Common sense ultimately prevailed on the matter of Tampa’s variance board voting to allow Derek Jeter to erect a 6-foot privacy fence around his gigantic new home now under construction on Davis Islands.
Put it this way. Once you’ve established the reality of the largest house in the county (at 33,000 square feet) shoe-horned into a residential neighborhood, you’re going to quibble over a 2-foot differential on fencing?
But even more to the point, the reality of a mammoth, celebrity-owned mansion is that it will be a beacon to gawkers. Logistically, Bahama Circle is hardly well suited for drive-by voyeurs. Better that the word get out that there will be no gratuitous Jeter sightings.
Even though the Davis Islands Civic Association opposed the variance, Jeter’s immediate neighbors, the ones already impacted by ratcheting traffic, lobbied for it – a position that understandably carried the day.