"It ain't over till it's over!" Yogi Berra (in July 1973 when Mets were in sixth place, and ended the season in first).

Any banker foolish enough to lend money to DAVID BARTON CORNEAL to convert the DOW MUSEUM OF HISTORIC HOMES into a 30-room hotel?





Thanks to Mayor Nancy Shaver for presiding at a fair hearing, August 24-25, 2015, with a full record.

No Thanks to other-directed Commissioners ODD TODD DAVID NEVILLE (R-PROCTORVILLE), NANCY SIKES-KLINE (R-DEVELOPERS), LEANNA A.S. FREEMAN (R-WEEKSVILLE) and Vice Mayor ROXANNE HORVATH, who were "persuaded" by a biased University of Florida "Opinion Paper" never subjected to scientific peer review and never focusing on our zoning, planning and community leaders. What lugubrious goobers.

The notion of putting thirty (30) hotel units at the site of the DOW MUSEUM OF HISTORIC HOMES (in which Florida's government invested $2.1 million and in which Kenneth Worcester Dow invested 61 years of effort is corrupt, inane and dangerous.

What rich person would want their Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus or other fancy-bears car shorted out and ruined because some would-be hoteliers (DAVID BARTON CORNEAL and OLD ISLAND HOTELS, INC. ) did not have enough sense to foresee the massive rains and sewage pollution, which have been documented for decades?

What rich person would pay $500/night for a boutique hotel room with no valet parking when it drizzles?

This is not a business plan -- it is a game plan for disaster.

I remember the horrified look upon the countenance of a Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) mediator who met with me (and University of Florida lawyers by phone in my discrimination case against the UF Levin College of Law) at the conference room in our City Financial Services Building at 50 Bridge Street, near where this photo was taken on August 25, 2014. She was parked in front under similar routine flooding conditions, in a hybrid car in danger of shorting out -- I recommended she move her car to higher ground.

We need a development moratorium. No more permits. No more PUDs. We need it. Now. No more development in our historic downtown. Until and unless the $100 million that Mayor Nancy Shaver and Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT are discussing is invested in a pumping system to keep St. Augustine from being inundated.

No sane banker would want to lend money for such a project in close proximity to frequent floods and sewage spills.

What do you reckon?