Late Friday Afternoon Assistant County Attorney Steve West forwarded to me two new title abstracts for two existing parcels in Perdido Key (Sundown and Grand Caribbean). Neither of these two parcels, from my initial scan and review of them, provide for any dedicated public beach access nor do they contain easements or reservations for the public's use of the beach. And this is not surprising.
Because the Sundown parcel is on the extreme west end of Perdido Key and looks as if it is firmly within the giant tract of land that was deeded to three families directly from the Federal Government in 1926 via an action by then president Calvin Coolidge. So, no new news there.
Part of the public access mystery appears to be solved in looking at the original deed for Grand Caribbean which apparently extended all the way down to the beach.
Which means at some point Sandy Key was subdivided and sold off from the original Grand Caribbean deeded property--so far as I can tell.
The Grand Caribbean parcel, while in and of itself providing no dedicated easement or reservation for perpetual beach access for/by the general public nevertheless is interesting because in it's current configuration it is "land-locked" to the north of the Gulf of Mexico bordered by the Sandy Key condominium on its south--with Sandy Key directly on the Gulf of Mexico. It appears that the original large parcel had gulf front property included. So the interesting thing that I discussed in a previous blog post was "why" Sandy Key would acquiesce to Grand Caribbean's want for a beach walkover to access the Gulf of Mexico? The Grand Caribbean HOA document contained within the abstract only contains one page and in the one page (of many I would assume) there is no mention of public beach access to the south--so I would need to see the rest of the 1996 HOA Grand Caribbean covenants to know for sure if deeded public beach access was negotiated for the northern part (Grand Caribbean) when the parcel(s) were divided up in 1996 and two separate condo complexes were made from the one larg lot? But with the information I have at hand right now--it appears somewhere there is a reservation for Grand Caribbean from Sandy Key for access. That's my assumption for now, but I'll find out for sure in the weeks and months to come.
So no, these two parcels' abstracts and what they describe (no public beach access) do NOT come as surprise to me based upon the sum totality of what we know thus far about all of the parcels out on Perdido Key. The interesting information will come upon our thorough examination of the deeds and abstracts for La Playa, Sandy Key, Beach Colony, Parasol, Land's End, Vista Del Mar, Indigo, Indigo East, Palacio, and Perdido Sun.
Once we start to receive each of these complete abstracts, which we will obtain, we will have a much clearer picture of the state of public beach access at all of Perdido Key in District 1. In fact--once we get the final ten mentioned above----I think we will have the entire puzzle put together.
More to come.
