CORTEZ – Karen Bell has directed her lawyer to sue to stay the order to demolish a stilt structure known as a net camp just offshore of her commercial fish house, A.P. Bell Fish Co.
After the Manatee County legislative delegation offered verbal support for the net camp at a public meeting on Jan. 6, Florida Sen. Jim Boyd (R-Manatee), Rep. Tommy Gregory (R-Manatee) and Rep. Will Robinson (R-Manatee) made it clear to Bell that their hands are tied on extending the demolition deadline of Sunday, Jan. 24, won by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in the 12th Judicial Circuit Court on Oct. 8, 2020.
Bell had intended to ask the legislators to request that DEP grant a 120-day extension on the demolition order, allowing the Florida Legislature time to draft legislation to protect the camp during the session that begins on Tuesday, March 2.
The delegation made it clear almost immediately that the request was futile.
“Because it’s a court order, they have no authority. I was told to ask the judge for a stay,” Bell said.
Meanwhile, back at the net camp, a work crew appeared on the roof the day after the hearing, prompting rumors to fly about whether the stilt structure was in the process of being demolished as ordered.
It was not.
Guthrie, who built the camp in 2017 and claims ownership based on prior net camps his family built on the spot, instead reroofed the structure last Thursday, Bell said.
Net camps, which once dotted the Cortez waterfront in Sarasota Bay, were used to clean, dry and store cotton nets. They declined in use when netmakers began using more durable fibers, and were made virtually obsolete by the 1994 Florida gill net ban.
Today, only Guthrie’s structure and a historic net camp remain, the latter restored by the not-for-profit Cortez group, the Florida Institute for Saltwater Heritage (FISH).
The 12th Judicial Circuit Court has ruled that the state owns the submerged land under Guthrie’s structure, and that the construction was unpermitted and therefore illegal.
Bell appealed in vain to Gov. Ron DeSantis to overturn the demolition order by Manatee County Circuit Court Judge Edward Nicholas, saying that the Guthrie camp had been rebuilt in the same spot as previous Guthrie camps and on some of the same pilings.
Previously, Bell had unsuccessfully intervened in the lawsuit, floating the argument that the structure has existed on the spot since at least the early 1900s, and, with the submerged lands, is protected by the 1921 Butler Act.
The act awards title of submerged lands to adjacent waterfront property owners who made permanent improvements on the submerged lands. Repealed in the 1950s, the act continues to affect title to submerged lands that were “improved” with construction prior to its repeal.
DEP conceded that aerial images show that a smaller, dilapidated structure existed where Guthrie built his structure, but said the Butler Act did not protect it because it had been allowed to deteriorate and become unusable.
Other stilt structures stand on state submerged lands in Charlotte, Lee and Pasco counties, but DEP maintains that those structures were not allowed to collapse before being rebuilt.
Bell said she is hopeful that her most recent lawsuit to stay the demolition order will be heard before the Jan. 24 deadline to tear down the net camp.
As she wrote to Gov. DeSantis: “These camps are iconic to this community. Artists come from all over the world and have memorialized these structures in their work. I do not understand how my state is not supportive of our history.”
