In a situation that might be called deja-view, a four-story botanical mural on a Bayshore Triangle luxury apartment complex is the target of county building officials who want it changed.

The problem is not that the mural was painted. The problem is that it has changed from the architect’s drawings approved by Collier County building officials.

The current mural is an abstract that suggests huge blooms in shades of coral, blue, soft green and gold. The original design, as shown in its permit application, features gray and steel blue pinwheel geometrics.

The art is unavoidable. It covers all of the east side and a quarter of the north side of a five-story parking garage attached to Ascent at Metropolitan, a luxury apartment building abutting Davis Boulevard at its intersection with U.S. 41.

And it is facing the same dilemma two much smaller buildings in the same area battled six years ago. The resolution to that crisis was supposed to prevent one like this.

Between 2017 and 2018, two business owners in the area, which is part of the Bayshore Community Redevelopment Act (CRA) District, added murals to their buildings. Collier County code enforcement directed them to remove or change them. Both had gone beyond their initial designs, they were told.

The standoff ended in 2018 when county commissioners offered the final say on the two murals to the CRA advisory board, which approved them. The advisory board asked, in return, that the county set some sort of standards for public art and some administration for those standards.

That has not happened.

A start, and then a squabble

At one point, the United Arts Council of Collier County (now United Arts Collier) was to assume that role. But interpersonal friction between then-commissioners and the council’s leadership quashed that almost as soon as the commissioners approved the idea. It has not found a firm footing in any agency since.

So theoretically, adding a mural to any building has been on hold until some art plan is approved for the Bayshore CRA District. Whether the county planners had the jurisdiction to approve a mural at all could be in question. County building officials did not respond for an interview request or answer a list of written questions before this story’s deadline.

It’s confusing, acknowledged Collier County Commissioner Dan Kowal, in whose District Four the mural is based. Kowal said he didn’t know whether either design was termed a mural or simply a “finish” on the structure.

Kowal was to meet with county attorneys on the topic, which was scheduled to come up at the board of commissioners’ meeting Sept. 10.

Taking a populist approach, Kowal published in his Aug. 30 newsletter a photo of both the current facade and the facade county building officials say was approved. He asked for readers to submit their opinions.

He said he found, as of Friday morning, emails running at 75% to remove the mural to 25% who wanted it to stay. The reasoning had a strong thread of living by the regulations.

“I saw a lot of feeling that ‘rules are rules,’” Kowal said. There was also some feeling that the colors were a bit too bright for its surrounding milieu. Still, those colors were the same reason others supported keeping the mural.

Future of art still fuzzy

“I’ve heard all kinds of comments. I heard someone call it ‘the Kleenex box,’” said Diane Sullivan, a Realtor whose own Bayshore Drive building, strewn with paintings of hibiscus, ran afoul of county officials back in 2018. “I like it. I think it’s refreshing.”

Amanda Jaron, a fellow business owner who also successfully battled to keep her mermaid mural on Bayshore Drive, has started a petition to keep the mural and has encouraged residents to email Collier County commissioners.

Sullivan sympathizes with the building’s owners, recalling her own experience: “I was told to ‘just submit some kind of drawing.’ There didn’t seem to be a concern about whether it was exact. And, as everyone knows, art grows and changes.”

Her own building is due for a repainting in the next year, and Sullivan said she doesn’t know whether she can reinstate her mural. She would like to see the county set up standards that would eliminate the confusion.

“I realize there’s a fine line,” she said of art opinions. But she felt some process should have been set up by now.

Neither the county nor GFI Capital Partners, identified as the owner of the structure, responded by press time to a request to speak about circumstances around the mural.

“What does bother me is that here we are six years later, and nothing has changed,” Sullivan said of the county edict. “We’re in the same situation.”

This story was published in The Naples Press on Sept. 13.