ST. PETE BEACH - The Coral Reef Hotel, originally built in 1963, soon may be redeveloped as a $60 million, 12-story major hotel or timeshare resort.

If the developers, Coral Reef Partners LLC, are successful in navigating the city's new development regulations, this may be the first indication the city's development wars have come to an end.

For the Coral Reef, the first step will be for property owner Robert Fleeting to explain his plans at a public meeting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the city's Warren Webster Community Center, 1500 Pass-a-Grille Way.

"Our intention is to demolish the existing hotel and construct a new building with a combined total of 248 units," Fleeting said Thursday.

The building will include 10 stories of living space over two stories of parking. Each 1,000-square-foot unit will include two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and kitchen.

The hotel also will include conference facilities, a restaurant, a pool, gymnasium and poolside bar.

Once completed, the entire 4.28-acre complex, including the nearby Coral Reef Resort timeshare buildings, will have three pools and four spas. There will be aesthetic improvements to the entire site, Fleeting said.

The two resort timeshare buildings on the site are separately owned, but are considered part of the hotel site plan for zoning and building regulation purposes.

When Fleeting, a native of Scotland, purchased the hotel property in 2004, he said he planned to tear down the hotel and build condominiums.

"The city told me they did not want to lose one of their major hotels and asked me to wait until they had completed their new land development regulations.

Only weeks later, the hotel was condemned and boarded up for safety reasons.

"It was the black hole of Calcutta. It was quite horrific. Water was running over electrical wiring. I called the fire marshal and he told me as gently as he could that we had to close," Fleeting said.

Then the city's development wars intervened when Citizens for Responsible Growth successfully campaigned for the city's planned development regulations to be rejected at the polls in 2005.

Over the next few years, Fleeting succeeded in signing multimillion dollar development contracts with a series of major hoteliers, but each fell apart because of the uncertainty over the city's development rules.

New regulations proposed by another citizens' group, Save Our Little Village, were approved by voters last year and officially went into effect this month when the state Department of Community Affairs approved the voter-approved new comprehensive plan and land development regulations.

Today, even though those regulations are still being fought in court by members of Citizens for Responsible Growth, Fleeting is not waiting to put his plans for the Coral Reef into action.

But this time, Fleeting is reversing normal development procedures by first getting city approval for his plans before he approaches another flag hotel or secures financing.

"Because of what has happened in St. Pete Beach, I can no longer do it the normal way. I don't want egg on my face again," he said.

Once he has city approval, he will approach major resort companies to "flag" the project. The building footprint, density and height will not change, he said, but final interior design may be altered, depending upon the resort company selected.