County Commission hearing date not yet scheduled
With Chair Colin Pember casting the tie-breaker, the Sarasota County Planning Commission voted 4-3 on Nov. 21 to recommend that the County Commission deny an application to construct a development with 170 single-family homes within close proximity to the Celery Fields.
The site planned for the community is known as the Smith Properties.
The decision came after a hearing that lasted nearly four hours within the Commission Chambers of the R.L. Anderson Administration Center in Venice, which was full; yet other members of the public were directed to “overflow” rooms in the facility.
Planning Commission member John LaCivita made the motion of denial on the basis of the proposed development’s incompatibility with the surrounding area, including the Celery Fields and neighborhoods with less residential density than the 3.5 units per acre proposed on 50.82 acres of agricultural property being used mostly for cattle grazing, as the project team members had pointed out.
LaCivita specifically cited county Future Land Use Policy 1.2.17, which county Planner Tana Ania Spencer had shown the board as part of her presentation. Her slide said, “As reflected in Sarasota County Zoning standards, potential incompatibilities between land uses due to the density, intensity, character, or type of use proposed, shall be mitigated through site and architectural design.”
Referencing county graphics in the county staff report, LaCivita pointed out, “The Smith Property does look like it’s part of the Celery Fields.”
“I think most people know … I’m a strong property rights supporter,” Pember said after his colleagues had offered their thoughts. He has been on the commission eight years, he noted. Nonetheless, he continued, “I just don’t think this is the right place for this project.”
His statement mirrored a comment that county resident Bill Zoller made during the hearing.
Master Gardeners have a mantra, Zoller told the commissioners: “Right plant, right place. … You plant where it’s proper to do it.” He added, “This project simply is the wrong thing in the wrong place.”
Planning Commissioner Justin Taylor acknowledged that he was against the proposal when he walked into the Chambers that afternoon. Fifty percent of the site where Texas-based homebuilder D.R. Horton plans to construct the 170 homes borders the Celery Fields, Taylor pointed out.
Referencing remarks during the hearing that the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology has designated the Celery Fields the No. 3 best bird-watching destination in Florida, Taylor added, “I think it would be great to be No. 1.”
The vast majority of the 43 speakers stressed their concerns that the development was not appropriate next to the Celery Fields. Since Sarasota County staff transformed the land nearly 30 years ago into a regional stormwater project, they pointed out, more than 250 bird species have been documented on the site, as reported by the county’s Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Department, Richard Frandsen of Bradenton said.
Helen Jelks King, a member of the Sarasota Audubon Society board of directors, explained that she coordinates the schedules of the naturalists who assist visitors on the Raymond Road Boardwalk, which, she noted, “is the No. 1 birding ‘hot spot’ of the entire Celery Fields property.”
She told the commissioners that photographers line up before dawn to find rare birds. Seven state-threatened species inhabit the Celery Fields, King continued, along with three that have federal designation as being threatened. The latter, she noted, are the crested caracara, the wood stork and the snail kite.
Harma Nyof of Sarasota, who said she has been a Sarasota Audubon docent for over a decade, pointed out, “I’ve witnessed many a visitor being moved after observing birds they’ve never seen before. We call these sightings ‘lifers.’ People travel great distances to add to their ‘lifer’ list.”
Having the 170 homes so close to the Celery Fields, Nyof continued, would result in disturbances that could lead to birds abandoning the Celery Fields for other destinations.
However, Planning Commissioner Adam Maio — the son of former two-term county Commissioner Alan Maio — voiced support for the project. “I’m very pro smart growth on projects,” he said. “We have to look at property rights,” he told his colleagues, in making any decision.
Planning Commissioner Andrew Stultz, who noted that he grew up on a farm in Indiana, talked of the lack of habitat on the Smith Properties. While he acknowledged that the land “floods like crazy,” as speakers also had documented with photographs and cell phone videos, Stultz emphasized his view that the applicant’s team “has done a really good job of over-engineering the project,” to prevent flooding on the site and any flooding impacts to surrounding properties.
Bill Conerly, a vice president and senior project manager with the Kimley-Horn consulting firm of Sarasota, who is a member of the D.R. Horton project team, answered a number of Stultz’s questions about the details for stormwater control in the new community.
Stultz also pointed to the plans for greater buffers around the development than county regulations require. Charles D. Bailey III of the Williams Parker law firm in Sarasota had noted, as well, that the developer would ensure that the buffers include species of trees that exist on the Celery Fields. The site, Stultz said, would look far better in 10 years, with mature vegetation.
The county Planning Division staff report on the application noted that among the larger trees would be the American elms, bald cypress, live oaks and slash pines, while red cedars and cabbage palms were on the list of the medium to small trees.
Planning Commissioner Donna Carter, who seconded LaCivita’s motion to recommend denial of the application, rounded out the four-person majority opposing the project. Planning Commissioner Cullen Morgan of Venice was part of the minority.
In response to a question that Carter posed, property owner Matthew Smith acknowledged that the members of the county’s Environmentally Sensitive Lands Oversight Committee (ESLOC) had received a nomination for the land to be preserved through the county’s voter-financed Land Acquisition and Management Program. However, he said, since D.R. Horton representatives had worked with him on a contract to buy the site if the development wins County Commission approval, he could not allow the land to be considered for preservation.
