ANNA MARIA – No final decisions have been made, but the mayor and commissioners are considering allowing beach cabana rentals in some public beach areas and not allowing them in others.
Current city code adopted many years ago doesn’t allow any commercial activity in the city’s coastal conservation and recreation open space zones that comprise most of the public beach areas in Anna Maria.
City code also doesn’t allow multi-legged cabanas and tents in the coastal conservation zones, regardless of who owns them and sets them up.
The mayor and commissioners first discussed commercial beach activities, including cabana rentals, on July 24 and they continued those discussions on Aug. 14.
Reiterating statements made at the previous meeting, Mayor Mark Short said, “Commercial activity is not listed as a permissible activity on any of our beaches. In fact, our land use ordinance even goes as far as to say you can’t even have more than one-pole tents on the coastal conservation part of our beach.”
Highlighted in green on the city’s zoning map, the coastal conservation zones include the lengthy beach shoreline that extends from the southwest end of Magnolia Avenue near the Sandbar restaurant and around Bean Point to Jacaranda Road. The coastal conservation zones also include the Gulf shoreline that extends south from Oak Avenue to the city limits at Beach Avenue; and the narrow, residential Tampa Bay shoreline along South Bay Drive from Magnolia Avenue to the northeastern tip of the city near the Galati marina.
Highlighted in blue, the largest beachfront recreation open space zone extends along the Tampa Bay shoreline between Hibiscus Street to the northeast end of Magnolia Avenue and includes the Bayfront Park and City Pier shorelines. A smaller beachfront recreation open space zone extends along the Gulf shoreline from Magnolia Avenue to Oak Avenue.
Short said the first question the commission needed to answer was whether they wanted to leave the current ordinance as it is and begin enforcing the existing prohibitions and restrictions that are not currently being enforced, and haven’t been in the past.
“If the commission chooses to leave the ordinance as it is, we will immediately begin enforcing it,” Short said.
The commissioners reached preliminary consensus that they don’t want the enforcement of the existing prohibitions and restrictions to begin until they decide if and how they’re going to change the existing city regulations.
The commissioners also reached preliminary consensus that they do want to change the regulation that only allows single-pole shade structures (umbrellas), but not cabanas and tents, in coastal conservation zones.
Based on the comments made during the Aug. 14 meeting, the commission appears to be leaning toward allowing cabana rentals in the recreation open space zones, but not in the coastal conservation zones that include a significant portion of the city-controlled beaches.
Commissioner Kathy Morgan-Johnson said, “I think we should allow the cabanas,” but she didn’t specify which zone or zones she was referring to.
Johnson said she doesn’t have strong feelings either way about logos and other advertising being placed on rented cabanas, if allowed.
Commissioner Gary McMullen doesn’t support cabana rentals in the coastal conservation zones and he doesn’t support company logos or advertising being placed on the cabanas that would have to be reserved in advance before being placed in the recreation open space zones, if that’s what the commission decides to do.
Commissioner John Lynch supports allowing cabana rentals in the recreation open space zones. He’s currently opposed to allowing cabana rentals in the coastal conservation zones but he feels more discussion is needed.
Commissioner Chris Arendt supports cabana rentals being allowed in some form or fashion but he hasn’t arrived at a final conclusion and he feels more discussion is needed.
Commission Chair Charlie Salem is still evaluating the options and he wants more input from residents and vendors before making any final decisions.
Short said the commission also needs to decide if it wants to allow any additional commercial activities on the public beaches.
“We can decide what commercial activities we would like to allow. Cabana rentals? Yoga instruction? There may be others? We need to be very specific in terms of what we will allow in terms of commercial activity,” he said.
Other Island cities
Holmes Beach Development Services Director Chad Minor and Code Compliance Chief James Thomas attended the Anna Maria meeting and Minor briefly addressed the commission.
Regarding Holmes Beach’s sign regulations that prohibit advertising on the beach (including cabanas and tents), Minor said, “At this time, we’re approaching it from the commercial advertising aspect. We’ve got most of the vendors to comply. The other concern we had was the placement of tents before they were actually rented. Someone could walk by, scan the QR code and then rent the tent. If they’ve got a pre-arranged reservation, that’s how we’re approaching it.
“We will be diving into this in more detail. One of our other concerns is it’s tents today, what could it be tomorrow? SUP boards (stand-up paddleboards), kayaks? I get more Jet-Ski rental requests a week than I’ve ever had. There’s a lot of businesses that want to be out here, and rightfully so. We just have to learn how to balance that,” Minor said.
Short said he received a copy of a cabana rental-related draft ordinance the city of Bradenton Beach is working on, but he didn’t know if it had been presented to Bradenton Beach commissioners yet. Short said the draft ordinance proposes limiting each cabana or tent to 10 square feet with no more than two enclosed sides. The draft ordinance currently proposes prohibiting commercial signage or branding, imposing a limit of 20 cabanas per licensed vendor, imposing a restriction on how many cabanas can be set up side by side and imposing a restriction on the number of chairs placed under the cabanas.
The Bradenton Beach commissioners are expected to discuss the draft ordinance during their Thursday, Sept. 11 commission workshop.
Public input
Longtime North Shore Drive resident John Dicks said, “The world’s not going to end if we don’t allow rental cabanas on our beaches. Look deep and hard as you consider changing our ordinances.”
My Beach Concierge owners Peery and Becky Heldreth attended the July 24 and Aug. 14 meetings.
During the recent meeting, Peery asked the commission to allow cabana rentals in the coastal conservation zones.
“We’re talking about a tremendous amount of area here in the city of Anna Maria,” he said.
He also said some cabana rental clients are physically unable to transport and set up their own cabanas, including senior clients and those with disabilities.
Anna Maria General Store owner and former city commissioner Brian Seymour said enforcing a ban on all commercial beach activities except cabana rentals could have unintended impacts on other businesses, including beach weddings and restaurants and food delivery services that deliver to beachgoers.
“There’s a lot more to this than just beach cabanas,” Seymour said, and he suggested the commission host a public workshop before making any final decisions.
Short said beach weddings are regulated by city-issued special event permits but Salem acknowledged other industries could be impacted by the commission’s future decisions.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do on this,” Salem said.
