Friday at 5:00 PM was supposed to be the deadline. Instead, it became a phone call. Chuck Whittall picked up the phone and told the Town Manager he was not taking the arch down. The state permit, he said, is the only permit that matters. Longboat Key has its answer. The St. Regis arch is going to circuit court — and Whittall says he will follow it from there to the Florida Supreme Court if he has to.
—For nearly a year, the question hanging over Longboat Key has been when the St. Regis arch dispute would stop being a zoning question and start being a legal one.
—It became a legal one Friday at 5:00 PM.
—That was the deadline Town Manager Howard Tipton had set for Unicorp National Developments and SR LBK to bring the unpermitted 14-foot metallic arch and crown-and-lettering sign on the resort’s Gulf-jutting groin into compliance with Town code — or face suit. Five o’clock arrived, and so did a phone call. Unicorp CEO Chuck Whittall called Tipton and said he was not removing the structure.
“He believes they are on legal solid ground,” Tipton said in describing the call, “that they have a permit from the state and it is in state waters and not in the Town’s jurisdiction.”
—That, in one sentence, is the legal theory Whittall intends to take to a Sarasota County courtroom — and beyond.
—The Town Manager’s Position
—Tipton, for his part, declined to escalate the rhetoric. His comments after Friday’s call carried more weariness than heat.
“I appreciate that he created a great resort out of the dilapidated Colony, and so much effort to buy the individual units,” Tipton said. “Chuck wants to work together. It is not going through Town Code Enforcement. It is going straight to circuit court.”
—That second sentence is the operational one. Under the special counsel services agreement the Town Commission authorized 7-0 on Monday, the Town’s outside litigation counsel — the firm Garcia Dell, headed by Martin Garcia — is now empowered to file directly in the Twelfth Judicial Circuit, bypassing the Town’s own special magistrate. Town Attorney Maggie Mooney told the Commission Monday she preferred that route precisely because she expected exactly this scenario: a developer who would appeal any magistrate ruling into circuit court anyway, prolonging the non-compliance.
—Friday’s phone call confirmed her read.
“The State Said They Are the Proper Agency”
—Whittall, in an interview after the call to Tipton, was unequivocal about why he thinks Longboat Key has no standing to compel removal.
“The state gave us a permit to build a groin, do ropes and columns and put a sign on it,” he said. “Maggie Mooney said she does not agree. The state said they are the proper agency. We believe we have rightly built the sign.”
—That is the argument in its purest form. The groin sits seaward of the Erosion Control Line, on sovereign submerged state land. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection issued a permit in 2024 covering the groin repair, the boardwalk, and — Unicorp maintains — the archway and sign that crown the structure. If the state owns the land beneath it, and the state has authorized what stands on it, Whittall asks, on what basis does a barrier-island town tell him to take it down?
—The Town’s answer is that local sign and zoning codes apply to structures within municipal boundaries regardless of who owns the underlying land. Mooney’s two prior rounds of analysis at the Planning and Zoning Board, along with her March 9, 2026 constitutional memorandum, all rest on that premise. A judge will sort it out.
“It Looks Like a 1950s Monaco Pier”
—Whittall’s affection for the structure he built is undisguised, and he leaned into it.
“It is not offensive — it is beautiful,” he said. “It looks like a 1950s Monaco pier.”
—He described the arch as something the resort’s guests, and members of the public who walk the beach, have embraced.
“We get lots of photos and weddings and Mother’s Day at the sign under the arch,” Whittall said. “It is a true landmark. It is an Instagram memory moment. Thousands of pictures and memories have been created.”
—That language — landmark, Instagram memory moment — sits at the heart of the case the Town is preparing to make against him. The previous LBK News reporting laid it out: in attorney Brenda Patten’s January 23, 2026 application letter, Unicorp’s stated purpose for the arch was to “draw attention to the property, promoting visitors and tourism,” and to provide “a focal point for photos and memories, drawing more visitors and tourists to the hotel or motel.” That is, on its face, the language of commercial advertising on sovereign state land — the precise problem the Town’s sign code was written to prevent.
—Whittall’s view is that beauty and economic contribution should resolve the question. The Town’s view is that the code resolves it.
“Built to Outlast My Lifetime”
Asked about the structure itself, Whittall offered details that have not previously been part of the public record.
“It was about $16,000 to build the arch,” he said. “Hired a firm out of South Florida. It is built to withstand 150 mph hurricanes and is fabricated from marine grade stainless steel to outlast my lifetime. It will be here for generations.”
—The 150 mph wind rating is significant: it matches exactly the standard Mooney’s withdrawn ordinances would have required of any “private groin sign” structure. The construction quality, in other words, is not in dispute. The legal authority to put the structure where it stands is.
“Small Voices Make the Loudest Noises”
—If Whittall’s tone toward the Town Manager was conciliatory, his tone toward the residents and commissioners who pushed for removal was something closer to exasperation.
“We don’t know why a handful — granted, small voices make the loudest noises — find something better to do than argue over our sign,” he said.
“We don’t get it. We don’t get it. We are not fighting over it just to fight. It could take years. We will fight it on every level, whether it’s the Florida Supreme Court.”
—That last clause is the one with operational consequence for Longboat Key taxpayers. A circuit court case, fully litigated, runs into six figures. A circuit court case followed by an appeal to Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal runs higher. A case Whittall is publicly committing to take to the Florida Supreme Court — the highest court in the state — runs higher still, with no guarantee, as Mooney warned commissioners Monday, that the Town will recover its attorney’s fees and costs even if it prevails.
—When Commissioner B.J. Bishop asked the Town Attorney that question on Monday, Mooney’s answer was direct: “I cannot guarantee this commission that we will recover attorney’s fees and costs. Certainly we will ask, but I don’t want to mislead anybody.”
