Applicant for project a division of Texas-based homebuilder D.R. Horton
On a recent, unanimous vote, the Sarasota County Commission agreed to a developer’s request for a continuance of a hearing regarding a proposed residential community with 60 townhomes and 330 multi-family apartments in what has been designated Sub-Area G of the Fruitville Initiative.
The property is located east of Interstate 75 and north of Fruitville Road.
All of the commissioners were agreeable to the request of the developer — DHI Communities — to modify the Critical Area Plan encompassing the Fruitville Initiative to allow for a revised block layout and local street network, as well as a modification of the sub-area from one with mixed uses to one with only homes. However, none of them indicated support for DHI’s proposal to remove 14 of 18 Grand Trees on the property.
(DHI Communities is the multi-family building division of Arlington, Texas-based D.R. Horton, The Sarasota News Leader learned from an online search.)
County staff had declined to approve the Grand Tree plans, which necessitated that DHI appeal the decision to the board.
Attorney Charles D. Bailey III of the Williams Parker firm in Sarasota, who represented DHI during the Nov. 19 public hearing, explained that project team members with the Kimley-Horn consulting firm in Sarasota had worked on multiple designs of the development to try to preserve more of the trees. However, the best they could do was to save four, he told the commissioners.
Those would be on the perimeter of the site.
Bailey added that those trees would be “aesthetically enjoyed by the public because we’ll be constructing a multi-use recreational trail” near them.
Bailey further noted, “The challenges associated with saving the trees are that the site itself … is the smallest sub-area within the [Fruitville Initiative].” It is slightly larger than 21 acres, he added. In comparison, he pointed out, a former county parcel in the Fruitville Initiative — which the board sold to Benderson Development Co. in 2014 — encompassed 42 acres.
Bailey also pointed to a public right of way that is located within the western third of the property. That left DHI only 6.7 developable acres on the west, he said, while 14 acres is open on the eastern side of the site.
DHI had worked with the 13 property owners within Sub-Area G, Bailey explained, to purchase the 15 parcels needed to create the new residential community. Twelve single-family homes exist on the site, he added. “It’s peppered, unfortunately, with the Grand Trees.”
Bailey noted that 10 or 11 Grand Trees stand where the townhomes have been planned.
However, he continued, DHI would be planting 475 trees on the site, with a minimum diameter of 2 inches at breast height (DBH).
Moreover, Bailey said, the company would pay “at least $218,018” into a county fund to compensate for the loss of the 14 Grand Trees, as required by the County Code. If the commissioners agreed, he said, DHI would work with the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast, which is based in Osprey, for that money to be used to plant 547 trees as mitigation on the county’s Southeast Quad next to the Celery Fields Regional Stormwater Project, which is an international bird-watching destination.
He reminded the commissioners that the Foundation has been working with the Sarasota Audubon Society to “re-wild” that Quad after the commissioners in 2020 agreed to place a conservation easement over the Northeast, Southeast and Southwest Quads.
County staff worked with the Foundation on the easement before the Oct. 6, 2020 commission vote.
Bailey also pointed out that the original plans for Sub-Area G called for “very intense development”: 50,000 square feet of industrial space, 70,000 square feet of office space, 5,000 square feet of retail space, and 200 multi-family residential units.
‘It looks pretty darn intense’
“I think I probably would have been more impressed if you were saving 14 and only losing four [of the trees],” Commissioner Mark Smith told Bailey.
Smith added that he believed the locations of the trees “would help your development, because they would be between your development and the interstate. … I know you keep saying [the new plans are] less intense,” Smith continued but when I see your plan … it looks pretty darn intense [with] a lot of pavement and buildings.”
Bailey again pointed out the constraints of the site. “So this is a squeeze,” he added, to make the development possible. It was not feasible, Bailey said, to “slide everything east …”
Commissioner Tom Knight told Bailey, “I kind of echo Commissioner Smith a little bit about the trees.”
At one point, Commissioner Teresa Mast asked Bryan Beard, an environmental specialist with the county’s Environmental Protection Division, to come to the podium.
“I know that we’ve had some pretty significant storms,” she began, “and I know that we’ve had significant damage in this area.” She then asked Beard whether staff had checked on the trees within Sub-Area G in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricanes Helene and Milton, to determine whether any of the trees would need to be removed because of damage.
Beard told her staff had been on the site; none of the trees suffered damage.
Then Mast asked whether the Environmental Protection staff had had any discussions with the applicant’s team regarding plans to save Grand Trees 12, 14, 16 and 17.
(A report that Beard had prepared for the hearing showed that No. 12 has a diameter at breast height (DBH) of 57 inches; for No. 14, the DBH is 47 inches; for No. 16, it is 55 inches; and for No. 17, it is 37 inches.)
Would it be agreeable to the Environmental Protection staff, Mast continued, if those trees were saved and the others were removed?
Beard responded that that would be up to DHI.
“I’m asking staff,” Mast responded, noting that county Planner Ana Messina earlier had indicated that staff had tried to work with the applicant’s team on a redesign of the development to save more of the trees.
