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Archive for the 'Dunedin' Category

Animal laws in Pinellas County

 Back in the old days, having a pet was a pretty simple matter. If your doggie wanted to go out, you let him out. You knew he wanted to come back in when he scratched on the door. Every evening you’d open a can of Alpo for him. End of story.

Pet ownership is a lot more complicated now. You can tell by all the people who walk, zombie-like, through your neighborhood at all hours of the day and night, leash in one hand and plastic poop bag in the other.

Pet ownership can be especially problematic if you own a pet and hope to move into a condo. Make sure you check the condo documents before you buy and read all the fine print if you hope to take your doggie along when you move.  Some condo developments restrict pets to a certain weight limit; others simply don’t allow pets at all.

Bo

If you want to buy a single-family home, restrictions like that don’t generally apply. However, you should make sure to check the homeowner association regulations just to double-check. Some may limit the number or type of pets you are allowed to have; others might impose restriction by weight. Almost all of them contain some language pertaining to animal waste and what you have to do to clean up after your pet.

Just for the fun of it, I thought I’d check on the laws in Pinellas County that apply to pets and other animals. Some of them are a little surprising. For example, I knew it was against the law to let your dog run free, but did you know it is equally unlawful to let your cat do the same thing?

Here are some other things you should know:

• It’s illegal to leave food or garbage out where it can attract “cats, dogs, raccoons, coyotes or other wildlife and thereby creates a public nuisance”
• While it is illegal to let dogs run free, the law doesn’t apply to police dogs or to “any dog which is actually engaged in or being trained for the sport of hunting during a legal hunting season…” So if your dog is caught running free, tell the officer you’re training him to hunt squirrels.
• If you have a dog or cat that is in heat, and you don’t keep her away from male dogs and cats, you’re breaking the law.
• It is unlawful to “molest, harm, frighten, kill, net, trap, snare, hunt, chase or shoot” any animal, unless they are fish. So apparently you can molest all the fish you want without fear of prosecution. It’s also against the law to “capture or collect for any purpose any animal, nest or egg or any animal, whether dead or alive.” So forget about those yummy road kill buffets.
• It’s illegal to “place, dump, abandon or leave” any animal on park property.
• You can’t use gasoline or chemicals to drive off wildlife.
• You can’t feed pelicans or sand hill cranes.
• And I like this one a lot: You can’t shoot wildlife with remote-controlled guns “when that person is not physically present at the location of that gun.”

Now, just so you won’t think that I am above all this, I’ve included a picture of Bo, our year-old Puggle (that’s a dog that is half pug and half beagle) – 28 pounds of muscle and attitude.

Tags: animal laws, dogs, pinellas county, Pinellas County real estate, real estate

Some colorful Downtown Dunedin real estate

Just found this picture of Dunedin's Blur nightclub, taken several months ago. Not sure what the special event was, but they draped the front of the building in this raspberry-colored fabric.

Tags: dunedin real estate

Dunedin’s Jollimon’s Grill worth finding

You could drive through Dunedin a hundred times and never see Jollimon’s Grill. It’s not on a main drag – in fact, it’s not even visible from any of Dunedin’s main streets. If you’re on Main Street, standing in front of Cafe Alfresco, you’ll have to hop onto the nearby Pinellas Trail and walk a couple of blocks north. Cross Monroe and then watch to the left  — Jollimon’s  nestles right up to the trail, and you’ll know it from the umbrellas in the courtyard dining area. It’s actually on Huntly Avenue, which is a street you could spend your entire life not knowing about.

But you’ll be glad you found the place.

Florida has no end of Key West-type eateries, places that try hard for casual dining and specialize in Florida-style seafood. There’s a whole range of formality to these places, and Jollimon’s is definitely on the tee-shirt-and-cutoffs end of the scale.

But don’t let the funk put you off. This is a great local place and a great value. The burgers are as good as you will find anywhere, and they will happilyadd on or take off ingredients to your heart’s content. Want tywo patties, or even three? Just ask.

