HOLMES BEACH – The battle over the fate of the treehouse is finished with 12th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Edward Nicholas dealing the final blow in court.
In the final hearing of the last court case in Manatee County, Nicholas ruled in favor of the city’s request for a court order to have the treehouse removed from its Australian pine perch on the beach in front of Angelinos Sea Lodge. While he said that owners Richard Hazen and Lynn Tran could appeal his decision to the Second District Court of Appeal, the only way to stop the demolition of the treehouse is an order staying the removal order.
In speaking with The Sun on Feb. 29, Tran said she’d already submitted the engineering plans for the treehouse to the city for evaluation and requested applications for demolition permits.
“It will be a very sad day taking it down,” Tran said.
During the Feb. 28 hearing, Nicholas sanctioned Tran and Hazen for filing a third amended complaint in the case, calling the move a stall tactic to prevent the case from moving forward.
Representing the city during the most recent hearings was attorney Randy Mora.
“It’s not about what the city wants but about legal requirements,” he said. “It’s time to resolve this. All litigation must come to an end. This is that end.”
For the treehouse to be permitted as a recreational structure, it would require site plan approval, permits and to be properly set back from the erosion control line, none of which Mora said was possible given the circumstances.
“The treehouse is located within 30 feet of the erosion control line,” he said, noting that wasn’t the city’s only issue with the structure. “That structure still stands because the owners refuse to comply with enforcement. There is no version of the treehouse that will be allowed. No plans are or were approved. The city seeks an end to these proceedings here today. We are here because the city is without any other recourse.”
Tran represented herself and Hazen during the proceedings.
When making his ruling at the end of the more than three-hour hearing, Nicholas said that he agreed with a statement made by Tran at the beginning of the session that the case was, in fact, pretty simple.
“The saga of the treehouse is over,” he said, adding that the case was, at its core, an appeal of a code enforcement administrative order.
“Ultimately the bottom line is that the treehouse is within the ECL (erosion control line) setback and in violation of the city code and remains uncompliant after 11 years,” he said. “The respondents (Tran and Hazen) are unwilling to accept that they have lost. This is not about taking anyone’s property. This is about the respondents’ unreasonable unwillingness to accept the inevitable. The city is entitled to the injunctive relief it seeks.”
Nicholas gave the owners 90 days from the recording of his filing, expected within days of the hearing, to apply for demolition permits and remove the treehouse. Otherwise, with 72 hours’ notice, the city can enter the property and remove the treehouse with the cost of removal charged to the owners.
After the hearing, Tran and Hazen both said they were unsure what their next move would be, but Tran told The Sun on Feb. 29 that they would be pursuing removal of the treehouse.
Treehouse history
Hazen said he first approached Holmes Beach city staff in April of 2011 about building a treehouse on the property he shares with Tran. At the time, he said he didn’t have a plan for the structure, he just knew he wanted to build something, and was told by then-building official Bob Schaefer that he just needed to build something that was safe and that people wouldn’t easily fall out of, and that there was nothing explicitly in the city’s codes about a treehouse.
Construction on the two-story beachfront structure began in May 2011 with the treehouse being supported by an existing Australian pine tree and several pilings disguised as tree trunks. Tran said that construction was primarily completed in November 2011 when the city received an anonymous complaint about the treehouse. She said the couple received the first notice of violation from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on Nov. 29, 2011. She added that FDEP staff was looking at either an exception for a permit for the structure or a way to approve it with an after-the-fact permit.
Thinking that the issues with the structure were only with FDEP, Tran said the city had given verbal approval for the construction. It wasn’t until 2013 that the couple say they learned that wasn’t the case.
Tran said they had to get a letter from the city stating that staff didn’t contest FDEP issuing a permit for the treehouse. When they tried in early 2013 to get that letter, she said they received a first notice of violation from the city in April 2013, the first time she said she and Hazen learned about a 50-foot required setback for construction from the erosion control line. Unfortunately for them, the treehouse was constructed within that setback and no exemption could be given by the city or FDEP staff.
In June 2013, the couple received the first of several code violations on the property, this one at $100 per day until the property was brought into compliance. Though a judge later reversed that violation, the property still has an ongoing daily code violation of $50 per day, along with fines for operating a vacation rental without a city-issued vacation rental license. Over the years, the amount owed in code violation fines has swelled to well over $300,000 in addition to attorney fees and court costs.
Litigation between the city and the treehouse owners spanned more than a decade between 2013 and 2024.
Vacation rental issues
The treehouse isn’t the only structure on Tran and Hazen’s beachfront property. The couple also owns and operates Angelinos Sea Lodge, a short-term vacation rental with four units. Though they had previously had vacation rental certificates issued by the city for the operation of those units, in 2021 they were unable to renew the certificates because of a code violation at the property – the treehouse was the code violation. In addition to removing the treehouse, the couple was required to pay all fines, at that time amounting to about $200,000, before vacation rental certificates for the units could be issued.
City staff took the couple before the code compliance special magistrate in April 2021 where a $125-per-day fine was assessed for renting without a vacation rental certificate. In June of that year, Tran appeared again before the special magistrate, breaking into tears because in refusing to allow them to rent the units, city leaders were taking away their source of income.
During the Feb. 28, 2024 hearing, Tran said the couple could pursue litigation against the city due to the non-issuance of vacation rental certificates and the ensuing fines if needed to settle that dispute with Holmes Beach city leaders.
