An Orlando area developer held a neighborhood meeting on Wednesday night to unveil preliminary plans for a 29-story oceanfront condominium high-rise. The site is on the east side of A1A in Daytona Beach, roughly between Morningside and Brookline avenues.

The plans weren't well received, according to several people who attended the meeting at Steve's Famous Diner, the popular beachside restaurant across the street from the vacant oceanfront lot where the proposed Daytona Beach Oceanfront Condominiums would be built.

"There were about 80 people at the meeting, all of whom were against it with the exception of one," said Ken Strickland, the Daytona Beach City Commissioner who represents Zone 2. His district includes the site of developer Gelcorp Industries' proposed project.

"Gelcorp's attorney Mr. (Rob) Merrell after about an hour decided to call off the meeting and reschedule it when they were better prepared," said Strickland who attended the meeting. He declined to say what he personally thought of the project.

Merrell, a land-use attorney with Cobb Cole Law Firm in Daytona Beach, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Christos Mavronas is the owner of the Steve's Famous Diner at 2011 N. Atlantic Ave. where the meeting was held. "People weren't really upset," he said, while confirming that the vast majority opposed the project. "They don't want a building blocking the beach. Residents around here got used to being able to access the beach from that lot. It's now an open space. They love that."

The veteran restaurateur said he personally remains "on the fence. What I'll be losing is the view, but it is what it is. If they build it, I know I'll be busy."

Meeting was 'certainly spirited'

The preliminary site map for the Daytona Beach Oceanfront Condominiums indicate that the planned condo tower will be 300 feet tall, which would make it the fifth-tallest building in Volusia County and the tallest in the county along the ocean north of Seabreeze Boulevard.

The vacant lot is nestled between two existing condo high-rises: The Aliki Forum to the north is 23 stories and is 283 feet tall. The Island Crowne Condominium complex on the south is 19 stories and stands 222 feet above the ground.

The website for Gelcorp describes the project as a 267-unit tower on "500 feet of direct oceanfront in the heart of Daytona Beach." The site map also indicates that the project will have 587 parking spaces as well as a pool and separate kids pool along the tower's east side. A two-story sales office is also planned across the street, just south of Steve's Famous Diner.

Scott Miller is the Gelcorp project manager overseeing the proposed development.

"The meeting was very well attended and certainly spirited," Miller told The Daytona Beach News-Journal in an email.

"We haven't made any formal submission to the city at this time, and we are taking some of the neighborhood comments into consideration and considering changes to the plan. Once we have determined formally what we intend to submit to the city of Daytona Beach, we'll make those images available and initiate a new neighborhood meeting in a more formal location with a more interactive plan to show."

Miller wrote that he expects it will take roughly two months before his company is ready to take the next step towards making the project a reality. "Our original concept plan was for 267 units, and I'm not sure what the next iteration will look like at this time," he added.

Susan Cerbone, a spokeswoman for the city, wrote in an email that Gelcorp as of Thursday had yet to submit a formal application for the project. "They came into City Hall to meet with staff for a 'pre-application' meeting to discuss development standards," she wrote.

Developer paid $5 million for site

Volusia County property records show that Gelcorp paid $5 million to acquire the roughly 2.5-acre property in November 2021. The seller was another Orlando area investor group that paid $3.5 million to acquire the parcel 12 months earlier.

The property was previously the longtime site of the Beachcomber Oceanfront Inn, a seven-story 184-room hotel that was torn down in 2007 after it was badly damaged during the multiple hurricanes that hit the area three years earlier.

Gelcorp's latest preliminary site map states that the actual development area for the project would be 1.78 acres. An earlier conceptual plan provided to the city in October included drawings showing two towers instead of just one and labeled the project as apartments, not condo units. The number of potential units was also listed as 252.

Carl Lentz IV, managing partner of SVN Alliance Commercial Real Estate Advisors, represented Gelcorp in its purchase of the former Beachcomber property. Tim Davis, a commercial Realtor who is also a partner at SVN Alliance represented the sellers, Trilogy Daytona LLC, an Orlando investor group led by James Gissy.

"They (Gelcorp) have been working with the city on conceptual plans," said Lentz of the proposed Daytona Beach Oceanfront Condominiums project. "They're excited about it."

Lentz is also a former Daytona Beach City Commissioner. He said he was not surprised that people at the neighborhood meeting raised concerns about the project. "Inevitably, there will be a minority of the public who will object. That's because they oppose change."

Lentz said he believes the project will be "a nice complement to the area. It's exciting that there's a developer willing to take the risk."

'We need to stop and think about what we're doing'

Anne Ruby, a Daytona Beach beachside resident, also attended the neighborhood meeting which was initiated by the developer.

Ruby said Merrell was unable to answer most of the questions posed by those who attended the meeting. She said Merrell told the audience that he had just been hired by the developer shortly before the meeting and was not given the time to properly prepare.

"This meeting was premature," she said. "The developer hasn't even made an application to the city."

Ruby said she is also concerned about another developer's plans to build an oceanfront condo high-rise. That project site is just a few miles to the south at the east end of Silver Beach. "That one is going to be 300 units, 28 stories and 295 feet tall," she said.

"Given what (tropical storm) Nicole did, and it was barely a storm, we need to stop and think about what we're doing when we permit projects east of A1A," she said, referring to the significant beach erosion that the back-to-back tropical storms Ian and Nicole caused in the Daytona area.

The erosion caused several oceanfront homes in Wilbur-by-the-Sea to topple and resulted in the forced evacuations of several oceanfront condo buildings and hotels in Daytona Beach Shores. Some of those buildings whose foundations are now exposed have yet to let residents return because of safety concerns.

Said Ruby: "Do we really need more tall buildings?"

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: New Daytona Beach high-rise condo plans met with local resistance