Judge OKs controversial canal dock permit for Bradenton housing development
Marshall Gobuty has won a legal battle in his fight to add 49 boat slips along an unnamed canal that borders his Hunters Point community.
The slips were were sold as a package for many of the single-family net zero homes at Hunters Point, 12444 Cortez Road W.
This week, J. Bruce Culpepper, administrative law judge for the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings, ruled in favor of Gobuty, recommending that the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFMD) issue the dock permit.
The ruling, issued March 7, followed hearings in 2022. It could help Gobuty move forward after being in legal limbo since 2021 when neighboring Cortez Village Marina (MHC Cortez Village) filed a legal challenge.
The owners of the marina, also served by the same canal that feeds into Anna Maria Sound, said that the waterway isn’t wide enough to handle additional boat traffic with the planned boat slips.
The legal challenge put the brakes on Gobuty’s boat slip plans after the SWFMD and Army Corps of Engineers had already signed off on the permits.
MHC Cortez Village— owned by Chicago billionaire Sam Zell’s firm Equity Lifestyle Properties — filed the petition with the court in May 2021.
“It took two years of a David and Goliath fight, but we won and we’re improving safety on the canal for boaters as well as our precious manatees,” Gobuty said in a news release.
“This was a significant victory and Hunters Point will now address all the issues surrounding the two-year delay and see how we can move forward,” Gobuty said.
Added Susan Martin, attorney for Gobuty’s Cortez Road Investments & Finance: “MHC tried to shut down the most advanced sustainable community in the U.S. We knew from the outset that we were in the right and that their arguments had no credible support.”
All parties have the right to submit written exceptions within 15 days from the date of the recommended order.
More recently, the owners of Cortez Village Marina filed a complaint with SWFMD after Gobuty had ordered pilings be placed in the canal with navigational aids posted on them.
On Jan. 17, the SWFMD sent a letter to Gobuty ordering that all construction activities in the canal cease until the question of permit requirements is resolved.
“The placement of these pilings constitute construction in, on, or over wetlands or other surface waters and are activities regulated by the district. Such construction has occurred without an environmental resource exemption, and is a violation” of Florida Statutes, Megan Albrecht, senior attorney for SWFMD, said in the letter.
To date, the complaint over the pilings has not been resolved.