I tried the crab chowder this weekend, and it was spicy, chock full of crabmeat, and VERY good.

Jollimon’s has a pretty cool website, www.jollimonsgrill.com, and you can review the menu for yourself.

Tampa Bay ranks last when it comes to public transit

Tampa Bay scores again; Forbes Magazine took a look at the 60 major metro areas in the country and then rated their rapid transit systems. Tampa Bay made the list — in last place.

That should come as only a mild surprise to anyone who has had to drive to work on either side of Tampa Bay. Traffic here is a nightmare, and there are few alternatives to driving your own car to work. We do have a bus system, but there is no rapid transit system, no subway, no passenger rail.

A great light rail system opened a few months ago in Phoenix. So far, it's been very popular with local residents.

Many of our major roadways started life as sleepy two-lanes.  US19N, the major north-south road that runs the length of Pinellas County, was once a rural two-lane road that passed through miles of orange groves, at least in the northern part of the county where I live. Someone recently told me that he remembered when there was just a flashing light at the intersection of 19 and Tampa Road, a busy major intersection today that serves six lanes of US19 and four of Tampa Road. 

If you want to cross the bay between Pinellas (Where St. Petersburg is located) and Hillsborough (Tampa), you have four choices: The Gandy bridge; the Howard Franklin Bridge; the Courtney Campbell Causeway; and Hillsborough Avenue, the only land route, located at the northern tip of Tampa Bay. If you attempt this crossing in rush hour, be prepared to sit.

If you’ve read this blog before, you know I am a fan of light rail, and we might — just might — have such a system in our sights.

A month or two ago, President Obama came to town and announced that the federal government would fund the majority share of a high-speed rail line between Tampa Bay and Orlando. That’s nice, because it would eliminate the drive on I-4, a really difficult bit of Interstate between those two cities.

But the real value of such a line would be the possibility of a light rail system at this end of it. The high-speed line could connect to a light-rail system that would circumnavigate Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties and provide an alternative to the automobile.

We have something called the Tampa Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority (TBARTA), which would like to build that system. Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard, who serves on the TBARTA board, spoke at St. Petersburg College recently about rapid transit in Tampa Bay, and said such a system is necessary both for current residents and to respond to companies that may consider locating facilities in Tampa Bay. 

All that said, I do have a bone or two to pick with Forbes about this ranking.  We used to live in Washington, DC,  and it would be hard to imagine a worse commuting city than that. before we lived in Florida we lived in Maine, and that meant the occasional drive to the biggest metro center in that neck of the woods, Boston. If you’ve never driven in Boston at rush hour, it is a breathtaking experience. Still, both those cities have good subway systems and buses that run frequently.

I think it is fair to say that Palm Harbor real estate, Dunedin real estate, or Pinellas County real estate in general would be more attractive if it was served by an efficient light rail system

The Dunedin Country Club

Dunedin Country Club

Picture this:

You are a developer in Dunedin, Fla., and you have a vision about a new housing development. You want to attract people from up north who may want to relocate to a warmer, sunnier climate.

So you buy a big tract of land and you subdivide it into house lots. Right in the middle of it you leave plenty of space for a golf course. And just to make sure you make the course really attractive and interesting, you hire one of the greatest living golf course architects to design it.

Sounds like a pretty contemporary scenario, right?

In this case, however, it was not.  All of this took place in the 1920s. The subdivision included Dunedin’s Fairway Estates, and the golf course was the Donald Ross-designed Dunedin Country Club.

This story starts in the early years of the 20th century, when Baron Otto Quarles arrived in Florida from Europe. He bought a huge tract of land north of Dunedin and built a large mansion on the site, but within a few years he lost interest and relocated to the other side of Tampa Bay, in Tampa.