When she asked whether he would sell the property to the county if the County Commission denies the application, Smith told her he was not certain he wanted to give her an answer.
Moreover, in regard to comments that one of the speakers had made, Smith said that his in-laws “never had any intention of selling” the land to the county in the 1990s, when county staff was working on the purchase of the parcels that would become the Celery Fields. “Just developers kept approaching us,” Smith added.
Commissioners Emmalee Legler and Jordan Keller were absent from the meeting.
In response to a Sarasota News Leader question, Genevieve Judge, county public information and community outreach manager, wrote in a Nov 26 email, “The application has not been scheduled for the [County Commission] at this time. However,” she added, “I can tell you it’ll be after the first of the year because the December [County Commission] agendas are already in the works.”
The proposal
Williams Parker attorney Bailey explained to the commissioners that Matthew Smith’s in-laws bought the land in 1963. Other than the grazing livestock, Bailey continued, the site has two houses, including Smith’s. One Grand Tree stands on the southern boundary, Bailey added.
“We’re not here to develop the Celery Fields,” Bailey stressed.
Moreover, he noted, the property is within the county’s Urban Service Boundary, meaning that it already has access to county infrastructure such as water and sewer lines.
Further, he pointed out that the Future Land Use designation of Smith Properties is Moderate Density Residential, which means it could have up to 4.99 homes per acre if it were rezoned — as requested — to Residential Single-Family-2/Planned Unit Development (RSF-2/PUD).
The current zoning is Open Use rural, which allows one dwelling unit per acre, Planner Spencer told the commissioners.
Both Bailey and Spencer noted that two neighboring developments — Meadow Walk and Otter Creek Estates — also are zoned RSF-2. Others nearby — Shadowood, Shadow Oaks and Sylvan Lea — do have lower density, Spencer added, while Deerfield is zoned RSF-3, which has density of 4.5 units per acre.
“This is infill development,” Bailey pointed out to the board, “which is very difficult, because usually you’re the last piece of the puzzle, and there’s development around you.”
“We did not take this very lightly when we first got the assignment [to work on the project],” another project team member — Kelley Klepper, a vice president and senior planner with Kimley-Horn — told the commissioners.
Klepper also addressed the planned buffers. The county’s requirement is for 15 feet on two sections of the community perimeter, he said, and 50 feet on the third. “We’re proposing a 60-foot buffer along all of our perimeters,” he added especially along Raymond Road, which is to the north of the site.
Further, he noted the county canals that border the property and the plans for a large stormwater pond in the center of the community.
The data box included with the Binding Development Concept Plan for the project says that the residences would comprise 26.62 acres, while open space would account for the remaining 24.2 acres. Klepper stressed that the latter figure represents over 40% of the development.
Then, referencing the county’s stormwater stipulations for new communities, Klepper said that the design for the D.R. Horton project would allow the site to be able to handle 11.8 inches of rain in 24 hours.
(Another speaker, Nancy Simpson — who identified herself as a certified floodplain manager — noted that nearly 60% of the Smith Properties land is within a floodplain. What happens, she asked, when rainfall exceeded 11.8 inches in 24 hours? “People are still reeling from [Hurricanes] Helene and Milton,” she added.
In late August, during a discussion of the flooding produced by Tropical Storm Debby, Spencer Anderson, director of the county’s Public Works Department, explained to the County Commission that any team involved in new development has to use the county’s stormwater model to demonstrate that the construction could handle a 1% annual chance of 10 inches of rain in 24 hours.
A day before Anderson made his presentation, Rich Collins, director of the county’s Emergency Services Department, used graphics and a video to show that Tropical Storm Debby had dumped more than 18 inches of rain on part of the county over 36 hours. That was far more than the National Weather Service had predicted, Collins emphasized.
Conerly, the project team member who discussed the stormwater engineering for the Smith Properties proposal, told the Planning Commission, “We firmly acknowledge that [the site] floods … in storm events. “When we have a storm event like Debby,” he added, “the engineers aren’t surprised that it floods.”
Yet, he stressed, “Our obligation [under county regulations] is to provide no adverse impact [on] the neighbors.”
When Commissioner Stultz said he assumed that the owners of the new homes would have to purchase flood insurance, Conerly replied that that would not be the case. The stormwater plans for the site would make certain the homes were out of the floodplain, Conerly added.
In response to a question from Chair Pember, Andrew Pluta, another Kimley-Horn engineer on the project team, said about 6 feet of fill dirt would be needed to build up the homesites.
Pember then questioned the effect that extra height would have on light pollution for the surrounding areas, even though one of the stipulations that the project team had provided was a plan to promote a “dark sky” effect.
Another speaker during the hearing — Robert Schroeder — also talked about neighboring residents’ concerns about the flooding on the Smith Properties site after the early August storm. “Debby’s gone,” he said. “We shouldn’t have to worry for another 100 years.”
“With the flooding and the hurricanes getting stronger,” Steven Spak, said, “you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”
Miles Toder, an urban planner, talked of walking through the Celery Fields after Hurricanes Helene and Milton. “I saw the damage that was done,” he added. “Most of [the Celery Fields] was underwater,” Toder said. “Maybe Mother Nature didn’t intend for us to build 170 units in that particular location.”