Beard told her it would be up to the DHI team to convince the commissioners that removing 14 of the 18 trees was necessary.
“OK,” Mast replied.
Then Bailey pointed out that if the 14 trees were left in place, “They would unreasonably prevent development of the property, as they pre-empt about a third of the overall acreage of the property.”
The design of the community was created to limit the footprint of the construction as much as possible, Bailey continued. The townhomes would be two stories, he said, while the multi-family apartments would be three stories.
Further, Bailey noted, the plans call for the minimum number of parking spaces to satisfy county requirements, though the team hopes to reduce that number even more through submission of what county Planning Division staff calls an “alternative parking plan.”
Bailey then asked that the commissioners allow Brett McQuaid of DHI Communities in Tampa to address them. (McQuaid’s LinkedIn account says he has been the vice president of D.R. Horton’s multifamily division since January 2022.)
McQuaid told the board members, “We worked with staff significantly over months and months and months to design this [community].” He added, “What we wanted to do is create a master plan here” that would fit into the concept of the Fruitville Initiative. “I felt like this fit well with the Fruitville Initiative and the overall area,” he said.
The goal, McQuaid continued, is to save “as many [of the Grand Trees] as we possibly can.”
He also explained that, in his experience, the regrading of a site for a development and the inclusion of the required stormwater system usually leads to the deaths of the remaining trees. Those in Sub-Area G site with the best chance of living, McQuaid added, are those on the perimeter.
“We’re going to be planting about a thousand trees in order to remove the 14 here,” he pointed out, referring to the new trees planned on the site and the mitigation efforts that Bailey had discussed.
“I do believe we’ve met the criteria for removing these trees,” Bailey told the board members after McQuaid completed his remarks.
Yet, Commissioner Smith referenced Planner Messina’s presentation, including her comments about saving the trees. “She did mention the option of perhaps building taller, so that you would lessen the [construction] footprint …”
“To me,” Smith continued, “Grand Trees are just that … an asset and not a hindrance.”
Bailey responded that he believes that three stories is the maximum height allowed for multi-family structures within the Fruitville Initiative.
However, after conferring with Philip DiMaria, a certified planner with Kimley-Horn, Bailey said that the townhomes, which were planned for two stories, could have three stories within the Fruitville Initiative, and the apartment buildings could be four stories high.
“So I’d like to see you do that,” Smith told Bailey.
Yet, McQuaid, who came back to the podium, said he believed most of the Grand Trees on the site are in the area where the townhomes are proposed. “The townhomes are designed for the demographic we’re seeing in this market,” he added, indicating that three stories would not work, as potential owners would object to the extra stairs.
“We really have spent months working through this plan,” McQuaid reiterated his earlier statement.
He also focused again on the potential that, if most of the trees were spared, they would suffer significant damage from the preparation of the site for construction. Impacts to the root systems would make it impossible for them to survive, he maintained.
Finally, McQuaid said that if the project did not contain the number of residential units planned, it would not be financially feasible.
Not a valid appeal
Following the exchanges, interim commission Chair Joe Neunder closed the public hearing and asked for a motion on whether his colleagues believed that amending the Fruitville Initiative to allow the development as proposed would be consistent with the county’s Comprehensive Plan — the first necessary step toward approval of the DHI plans.
Smith said he could move forward with that. “I do believe it’s consistent with the Comprehensive Plan for the most part,” he added.
Commissioner Ron Cutsinger seconded the motion, and it passed 5-0.
Smith also made the motion to approve the amendment to the ordinance that governs the development of the Fruitville Initiative, and Cutsinger seconded that one. It also passed 5-0.
However, when it came to a decision on the appeal of staff’s denial of the removal of the Grand Trees, Smith said, “I don’t consider the appeal to be valid,” because he believed that modifying the heights of the buildings would allow DHI to save more of the trees, “and these trees should be saved.”
Commissioner Mast seconded Smith’s motion to deny the appeal.
Attorney Bailey hurried back to the podium at that point, apologizing for interrupting the board action. He asked whether the commissioners would consider reopening the hearing so he could ask for a continuance.
Commissioner Neunder won his colleagues’ agreement to do so.
Again, Bailey talked of the fact that the project team had “been at this for over a year. I don’t know what the odds are of our being able to redesign [the development] to save some of the Grand Trees, but we would appreciate the opportunity to try.”
Mast reminded Bailey that she had tried to provide some guidance about saving the trees numbered 12, 14, 16 and 17. “From my perspective,” she added, “it’s much more doable. It’s much, much more thoughtful of our environment, our neighbors …”
Commissioner Cutsinger made the motion to accept the request for a continuance, and Mast seconded it. The motion also included a continuance of the hearing on a rezoning petition related to a 0.71-acre portion of the site, so it would conform to the zoning on the rest of the property. County Attorney Joshua Moye had pointed out that the rezoning was necessary to allow the development as it had been designed.
Cutsinger’s motion passed 5-0, as well.