It was hardly a surprise when billionaire condominium owners in Key West called NIMBY on the sheriff’s plan to build workforce-housing apartments on the vacant 1-acre lot next to their luxury Steam Plant townhomes with private rooftop pools on Trumbo Road.
The surprising part came when the same wealthy property owners — Meg Molleston, her husband Jed and her brother Walter “Wag” Woodward — instead offered to design, build — and pay for — the workforce housing that they would be comfortable having in their backyard, managing its height, appearance and configuration so as not to impede the Mollestons’ waterfront views.
Three years and thousands of documents later, the wealthy Molleston family, through their company, SPGL LLC, leased the acre lot from the sheriff’s office and on Dec. 13 broke ground on a 24-unit apartment complex right next door.
“My wife and I were alarmed when we learned that this property had been approved for 40 units of workforce housing,” Jed Molleston told a crowd of about 50 at the ground-breaking ceremony on Trumbo Road. “What do you think I said? ‘Not in my backyard.’ Meg and I weren’t going to have a Soviet-style apartment block jammed onto one acre.”
Upon hearing of Jed Molleston’s opposition, Key West City Commissioner Sam Kaufman suggested he speak with Sheriff Rick Ramsay to see if something could be worked out.
“Commissioner Kaufman told me, ‘The sheriff’s a reasonable guy.’ And he is,” Molleston said.
The family worked out a plan to reduce the neighboring workforce development from 40 to 24 apartments, and in the meantime bought a 14-unit rental complex on Stock Island to make up the difference.
Those units on Stock Island and the ones coming to Trumbo Road will be affordably rented to sheriff’s office employees, Key West Police Department employees, EMTs and other public safety workers.
“Meg and I find tremendous value in supporting our local law enforcement,” Molleston said. “When we work together, consider all points of view and work toward compromise, we really can have nice things.”
Sheriff Rick Ramsay acknowledged the fact that, “Obviously, if Jed and his family had their preference, there’d never be anything built on this property, but this is proof of what can happen with public-private partnerships,” adding that at least now “no one will dare rob the Steam Plant Condominiums when there’s 15 or so patrol cars parked right next door.”
And the sheriff’s office housing is the first of two potential workforce housing developments that the Molleston family will provide to the community along Trumbo Road, a ragged but waterfront edge of Key West’s downtown sector.
Just beyond the sheriff’s one-acre lot sprawls the Monroe County School District’s 6-acre administrative campus, a collection of dilapidated buildings, disused bus maintenance bays and an aging but still-in-use office building.
Multiple school boards and superintendents had spent 20 years talking about building employee housing on the Trumbo property and moving their administration building elsewhere.
The Molleston family, through their company, SPGL, is ready to move and negotiations are underway for about 70 apartments on the site — and again, in the Mollestons’ backyard.
