First, there was an attempt to build a resort at Marathon Florida Keys Airport, with its empty airline counters and no commercial airline. Then we saw a last-min- ute push to include a luxury hotel alongside mega-yacht slips at the soon-to-be-rede- veloped Safe Harbor on Stock Island. Now county officials are pushing for a hotel at Key West International Airport. All of this is being pursued in the name of hurricane shelters. That’s right, some county offi- cials and developers have fig- ured out that they might actu- ally slip these plans through if they promise to build hotels that will double as shelters dur- ing a hurricane threat. But much like mediocre attempts to build and preserve affordable housing, the idea of building fortified structures that will withstand hurricane-force winds is just another loophole to help developers do what they do: build buildings. They don’t make money if they don’t, and with limited opportunity to build new structures in the Florida Keys, developers must seize on the latest excuse to be granted a special exception. The idea of building hotel/ shelters has been suspicious from the start, with the first suggestion coming from a developer friend of County Commissioner Mario Di Gennaro — he offered to build a hotel at the Marathon air- port in conjunction with an Emergency Operations Center. What’s wrong with the current Emergency Operations Center? Because the room normally serves as County Commission chambers, county staff must move a few tables and com- puter workstations when major storms approach. In a really bad year like 2005, that can mean about four weeks of use — other years, the center is never activated. Yet, despite this unnecessary expense, the county is starting the process for issuing a request for propos- als. Next came Key West attorney David Paul Horan’s proposal to add a hotel to a fiercely debated plan for the Stock Island waterfront. After a series of public meetings involving the county Planning Commission, Development Review Committee and the County Commission, Horan waltzed in with an 11th-hour “addendum” to the proposal, and pressured county commissioners to approve the changes that very night or risk souring the whole Stock Island plan, which was being pushed as the last hope for saving waterfront areas for commercial fishermen. Horan said he’d spoken to utilities, law enforcement agencies and others whose employees could stay at the hotel during a hurricane threat. He also lauded the location at the only deepwater port in the Lower Keys, making a case for easy delivery of supplies if the Florida Keys’ main artery were cut off. But developers are not placing the hotel on the waterfront for solely altruistic reasons; the luxury hotel will enhance an area designated for mega-yacht slips, which also will benefit from the deepwater port. In essence, they get to turn this commercial fishing port into an upscale resort area, all based on the premise of assuring public safety. Fortunately, the state agency with development oversight in the Florida Keys, the Department of Community Affairs, found this plan for one of the county’s last working waterfronts inconsistent with areas zoned for boat yards and marinas. Officials with the agency sent the proposal back to the county for revision. This, by the way, is a case in point for keeping the Keys designated an Area of Critical State Concern, which requires stringent state reviews of this type of develop- ment. The latest idea, to build a hotel/shelter at Key West International Airport, was met with surprise earlier this month. The advocate for replacing a teen center, driver’s license bureau and employee parking with a hotel was Di Gennaro, who said the county needed to generate more revenue on the property. The revenue, we fear, would end up in someone else’s pockets. These attempts to circum- vent the usual process for building hotels should cease immediately. The arguments that their rooms should not be counted in the Florida Keys’ inventory of rooms when figur- ing evacuation times is flawed, because all hotels are supposed to be vacant during an evacua- tion. Under the county’s formu- la, hotel occupants are evacu- ated first, before residents and before the clock starts ticking on meeting a state-mandated 24-hour evacuation time for all residents. This plan for hotels to double as shelters is nothing more than a loophole for develop- ment, and some of the county’s elected officials seem prepared to escort developers right on through.