Dear Friends. You may already have received the message below from the Friends of Cape Haze but in case you didn’t I’m forwarding again. Thank you for your efforts and the amazing turnout. This will make a difference on the Cape Haze Peninsula.
The County Commission on February 28 adopted an upper limit of 15 units/acre of density for the entire Cape Haze Peninsula/West County. Properties currently at lower densities cannot get 15 automatically. They will have to go through a land use or zoning change, but they will not be able to seek more than 15. This is a very significant protection for the area.
There are three properties with prior existing approvals that will still be able to seek up to 65 units/acre. Citizens at the hearing strongly supported limiting all properties to 15, but the Commission eventually made clear that it fears a lawsuit involving constitutional takings claims for those properties which already have some sort of grandfathered Compact Growth Mixed Use (CGMU) status if the possibility of 65 units is removed for them. The properties are a small one on Placida Road in Grove City, the former Fishery property which has approval for 7-8 units per acre which Friends of Cape Haze supports, and the West County Town Center Property at Gasparilla Road and 776.
The West County Town Center is somewhere between 1100 and 1300 acres and currently has approval for less than 4000 units. In order to increase density at this site the developer will have to apply to the County for a change to its CGMU approval, and possibly also its zoning approval. So it is not inevitable that this property will have a higher density, but citizens must be alert to any future effort to increase the density at this site.
We are so thankful to all the citizens who wrote the commissioners, came to the hearing (many wearing red) and made comments. All of the comments were well thought out and well presented, including evacuation observations, comparisons to density in other large cities, comments on the likely effects of climate change, and data on the value of the local sportfishing industry supported by the tidal lagoons of West County.
We estimated the crowd at 150 to 200. We know the Commissioners took notice.
One unfortunate period at the hearing had a commissioner criticizing attendees for being misinformed. They were clearly not misinformed as the actual language of the ordinance proposal on the large screen at the front of the room made clear.
Thank you for your overwhelming support. And we hope we’ll all be on the lookout for any proposed change in the land use or zoning status at the West County Town Center.
Percy Angelo