Developer: Funding secure, construction to resume in 3 weeks after off-site work done
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- The way Mayor Adam Barringer sees it, the developers of the much-ballyhooed Hampton Inn and Suites on Flagler Avenue have three years to get the job done building it and the clock is ticking.
The way neighbor Deborah Dugas sees it, it has been an albatross from the onset and she hopes it never gets built, but she blames the city, not the developer.
The way local attorney Glenn Storch sees it, scuttlebutt that the lack of activity over the last couple of weeks is all to do about nothing. Well sort of.
"The property was funded -- the mortgage has closed," insisted Storch, who helped developer David Swentor of South Carolina-based Premier Development Corp. with all of the red tape, including securing of building permits and other zoning issues. "We're still waiting on a draw."
Swentor told NSBNews.net in a phone interview this morning that it's understandable with such a large-scale project like this in a small city that hasn't had anything of this magnitude in 30 years where people would become suspicious with the bulldozers silent just two weeks after a much-hyped groundbreaking.
The reality is that there is as much, if not more off-site working to be done at this stage of the project.
The project had been on the drawing boards for more than four years with some 60-plus appearances by Swentor in front of municipal leaders here, along with strong support from the business community and the merchants of Flagler Avenue and ardent opposition from a dozen or so Florida Avenue neighbors whose homes face the rear of the hotel site.