This letter is in reference to the traffic study on County Road 905, and the mention of Loquat Drive in a letter to the editor by Mr. Broton of Ocean Reef Club and his questionable interference in our neighborhood. We want to make sure that the true story is told and not the one he is telling everybody. He has decided that this is his project when he lives 12 miles away in a gated community; that he’s going to remove the barrier that protects our neighborhood from the onslaught of traffic every Saturday and Sunday.
I am Spencer Slate. I have lived in this community, Ocean Isle Estates, since 1978 and Loquat Drive for 31 years. So I’m probably the oldest resident in this community. We have some wonderful people that live in our neighborhood. However, over the past 10 years, the traffic cutting down through our neighborhood trying to beat the intersection has completely destroyed the safety and peace of our neighborhood, for us adults, our children and our pets. I have personally lost four of my and my children’s pets in the last six years to the traffic. The traffic before the barrier was installed made our neighborhood totally unsafe for every visitor and every resident. Our children couldn’t play in the street in front of their own home. Twenty-five years ago I asked the county to put up speed signs on Loquat and they did it through the neighborhood to slow people down to 25 mph. Being that I’m the only house on Loquat Drive, it’s been a drag strip ever since I’ve lived there — just look at the black marks up and down the road. So, I had a very unsafe environment for my children to be raised in when they were small, trying to ride their bikes and have fun going around the neighborhood. It was impossible until we put the barrier up in August 2021.
One Saturday in June 2021, before the barrier went up, I sat in my driveway for one hour and counted 284 cars, motorhomes, hundreds and hundreds of boats, and even the green city buses coming down our street and through our neighborhood, all documented. And of course, when you turn the corner on Garden Cove Drive, you confront the traffic from both dive shops and the Shipwrecks restaurant traffic. And then you go about 150 yards, and you’ve got the traffic from Buzzard’s Roost. So it’s an absolute bottleneck and everybody’s in a big hurry to get around to get on U.S.1. They don’t care where they are or how dangerous the situation is that they’re causing.
Families in our community have been up in arms for years and we came together and talked to our county commissioner, who at the time was our beloved Mike Forster who later passed away. Mike came over multiple times, noticed two community meetings, letters were sent to every resident, he placed police cars on weekends, flew a drone during weekend madness and held full county commission meetings with the closure on the agenda. Everything was done 100% correct following county code and the vote passed through the commission to put the barrier there.
So what is the answer? The issue is to correct the intersection where 905 goes into U.S.1 at mile marker 106.5, just like the correction at Burton Drive in Tavernier. That correction seems to have made it safer, and that’s the issue.
The barrier is not devastating to the two restaurants here in our community. We know that’s not true. Just yesterday, during a very slow time, there were 17 cars at the restaurant at Garden Cove for lunch, 21 cars at the restaurant in the marina. The night before, there were 19 cars at the Garden Cove restaurant, parked on both sides of the streets, and 24 cars at the marina restaurant.
So we have a deal for Mr. Broton. We are willing to remove our barrier for you so you can get to your destination four minutes early as soon as you remove the gate and gatehouse at Ocean Reef. That way all the weekend visitors can now have another site to go to and enjoy themselves with the beautiful amenities.
Thanks for reading this. If you have questions call me at 305-451-3020 or come by my house. You will only hear the truth from me.