About 20 years later, a developer acquired the land and announced very ambitious plans. Two golf courses, a casino and more than 6,000 home sites were part of the scheme. But then came the great Florida real estate bust of 1929, and the project went bankrupt.

Before that happened, however, Donald Ross was retained to design the golf course. Ross was a native of Scotland who designed more than 300 U.S. golf courses during his career. He was based in North Carolina and designed many courses there, but Florida was fertile ground for his talents, too. Ross-designed golf courses are highly prized; today, fewer than 20 Donald Ross courses survive in Florida.

The Depression took its toll on the course. By the mid-1930s it was in need of major repairs and maintenance. In 1938, the city of Dunedin obtained ownership of the course. Money was invested in the course, and golfers began using it again in 1938.

A real break for the course happened in 1945, when it was selected to become the home course of the PGA of America. The PGA leased the club and made Dunedin its national headquarters. That relationship lasted until 1962, when the PGA moved to another location in Palm Beach Gardens/

During those years the course was played by some of the greatest name in golf — Ben Hogan, Sam Snead. Bobby Jones and Babe Zaharias among them.
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The Dunedin Country Club has been going through some financial and management issues lately. Here’s a link to a story in the St. Petersburg TIMES:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/article1017449.ece

Tags: country club, Dunedin, real estate

Dunedin awaits rebirth of Fenway Hotel

Dunedin's Fenway Hotel

If I could travel through time, I think I might like to visit West Central Florida around 1925. The area was in the middle of a big land boom, and communities such as Clearwater and Dunedin were in the middle of exciting growth.

 Downtown areas were being developed, new hotels and commercial buildings were being built, and some beautiful and expensive private homes were going up.
 
Some residents of Dunedin felt that their community was being left a bit behind. Visitors to the area were attracted to Clearwater and St. Petersburg, not to Dunedin, which didn’t have the kind of resort hotel that people flocked to in the 1920s to escape the cold and snow of their native northern homes.

A local realty company decided to try to do something about that, and started pushing the idea of a very high-end resort hotel on Dunedin’s Main Street (now Edgewater Drive). The financing scheme seems a little offbeat – the developers asked every Dunedin resident to chip in a few bucks, and quite a few stepped up and did just that.
 
A Clearwater developer, George H. Bowles, paid $250,000 for a controlling interest in the still-unfinished hotel, and he was able to find the financing necessary to complete the project. The hotel opened in 1925.

One interesting feature that Bowles brought to the new hotel was WGHB, the first commercial radio station in the area. Bowles was a big radio enthusiast, and the December opening ceremonies of the Fenway were carried on a six-hour broadcast that was beamed across the country.

Remains of the Fenway Hotel pier

The Fenway attracted many wealthy visitors and it was an important icon of Dunedin through the late 1950s. But like many grand hotels of that era, it fell into disrepair and went out of business. It later became the campus of Trinity College, which then took the name of its parent institution, Schiller International University.

In recent months, a St. Petersburg attorney, George Rahdert, has stepped forward with plans to re-develop the old Fenway. There has been a lot of vigorous debate about what the Fenway’s future would be, from demolition to a reinvigorated hotel. Rahdert wants to restore the existing hotel and add new wings.
 
Some neighbors aren’t very happy about a new commercial enterprise operating near their homes. Other local residents are delighted that such an historic relic might be saved and restored.
 
The Fenway by the Bay Hotel that Rahdert envisions would include a ballroom, a 150-seat restaurant and more than 100 hotel rooms. What the developers have in mind is a “condotel,”. a facility where people can purchase suites which they could occupy for part of the year and rent out as hotel rooms at other times.

The project is now going through county review and approval processes. 

Go here for more information about the Fenway Hotel project.

Tags: Dunedin, fenway hotel, North Pinellas County, real estate

WWII Marine Corps amphibious vehicle was developed in Dunedin

Donald Roebling didn’t have to work, and he could trace that very good fortune all the way back to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Roebling’s great-grandfather, John Roebling, was the original chief engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge project, the construction of which began in 1870. But John Roebling was injured at the construction site and had to turn his chief engineer duties over to his son, Washington Roebling. John Roebling died of an infection related to his injury before the bridge opened to traffic in 1883.

