HOLMES BEACH – The bells are tolling their last for the beachfront treehouse at Angelinos Sea Lodge as an attorney for the owners has confirmed in court that the structure will be demolished by the end of July.
Twelfth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Edward Nicholas met with attorneys for both the city and the owners of the structure via a Zoom hearing on June 26 to hear how compliance with his February order mandating the removal of the treehouse was progressing. Attorney Fred Moore, speaking on behalf of owners Lynn Tran and Richard Hazen, said that permits were being filed with the city’s building department for the removal of the structure, a contractor has been hired and a permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) has been issued for the demolition of the treehouse. With the FDEP permit expiring on July 31, Moore said the couple will move forward with demolition as soon as the city permit is granted.
“The demolition of the treehouse will take place,” Moore said.
Chad Minor, Holmes Beach city planner, said during the hearing that the treehouse owners’ contractor had not supplied all the required permit application documents as of the time of the hearing. Moore said that the contractor and the couple are working to comply with all the permit requirements. No permits for demolition were issued by the city as of press time for The Sun.
Sanctions in the amount of $4,040 also were paid by the couple, the city’s attorney, Randy Mora, confirmed.
Nicholas agreed to a final case status conference to be held by Zoom in mid-August to make sure that the treehouse has been removed in compliance with his Feb. 12 order. Initially, the order set a deadline of July 3 for removal, though he agreed to allow Tran and Hazen 45 more days to obtain the necessary permits and remove the contested structure. As of July 3, city leaders legally have the option to provide written notice to the owners to enter the property and remove the treehouse with the bill for removal going to Tran and Hazen for reimbursement. Mora said that with the owners actively working on getting the permits and planning for demolition he doesn’t believe city leaders are planning to take that route and instead are still hoping for compliance from Tran and Hazen.
The treehouse has been a point of contention for more than a decade since it was first dreamed up by the couple in 2009.
Tran and Hazen state that they contacted the city’s building department at the time to see if they needed a permit for a treehouse and were told they did not. Once the two-story treehouse was built in an Australian pine with additional wooden pillar supports westward of the couple’s home, which also is home to their four-unit vacation rental business, issues with the city began.
Code enforcement notified the couple that they needed a permit for the structure, though they were unable to meet the requirements for an after-the-fact permit, according to city leaders, due to the treehouse’s proximity to the erosion control line.
The treehouse became the subject of code enforcement special magistrate hearings and court cases in 2011, continuing until this past May when an appeal to Nicholas’s February ruling was abandoned by the couple in Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal.
