Fighting over access
Young partiers foul the beach; now condo owners want to lock out the public
FORT LAUDERDALE — Every weekend, a young and rowdy party crowd takes over a secluded strip of Fort Lauderdale beach, leaving behind condoms, beer bottles, smoldering bonfires — and hundreds of wellto-do homeowners thoroughly annoyed by the putrid stench of urine and stale beer.
Condo president Hy Montero, who gets a birds’-eye view from his 30th floor balcony, has a solution: padlock the only gate that leads to the beach from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., locking out the public.
Montero, president of the 31-story Point of Americas 2 high rise, says more than a dozen of the neighborhood’s homeowner and condo association groups love the idea. All they need is permission from the city — but so far, they don’t have it.
Commissioner Ben Sorensen, whose district includes the area, has asked for more time to help work out a compromise.
“This is a public beach,” he told commissioners during a recent meeting. “This is public land.”
Similar controversies have played out across the nation as courts are sometimes called upon to resolve heated disputes between private property owners and a feisty public demanding access to a beach they say should belong to everyone.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 rejected an appeal from a California billionaire angered when the state kept him from blocking an access road to his private beach, a famous surfer haunt.
In 1999, a luxury condo along Fort Lauderdale’s Galt Ocean Mile put up ropes and signs in an attempt to keep the public off its beach. State officials ordered the condo to remove the signs and the rope because they were put up without permission.
And further to the north, waterfront mansions in the Town of Palm Beach have been criticized for their “No Trespassing” and “Private Property” signs. High hedges and walls only help to block access to most of the island’s coastline.
This is not Point of Americas’ first battle over beach access.
In 1993, the Point of Americas twin condos got city permission to lock the gate at night to keep young people from using the Port Everglades rock jetty as a hangout.
Ten years later, commissioners ordered the gate torn down to allow the public free access to the beach. The gate was later replaced but kept open.
The high-end condo dwellers at Point of Americas now say youthful partiers frequently wander onto the private beach, despite signs warning them away.
The beach fronting Point of Americas is private from the condo to the mean high tide line — the point the water reaches at high tide. The public portion of the beach sits seaward of that line.
It used to be a quiet oasis, but not since the kids came to party.
“This past Saturday we had at least 300 kids out on the beach,” Montero said. “They range in age from 15 to 25.”
Montero said the scene reminded him of the wild days of Spring Break more than three decades ago, when he, too, was a college kid on the prowl.
Stir-crazy crowds
“People thought we were crazy when we were coming down for Spring Break in the 1980s,” he said. “We were angels compared to these kids. They come onto our property and want to use our cabanas. They leave beer cans everywhere. They pee wherever they want to pee. There’s beer bottles, condoms. You name it, we find it.”
Locking the 6-foot-high gate overnight would help solve the problem, Montero argues.
He wants to try a 45-day pilot program to see whether that keeps the frisky day-trippers from turning into peace-disturbing nightwalkers.
Montero said things have gotten worse since the coronavirus pandemic hit. The crowds seem to be getting bigger and showing up more frequently.
News about the out-of-theway hangout spread by word of mouth and on social media, Montero said.
“If you are underage and you want to drink alcohol and get crazy, you’re not going to go to the strip from Las Olas north,” Montero said. “Police patrol that area. But we’re a little corner tucked away.”
Point of Americas has hired an off-duty detail officer to work a few hours during the day on weekends, just to keep an eye on things.
But most days, the cop is far outnumbered, Montero said.
As the building manager for Montero’s condo, Christina Ashley fields complaints all day long.
“This is the fun beach because the cops aren’t down here,” she said. “So they have carte blanche to do what they want. They smoke pot and drink. They have sex in the afternoon while people are sitting out on their balconies. It’s like Spring Break right outside the window.”
Raising hell
Mayor Dean Trantalis met with neighborhood leaders in October and was sympathetic to their plight.
“Kids like to have fun,” he said during a recent commission meeting. “They’re messy. They’re noisy. It’s just part of life. But we have to do something to make sure neighbors don’t suffer from other people having a good time. Something needs to be done, and we need to do it sooner rather than later since Spring Break is soon upon us.”
Thirteen neighborhood associations want the 6-foothigh gate locked, Montero said.
But three homeowner associations — Harbor Beach, Harbour Inlet and Breakwater Surf Club — want it left alone.
“They made the argument that it’s a public beach so there should be no locked gate,” Sorensen said. “I’m trying to find a win-win compromise between the two perspectives.”
Robert Linder, who lives in the Harbour Inlet neighborhood, said it makes no difference to him. But he takes his daily swim around 2 p.m., long before things get out of hand.
Montero said his condo would rather have the gate locked all the time, with access provided only neighborhood residents. City officials rejected that idea.
He then suggested locking the gate from sunset to sunrise, but the same trio of associations said no to that as well.
After dropping millions of dollars on their condos, he and his neighbors are hankering for some peace and tranquility.
“This is not what they bought into,” Montero said. “We need help.”