Which leads us back to Washington Roebling’s grandson, Donald.

In the 1930s, Donald Roebling was living a comfortable life in Clearwater, Fla., where he had build an impressive estate on the shore of the Intercoastal Waterway. Then in his 30s, Donald didn’t need to work, but he did share his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s interest in mathematics and engineering.

In the late 1920s and earely 1930s, three powerful hurricanes struck Florida. Many people were injured and killed, and many other were left stranded for days and weeks because there was simply no way to reach them through the wreckage and the flooded ground. Donald Roebling read about all the hurricane-related carnage and decided to do something about it.

He had a modern, well-equipped machine shop built on the grounds of his estate; he hired a staff of workers; and he set about designing a vehicle that could travel on land was well as through water. Such a vehicle, he thought, could make it through deep water and over blow-downs, and could be used to rescue people should another hurricane come ashore in Florida.

The result was an ungainly-looking two-tracked vehicle with a large open compartment that could hold people or equipment. Roebling called it the “Alligator.”

Roebling thought the Alligator would make a dandy military vehicle, and he tried to sell that idea to the U.S. Government. Try as he might, however, he could not get anyone to listen to his story.

Finally, however, he did get a Life Magazine reporter to write about the Alligator, and that got things rolling.  Marine Corps officials saw the article and kicked the Life clipping up the ladder.  Before long, Marine Corps officials were in Clearwater, looking closely at Roebling’s creation.

They liked the Alligator and thought it would be great for transporting troops from ships onto beaches and then back again. The trouble was that the Marine Corps didn’t have any money that could be spent on research and development of equipment. That didn’t really bother the wealthy Roebling, however; he agreed to do the research at his own expense, and turn out a new version of the Alligator that might make a better application for military use.

Within a few months, Roebling’s newer design was approved, and Alligators were being manufactured in Lakeland for the Marine Corps. Not long afterwards, four factories were turning out thousands of the amphibious machines, which saw much action at Guadacanal and throughout the South Pacific during World War II. The machines also were used in Korea and Vietnam, and the modern military amphibious vehicle in use today trace their lineage directly back to Roebling’s original 1930s design.

Plaque commemorating the testing of Roebling's "Alligator"

Roebling never made any money from his invention, although he could have.  He turned the invention over to the government, refused all commissions and payments, and said he wanted the Alligator to be his contribution to the war effort. He received a number of commendations and awards for his invention, and was even personally decorated by President Truman after the war was over.

What does all this have to do with modern-day North Pinellas County and real estate?

There is a very nice older waterfront subdivision in Dunedin called Harbor View. It was in that area, just north of Cedar Creek, where Roebling and the U.S. Marine Corps tested Roebling’s machine starting in August of 1941.

The months spent testing the Alligator in that area of water, beach and woods is what perfected the machine and allowed it to make such a contribution during World War II, ferrying Marines into battle and carrying wounded Marines back to their ships.

The Marine Corps League and the Dunedin Historical Society have erected a small plaque at the entrance to Harbor View:

“TRAINING AREA FOR THE U.S. MARINE CORPS

AMPHIBIAN TRACTOR (ALLIGATOR)”

“In this area between Curlew and Cedar Creek, along

St. Joseph Sound during the month of August 1941,

the first Alligator, which was designed by

Donald Roebling and built in Dunedin,

was received and launched by elements

of the U.S. Marine Corps

Fourth Amphibian Tractor Battalions.”

Tags: Alligator, amphibious, Dunedin, harbor view, Roebling, world war two

Fourth of July in Dunedin and Palm Harbor

People everywhere have their own favorite ways of celebrating the Fourth of July, just as they have special ways of observing every holiday. In Tampa Bay, we have parades and cookouts and fireworks displays like everywhere else, but people around here love to celebrate just about everything by getting on (or near) the water.

