Line drawn in sand over beach driving court fight
DAYTONABEACH— Driving on the beach in this ocean-side city has been a way of life for decades.
Now a group of residents is challenging its own government, the Volusia County Council, which two months ago agreed to close 1.2 miles of The World’s Most Famous Beach to driving so developers could build luxury hotels.
The council has fired back with a lawsuit against a dozen supporters of Let Volusia Vote, a political-action committee that has collected enough signatures to force the issue onto the November ballot.
“The attitude up here is that if Jesus had had a car, he would have been driving it on the beach,” County Council Vice Chairman Pat Patterson said. “It’s a sacred activity, and they don’t want to see it change.”
Council members say the new traffic-free zone will help revitalize an area declared blighted a decade ago by city leaders.
But Greg Gimbert, chairman of Let Volusia Vote, criticizes the council for what he views as kowtowing to out-of-town developers at the expense of residents. For years, he says, government has assaulted unfettered beach driving, adding fees, gates and off-limits stretches and ending night driving.
Gimbert, 46, a self-described libertarian, said he wants to preserve Daytona Beach as a place
where everyone can afford to spend a day at the beach without lugging umbrellas, fishing poles, body boards and other equipment from a parking lot.
“Driving on the beach enables us to have a millionaires’-level privilege that you have to either buy an oceanfront home or rent an oceanfront room to experience,” Gimbert said. “Without beach driving, all you have is a parking lot, a towel on the sand and maybe a bag.”
Council member Josh Wagner, a fifth-generation Volusia native, said he agreed to the traffic-free zone because the economicdevelopment potential is so great. But he understands that the issue is deeply emotional for many residents.
“I think it’s deep-rooted,” said Wagner, a beach-driving supporter whose district includes several beach communities. “It’s the one issue that neighbors will turn on each other for.”
Case in point: Wagner’s own brother-in-law, who lives across the street, posted a Let Volusia Vote sign in his yard, and Wagner’s mother asked where she could get one, too, he said.
The redevelopment plan calls for a Westin Hotel near University Boulevard on the north end of the new trafficfree zone and a Hard Rock Hotel with condos on the upper floors near Silver Beach Avenue, the southern boundary of the zone.
Traffic already is banned on a mile-long strip near the Main Street Pier.
The Westin would replace the dilapidated, empty Desert Inn, once rated one of the dirtiest hotels in the U.S. on TripAdvisor and the site of a child sexual-exploi- tation scandal that landed the then-owner’s son in federal prison in 2013.
“The area that we’re talking about is very depressed,” Wagner said. “It needs help.”
The county will require all developers within the zone to build a “luxury brand resort franchise” and provide public-parking spaces to compensate for the loss of parking on the beach. The hope is that competition will spur other businesses to upgrade, council member Deborah Denys said.
The county also is considering extending the city’s boardwalk. The sand and surf will remain open to everyone.
Beach driving in Volusia dates to a more relaxed period. Longtime residents remember bonfires, parties, dogs and horseback riding on the beach in the 1950s and 1960s, and Patterson said airplanes landed on the sand in the 1920s and 1930s.
Only a few other U.S. beaches currently allow driving, including several near St. Augustine and in North Carolina, New Jersey and Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
In Volusia, 15.8 miles of beach are drivable out of 34.8 miles managed by the county.
Through the years, rising sea levels have shrunk Volusia’s beaches, the county was sued on behalf of the endangered sea turtles and environmentalists expressed alarm about damage from oil and other vehicle fluids.
The migration of soft sand, which cannot be driven on, forced the closure of beaches north of Granada Boulevard in Ormond Beach, county officials say.
There also have been concerns about safety. Six people have been killed by vehicles on Volusia’s beaches since1996, county records show. In the past decade, 65 people have been hurt in beach-driving accidents.
Last week, Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall verified 18,949 names on the Let Volusia Vote petition, which is more than the required 5 percent of the voters in each of the county’s five districts.
Even so, the issue may not appear on the ballot. The county’s lawsuit says the Legislature in the late 1980s gave local governments the sole right to curtail beach driving. The case will be decided by a Volusia circuit judge.
Gimbert says there’s nothing in the law that prevents voters from weighing in.
“There’s nothing more American than what we’re doing,” he said.