Plan to allow denser development at John’s Pass heads to Pinellas County

A long-gestating effort to allow higher-density development in one of Pinellas County’s tourism hotspots could clear one of its final hurdles, the approval of county commissioners, next week.

Should commissioners on Tuesday designate John’s Pass Village as an activity center, Madeira Beach will be one vote away from rectifying a bureaucratic conflict that, for more than a decade, has posed an existential threat to the assemblage of boardwalk, restaurants and souvenir shops.

A 2008 change to Madeira Beach’s growth plan allowed more square footage of development per property than the countywide comprehensive plan allows. The discrepancy meant that, should a hurricane or other disaster wipe out John’s Pass, many of the buildings there couldn’t be rebuilt.

Madeira Beach began looking for ways to resolve the problem in 2021 and landed last year on labeling the 27 acres as an activity center, a county designation that allows for higher density and more intense land use in centralized developments. The county has applied the designation to a wide range of areas, from downtown St. Petersburg and Clearwater to downtown Palm Harbor and the Eighth Avenue business district in St. Pete Beach.

John’s Pass Village would, like the latter examples, be categorized as a “neighborhood” center, the least dense, least intense of the county’s four types of activity centers. Madeira Beach city commissioners initially approved a higher-density version — a “community” center, which has been used, for example, in St. Petersburg’s Skyway Marina district and the mid-Pinellas Gateway area.

But Forward Pinellas, the county’s land-use and transportation planning agency, voted in favor of the plan on the condition that it be moved to the neighborhood category. John’s Pass Village isn’t near a major transit hub or crossroads, one of the features the agency looks for when allowing higher density, and it’s low-lying.

“We just felt like that was too much intensity and density for such a vulnerable area,” said Whit Blanton, Forward Pinellas’ executive director.

The efforts to codify higher-density allowances in John’s Pass Village have been opposed from the beginning by critics who fear that the changes will open the door for high-rise hotels that would change the village’s character and bring hellacious traffic. The compromise with Forward Pinellas may have softened some concerns but did not eliminate them.

Madeira Beach should have pursued the neighborhood center level of density to begin with, said Ken Weiss, a Treasure Island attorney and longtime opponent of high-rise developments. Before city commissioners voted last year on the community center designation, Weiss commissioned a report from a land-use expert that argued the plan would “over-intensify future land use on a barrier island that is highly vulnerable to hurricane surge and sea level rise.” Weiss, an avid boater and former charter captain who said he spends time at John’s Pass nearly every day, still sees the amended plan as a gift to developers.

“I remember what it used to be,” said Weiss, who first moved to the Pinellas coast in 1958, “and I know it can’t ever be what it used to be, but we can put some limits on it.”

Developers who own land around John’s Pass have hinted at the potential for hotel development there for years. Real-estate mogul Ben Mallah, who owns the 14-room John’s Pass Hotel, said this week that he may look to expand by 20 or 30 rooms. But he expects lodging development to remain on the boutique side, he said — “nothing tremendous.”

Developer Bill Karns, who bought land in the village’s commercial core in 2021 through a limited liability company named JPV Hotel Property, said the density changes up for approval would allow him to build a 65-room hotel on that land. But for now, he’s content to keep renting it out to a parking company, which he called a good source of cash flow. The fact that property in John’s Pass is spread out among many holders would make heavier development difficult, he said.

“There’s over 80 different property owners in the Pass,” he said. “That would be a Herculean effort, to try to purchase all of those properties.”

Should county commissioners approve the activity center changes Tuesday, the plan would go back to Madeira Beach city commissioners for a final vote. That could happen as soon as March 13, said Andrew Morris, Madeira Beach’s long-range planner. Four out of five city commissioners would need to vote in favor of the plan for it to pass, due to a change to the city charter voters approved in 2018 that requires a supermajority vote on so-called “special area plans.”