Sparks fly over property lines, conditional use permit details as council members tangle with city officials at special meeting

Building and structures planned for Parcel U according to latest site plan

Parcel U not part of conditional use permit which is required for project approval

Site plans changed but city attorney, planning and development director, developer did not have details to present to public

Council members bristle at changing site plans not being available

MANDEVILLE — An extended and intense exchange between council members, developers and city officials raises questions about details in the Sucette Harbor project ordinance which will be up for a vote later this summer.

Councilman at Large Jason Zuckerman and District III Councilwoman Jill McGuire had an often testy back and forth with City Attorney Elizabeth Sconzert and Planning and Development Director Cara Bartholomew over why the ordinance does not contain a conditional use permit for a parcel where boat slips and parts of a building and outdoor seating are included.

An examination of the proposed Sucette Harbor site plan reveals potential issues with the project as it is currently submitted to the City Council.

Ordinance 23-16 includes a conditional use permit only for Parcel D, which contains most but not all of the building structures in the latest plan (see slides below). The other Parcel U is not part of the ordinance, but contains the now demolished marina and current site plans show part of the restaurant building and outside seating on it.

What’s more, at the beginning of the meeting Bartholomew informed the council that there are updates to the current site plan but those changes would not be made available at the meeting.

“There was [sic] two buildings located on the west side of the property along the marina, one of those buildings were [sic] removed. … The square footage of that southern building was added on about 2,000 square feet to accommodate just the marina service operations,” Bartholomew said.

Zuckerman pressed Bill Hoffman, President of Woodward Interests, the developer of the project, for the latest plan. Hoffman said they did not have the latest site plan changes at the special meeting. “Maybe tomorrow,” Hoffman added.

When a flood elevation map is overlaid on the Sucette Harbor site plan, the so-called “servitude of passage,” which is required to remain as drawn, is in clear conflict with those plans. What’s more, when the parcels or property map is added to the mix, it becomes evident that several structures are indeed planned to be partially built on Parcel U. This is a problem because Parcel U is not part of the conditional use permit in proposed Ordinance 23-16, which would green-light the Sucette Harbor project.

Only Parcel D is specified in Ordinance 23-16. At previous City Council meetings where the proposed Sucette Harbor project was discussed, both Bartholomew and Sconzert stated that Parcel U is not part of the proposal as it is an existing marina and its designated use hasn’t changed.

However, Parcel U was removed from commerce years ago when it was donated by Al Copeland Jr. to the LSU Health Foundation, after the bulkheads and slips were demolished. While Parcel U is mostly water, it does contain a significant amount of dry land.

The most recent Sucette Harbor site plans provided by Woodward Interests, the project developer and partner of the LSU Health Foundation, shows buildings and structures planned to be built on the land portion of Parcel U.

The slides below illustrate the issues. The servitude of passage is drawn in yellow and is overlaid in multiple slides at its precise location. Parcels U and D are shown in red and green, respectively. All slides are to the same scale, except the last one which is an inset or magnification of previous slides:

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