THE COUNCIL REFUSED TO RESPOND AND WALKED OUT ON ME AGAIN.

Deli king Ike Starkman has been feeding folks for years. Now he wants to shelter them too.

Give and Take

The Oasis on the Bay project, a 20-story condo building overlooking Biscayne Bay at NE 79th Street, met fierce opposition from the neighbors (homeowners directly adjacent to the project) when it was first proposed to the city.

One of the loudest voices was that of Allyson Warren, nearby resident and president of the Shorecrest Homeowners Association, who was quoted earlier this year in the Miami Herald as saying, “If they are going to do 20 stories, we will fight it tooth and nail.… That kind of height directly next to a neighborhood with single-family homes is abominable.”

Now Warren is publicly supporting the project, and spoke in favor of the large, two-building development to Miami’s Zoning Board at Monday’s meeting, in which they approved closing a portion of the public street on NE Bayshore Court.

The Plat and Street Committee voted unanimously to allow the developers to close this street, with the condition that they provide public access to the baywalk. (With only two dissenting votes, the Miami Zoning Board also backed the easement.)

Warren notes that the developers, River Bait and Tackle, LLC (a subsidiary of the Related Group), have also presented plans to the city to build a public park on nearby land and build a waterfront seafood restaurant.

“All this is public record,” Warren told the SunPost. “They can’t just not do it.”

Warren seems to view this situation as a give and take between the neighborhoods and the developer.

“You can’t stop development,” she says. “There are people who just oppose every project … you have to compromise.”

Jerry’s Project

By the time you read this, judgment will be passed on Isaac “Ike” Starkman’s latest business interest — being a developer.

Starkman, an Israeli-born entrepreneur who owns Epicure Market and the Jerry’s Famous Deli chain, submitted an application to the city of Sunny Isles Beach to build a mixed-use tower containing 243 dwelling units, 77,400 square feet of office space and 20,500 square feet of retail at 17150 Collins Ave. The new building just happens to be where the landmark Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House Deli, also owned by Starkman, now stands.

The application will be taken up by the Sunny Isles Beach City Commission this evening.

Screwing the Little Guy

While city of Miami Beach officials contemplate passing laws that will hike up the cost of parking impact fees charged to expanding commercial interests ranging from a high-rise developer to a small-business owner wanting to just add a few seats to his restaurant, they may also want to consider this: The fees as they stand now are already putting a major hurt on business people.

In an e-mail to Beach officials on Dec. 4, Ben Wagman, a franchise owner of the Quarterdeck Seafood Bar at 1430 Alton Road, wrote of receiving a $490,000 bill from the Miami Beach Planning Department for parking impact fees. The reason: Wagman took over an 800-square-foot space of a neighboring beauty parlor and merged it into the Quarterdeck.

“This fee was calculated based on 14 additional ‘virtual’ parking spaces the Planning Department said we now needed, at the rate of $35,000 per parking space,” Wagman wrote. “Ironically, we are one of the rare restaurants on South Beach that has its own (17 space) parking lot which provides ample parking spaces for our customers.”

The Miami Beach City Commission is considering upping this virtual rate to $45,000 a space. “Please keep in mind the devastating effect this will have on small and existing businesses (parking impact fee assessments are not locked in, our parking impact fee assessment will then be raised to $630,000!) on Miami Beach,” Wagman wrote.

Wagman pleaded with city officials for mercy. “Consider temporarily eliminating them for existing businesses or reverting them back to the pre-September, 2006 rate of $15,000 per parking space.” Or, at the very least, Wagman suggests, create a “tiered fee system,” one “that would be fairer, and less punitive to existing small businesses in our city.”

Unsolved Mysteries…

Last week the SunPost reported that Christian activist Sandra Snowden was annoyed that she couldn’t display her nativity scene on a Broad Causeway hill since the town of Bay Harbor Islands snatched the spot first, placing a Christmas tree, some boats and a — gasp — menorah there. Meanwhile Murmurs wrote about Bay Harbor Town Manager Greg Tindle’s pending resignation due to personal reasons and, apparently, the really long commute he has to make everyday to get to work. We also had a lot of Art Basel stuff as it was our Art Basel issue.

We are repeating these news tidbits because Murmurs has received numerous reports of newspapers not being received by various Bay Harbor Islands buildings even though our distribution folks are pretty darn sure they delivered them. One town resident even spoke of seeing the stack of papers waiting for the concierge to place them in the mail room, but when he went to pick one up, the SunPosts had mysteriously disappeared. Peeling out from the roadside — a suspicious white van.

Is a van driver out there picking up our papers? We don’t know. We do know the papers were delivered to 34 boutique condos, only to then later disappear so quickly that Bay Harbor residents were positive they never received them. Murmurs is interested in solving the mystery of the Bay Harbor Islands Triangle and encourages anyone with any tips to e-mail editorial@miamisunpost.com.

Speaking of Sandra…

While the Bay Harbor Islands Town Council was busy trying to figure out how to find a brand new town manager or to expand the size of their elementary school, Christian activist Sandra Snowden was outside talking on her cell phone to a Southern California Baptist radio station. Snowden was basically playing reporter, transmitting the happenings live via phone as she tried to get the Town Council to give her a better spot on Broad Causeway for her nativity scene or, as she put it, ask “the council for fairness and to live up to the agreement they had signed in the courts for ‘equality.’” The town officials, exhausted after doing the town business for the last few hours, filtered out without saying a word.

“It was broadcast ‘live’ worldwide on the radio from the chambers,” Snowden described in her e-mail to Murmurs. “It made great Christian talk show news. I have done more than 15 shows since last night. THE COUNCIL REFUSED TO RESPOND AND WALKED OUT ON ME AGAIN. [Murmurs note: capital letters hers.] We posted the council members’ pictures on the Internet so Christians worldwide would see what the worst council against Christians looked like.”

Ouch. Geez, they were just tired, Sandra. Can’t you put the nativity scene on another spot on Broad Causeway?

Well, actually Councilwoman Stephanie Bruder is OK, Snowden wrote. “She has been working hard behind the scenes for peace and equality.”

Then, Snowden stated in her message, as if in the middle of a phone call: “Must run now because I am on another show in Seattle, Washington in 10 minutes.”

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