—Whittall, on Friday, supplied the other half of that equation. He intends to make sure they ask many times.
“They Are Saying No Just to Say No”
—Whittall’s frustration with the Commission’s posture spilled over into the bluntest comment of the interview.
“They are saying no just to say no,” he said. “This is small potatoes. If we lose, we lose, we lose. We do not know what the town has to lose by letting it stay.”
—It is the clearest statement yet of how Whittall views the dispute: as a zero-cost gesture for the Town and a meaningful one for him. His implicit math is that the arch generates tourism, generates wedding bookings, generates social-media impressions, and generates good press — and that Longboat Key, by refusing to ratify it, is forfeiting upside while gaining nothing.
—The Town’s implicit math, expressed by the Planning and Zoning Board’s two denial votes and reaffirmed by the Commission’s unanimous Monday vote, is the opposite: that ratifying a non-compliant structure built without a permit on sovereign state land is itself the cost — a precedent that, once set, cannot be unset.
—Both sides genuinely believe they are protecting something the other side is willing to sacrifice.
“BJ Bishop Is Not Forward Thinking”
—Whittall did not avoid naming the commissioner who has been most publicly opposed to the arch.
“BJ Bishop is not forward thinking,” he said. “There is no $600 million resort on the Jersey shore. It is a beautiful monument to LBK and guests.”
—The “Jersey shore” reference is a callback to the March Planning and Zoning Board hearing, where Board Member Gladding warned that approving the amendments could turn Longboat Key into the “Jersey Beach.” Whittall has consistently rejected the comparison, arguing that the comparison itself is the failure of imagination — that what Unicorp built is not the kind of overdeveloped commercial corridor the Jersey Shore connotes, but the opposite: a luxury resort whose presence elevates everything around it.
—Bishop, who told a constituent in March that she would “continue to urge my colleagues we follow our sign code and have this removed,” has not publicly responded to the personal characterization. She voted yes on Monday’s litigation authorization, as did every other member of the Commission.
—Skipping Code Enforcement Entirely
—The procedural detail in Tipton’s comments deserves attention. “It is not going through Town Code Enforcement,” he said. “It is going straight to circuit court.”
That is by design. A typical municipal code violation in Florida moves through a sequence: code enforcement officer issues a notice, a special magistrate hears the case, fines accrue, and only then — if the violator appeals or refuses to comply with the magistrate’s order — does the dispute reach circuit court. Mooney’s recommendation, ratified by the Commission’s 7-0 vote, was to skip the early stages entirely.
—The reasoning was prophylactic. Footnote 2 of Patten’s January 23 application letter had reserved Unicorp’s right to litigate in any forum. Mooney told the Commission she expected the special magistrate path to “end up in the circuit court anyway” and saw no point in building delay into a process whose endpoint was already known.
—Friday’s phone call was the test of that prediction. The prediction held.
—Litigation Is the Substrate of This Property
—Anyone surprised that the St. Regis arch is heading to court has not been paying attention to the eighteen acres on which it stands. Litigation is not an interruption of life on this parcel — it is the geological layer beneath everything built on it.
—Strip away the cabanas, the wedding lawn, the porte-cochère, the boardwalk, and the groin, and what you find at the bedrock is forty years of legal filings.
—In 1988, Colony founder Dr. Murray “Murf” Klauber sued the Town of Longboat Key after the Town pulled his building permit for a luxury spa condominium called The Reserve. Eight years later, a federal jury awarded him nearly $9 million for civil rights violations, and the Town settled for $6.5 million in cash in March 1997.
—In 2007, Klauber sued his own Colony condo owners over $14.1 million in disputed repair costs. In 2009, Bank of America foreclosed on him. By 2010, the Colony was closed; by 2013, Klauber had thrown three of his Colony companies into Chapter 11 to stall a Sarasota foreclosure hearing. The bankruptcy court eventually wrested the property from his hands. He died in 2018, the same year the buildings came down.
Then came Whittall’s turn at the wheel. After buying the wreckage in 2016 for $22 million, Unicorp spent the next five years in court against Tennessee developer Andy Adams, who controlled seventy-five units and refused to sell at Whittall’s price.
—Other unit owners filed their own motions and their own threats to challenge the Town’s approval of the project. Judge Hunter W. Carroll spent years parsing the resulting tangle before the condominium association was judicially terminated in 2021.
—By the time Whittall settled with Adams that April for somewhere north of $15 million, he estimated his total spend on the property and demolition — before a single new wall went up — at almost $100 million. Now, having battled the Klaubers’ aftermath, the holdout unit owners, and the bankruptcy court, Whittall is set to battle the Town that approved his project in the first place. The arch dispute is not the first courtroom this parcel has seen. It is just the next geological layer that forms the legal bedrock of the site.
—What Happens Next
—The Town’s outside counsel will now prepare the complaint. The forum will be the Twelfth Judicial Circuit in and for Sarasota County. The legal questions in front of the court will likely include the scope of municipal jurisdiction over structures on sovereign submerged lands, the interplay between state DEP permitting and local sign and zoning codes, and the constitutional limits on content-based regulation of signage under Reed v. Gilbert and City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising.
—Whittall has publicly committed to appealing through every available level. Mooney has publicly committed to pursuing recovery of the Town’s costs without promising it. The arch — built for $16,000, fabricated in marine-grade stainless steel, rated for 150-mph winds, “built to outlast my lifetime” in Whittall’s words — remains where it stands, draped in fabric, awaiting a judge.
—There are buildings, and then there are landmarks, and then there are lawsuits. The St. Regis arch is now all three.