We spent a little time this morning poking around some of the favorite beach spots in Palm Harbor and Dunedin, just to see what people were doing.  Sure enough, the beachs were jammed with people, and the nearby waters were loaded with watercraft of all kinds.

Most of these picture were taken on the Dunedin Causeway, which runs from the mainland out to Honeymoon Island. There’s also a ferry that runs from Honeymoon Island out to Caladesi Island, which we wrote about recently as being the nation’s very best beach, at least in the opinion of at least one person who makes such nominations.

We also took a picture of what we believe is the largest American flag in all of Pinellas County — it flies over an auto dealership on US19. If you know of a flag bigger than this one, which is supposed to be just a little bit smaller than the size of a tennis court, we hope you will let us know.

We hope you are having a great Fourth of July, wherever you may be.

Flags at the entrance to Harbor View subdivision, Dunedin

Tags: Dunedin, fourth of july, Palm Harbor

Home refinance program expanded

     We’ve written here in the past about tax credits and about government programs aimed at saving homes from foreclosure and making home payments more affordable. Now, it looks as though the Obama Administration wants to expand those programs to make them apply to more borrowers than before.
 

    Until now, those government programs have been available to people whose mortgage amounts are up to 105 percent of a home’s value. This week, the administration announced that it wants to raise that limit to 125 percent of value.
Here are some of the conditions that apply:

• The mortgages in question must be owned or backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
• The applicants for new financing must be current on their mortgage payments.

     It is estimated that 30 percent of all mortgages are for amounts that exceed their homes’ values.
     The expansion of this federal home refinance program is an acknowledgement that the original program fell far short of expectations. When it was announced in March, the Obama Administration said it hoped that it would help 4-5 million homeowners who were upside-down on their mortgages. But in the middle of June, the administration admitted that only about 20,000 homeowners had applied to refinance their mortgages under the plan.
One problem has been rising interest rates. Current rates are around 5.5 percent, up from 4.84 percent in April. That rate increase has put a damper on refinances. The government hopes that the new expansion will encourage more homeowners to refinance their homes, and those refinances will make the homeowners less likely to default on their mortgages.
     Got a home in Palm Harbor, Dunedin, Clearwater, or anywhere else in Pinellas County with a mortgage bigger than the home’s value? This expanded program may be for you.

Tags: making home affordable, mortgages, pinellas county, refinance

Kelly’s: fun dining in Dunedin

Kelly's Restaurant, Dunedin

We had dinner on Sunday night at Kelly’s on Main Street in Dunedin.

We don’t go there that often, mostly because when we eat in downtown Dunedin we often end up across the street at Cafe Alfresco. But Kelly’s has good food as well as a certain avant garde attitude that’s fun.

When we first lived here Kelly’s had a pretty ordinary outside dining area in back. Now, that area has been re-designed and enlarged, and there’s plenty of room for entertainment and for a very active bar area off to one side. When we were there, a few people were eating inside and many more were out back, eating and drinking and listening to live music.

Also, the owners of Kelly’s have acquired and developed the next-door Chic-A-Boom Room, a cocktail bar, as well as Blur one door down, a night club.

Kelly’s puts on a very good breakfast, and many people head there on the weekends for eggs benedict and other breakfast goodies. If you go, get there early, or you will have to wait for a seat.

Kelly’s puts a premium on fun. There’s a manniquin near the front door (named Peggy Sue) who greets diners as they enter, and the tables feature unique salt-and-pepper shakers as well as wildly different coffee mugs.

Kelly’s fits nicely into the old Our Town style of Dunedin’s downtown, but at the same time it sports a kitschy bit of new wave color. It’s hip and fun, and the food is great.  Don’t miss it.

Tags: dining, Dunedin, real estate