uncertainty stems from a dispute between two county departments: the parks and recreation department and the community development department.
County land planners say their counterparts in the parks department need to get a permit before letting vehicles loose on the 150-acre tract north of Immokalee. Parks officials argue their bosses, the County Commissioners, implicitly approved the new activity when they signed an agreement with the state to create the park in January.
“They say there needs to be some conditional use on it, and I say that I thought we took care of that with the agreement,” Ramsey said.
In 2003, the South Florida Water Management District promised to give the county at least 640 acres of terrain that could be carved into an off-roading park. The offer was a deal-sweetener at a time when the county was being asked to abandon its roads in Southern Golden Gate Estates.
The failed subdivision south of the Alligator Alley portion of Interstate 75 was once a haven for off-road riding, an illegal practice that authorities generally tolerated. The state needed the roads, and the land beneath them, to transform the real estate bust into a natural boon as part of the Everglades restoration project.
The county and state set an Oct. 1, 2005, deadline for the replacement riding ground to be ready. That came and went.
With sportsmen growing frustrated and county commissioners threatening a lawsuit, water management district officials offered a temporary solution.
Alico Inc., an agribusiness giant, was willing to rent some pastures it owns east of State Road 29 just south of the Collier-Hendry county line.
Officials targeted July 7, this Saturday, as the grand opening. Once the lease agreement was signed with Alico, the only obstacles were paving a parking area and building a barrier of hay bales around the property’s wetlands to keep tires from treading on them.
Or so it seemed until word spread about the permit.
“We don’t feel like we’re holding the project up,” said Lisa Koehler, a spokeswoman for the county’s community development division.
Parks officials were told of the permit in January, “and at this point no application has been submitted.”
Sporting advocate Brian McMahon, though, said the new delay doesn’t bother him. He said he doesn’t put much faith in government-imposed deadlines.
