City of Fort Pierce Minutes of a Regular Meeting

Regular Postponed Meeting February 22, 2011
he started thinking about these things in the downtown area and
they didn't in his opinion fit well. They heard a young lady
speak earlier tonight (under Comments from the Public) about
allowing these businesses create something where the whole
design of the business is to capture them inside and keep them
there where they spend every last dime they have got. He read
the Minutes from when they talked about this back in September.
He has been in one of the arcades out in the County and it is a
bit of a social gathering place. If they do their jobs, they
are going to have other places for people to gather. It is a
gambling establishment - to call it anything else is really just
not honest. Staff members have persuaded him that they need to
do what they can to prevent these things from becoming
entrenched in their city limits. If they are here, they are
obviously grandfathered and can continue to do business. But
once established, how do they ever get shut down? Once they get
in, they are going to be here forever. He heard a comment from
a person who said they want to be business-friendly. But how
business-friendly is this to the businesses that are surrounding
the arcade? From what he has observed, these are in huge
shopping centers and the businesses on either side of the
arcades are really floundering, not doing well. So he does not
know how business-friendly it is to be business-friendly to one
particular industry that appears to be unfriendly to other
businesses. So to summarize, he is not in favor of making it
easy for an arcade to do business in Fort Pierce. He thought
when he spoke with him, Mr. Carlin had said that Port St. Lucie
has devised some practice where they are not approving arcades.
He would like to do what he can to empower Fort Pierce city
staff to make it difficult for this type of business to
establish itself. He does not know if that requires them to
enact an ordinance that has a lot of rules and regulations that
somebody is going to have to come behind and enforce, as
Commissioner Perona was talking about, or if it is to maintain
the status quo, or if it is to do something different.
Mr. Carlin said some of the things that are in this proposed
ordinance may accomplish what Commissioner Becht is looking for.
One of the things is about going through design review, having
to make exterior changes to the building, be subject to that
type of process, but also the Historic Preservation Board; but
he gathers it is not something supported in the downtown area,
so it would not be applicable.
Commissioner Becht said but that's the rub. He very clearly
sees the danger of allowing this type of business in the
downtown area where he knows the City has committed millions of
dollars; and yet, they are not going to protect the rest of the
City from what this is going to be? It doesn't seem honest of
him to say he doesn't want it in the downtown area, he is going
to protect that, but he is not going to protect the rest of the
City.
Mayor Benton said he feels they can't treat downtown any
differently than the rest of the community. One of the concerns
he had - because in his opinion it is gambling - years ago when
the jai alai frontons were allowed in Florida, those were built
so many miles apart. If they were to limit the number they
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City of Fort Pierce Minutes of a Regular Meeting held on February 22, 2011
Copyright © 2011 City of Fort Pierce Florida