Sept. 4 may have represented a watershed moment for Sarasota County, the day the county stopped being reactive to site-specific land-use planning.
"The era of planning by waiting for things to come in over the transom may have left us," said County Administrator Jim Ley.
The setting was a "smart growth" workshop led by Peter Katz, a nationally known expert on new urbanist planning. The county brought him on staff to lead an ongoing effort to examine the principles and practices of "smart growth." On Friday, the commissioners decided to move beyond talk to action.
Katz proposed setting up a task force to examine several "hot spots" in the county, areas poised for redevelopment but stalled in the current financial environment. The commission would appoint the members – ranging from 15 to perhaps 25 people. Katz would give them a primer on smart growth, send them to visit the "hot spots," then begin soliciting ideas and opinions from residents, county staff, and the development and financial communities – all the players.
While there were concerns voiced by commissioners – skepticism on overall cost, premises about increased land values and other issues – they gave Katz a green light to proceed. The go-ahead follows more than two years of groundwork to craft rules and regulations, including a form-based code allowing close attention to detail instead of over-arching principles.
For example, current regulations require stormwater mitigation but give latitude on how it can be achieved. The form-based code evaluates each specific site to determine the best solution.
The current system is adversarial at many points, with developers wrangling with county staffers to develop a plan, then wrangling with neighbors and others in the community to push it through the approval process.
Katz says he believes facilitated charrettes combined with form-based codes can work out site-specific details to everybody’s satisfaction, and position the county to lead development to create livable and attractive communities for the future.
Change is required because the old method of buying pasture land then using dredge-and-fill means to create high ground for homes and borrow pits for stormwater retention is over. "We cannot use the suburban model anymore," Ley said before the presentation. "This is a paradigm shift."
The shift is created in part by the voter-approved referendum to raise significant barriers to development east of the interstate. Voters overwhelmingly approved the measure, erecting high barriers to approval to convert more pastures into "McMansions." Future development will be focused on already-developed properties.
To be economically viable, that means increased density and more dwelling units per acre. Urban strip malls would be replaced with multiple-story, mixed-use buildings – combining commercial, retail and residential units. The needs of neighborhoods abutting the old commercial strips would be integrated into the planning, allowing local concerns to be accommodated as well as the desires of property owners and developers.
Katz wants to concentrate on "hot spots" that were proposed for redevelopment during the boom times. "They will probably come back again," he said.
He is also looking at entire corridors such as Bee Ridge, Swift, Lockwood Ridge and Stickney Point roads. The task force would "hover over multiple sites until smart growth principles are adopted. Let these areas compete for county attention," he said.
The task force will not focus on a physical plan for a site. But it will recommend one or more areas for focused planning, perhaps as many as five. "They’ll select on a strong community desire for planning, and then focus on it," Katz said. "The process will gather momentum as other areas want it, too."
This process eventually will lead to a charrette during which all interested parties can spend extensive time in facilitated discussions to iron out agreements and guide the final plan.
Katz said a recent reorganization of county staff would aid in the effort. "Neighborhoods and Zoning have been integrated into Planning and Development Services," he said. "We’re moving from being regulators to being agents for change. We need to gain the trust of citizens to move this forward."
Although no formal vote was taken, Katz was instructed to return with more specifics. All five commissioners asked questions and voiced specific reservations. But they gave Katz the go-ahead.
September 10th 2009 - 12:30AM