Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Zoning

Bank plan proposed where offices denied

By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published December 9, 2005

BRANDON - A developer for a proposed bank building will present his plan to the same County Commission that rejected a different proposal for the property in 2004.

The proposed 4,000-square-foot bank with drive-through windows would take up the southwest corner of Bryan Road and Bloomingdale Avenue. Owner Robert Sands tried last year to use the space for a 14,000-square-foot medical office park.

The County Commission turned him down, saying the project would intrude too far into a residential neighborhood to the south.

Sands will ask commissioners for the bank in January. Unlike the medical office, the bank does not require rezoning. Sands and Steven Allison, his representative, will ask for a minor modification in a planned development. Another bank is already doing business to the east.

Sands is arguing that by reducing the square footage of the proposal by about 71 percent and leaving the southern end out of the project's reach, he is addressing concerns commissioners expressed in 2004.

The case goes to the County Commission on Jan. 10. (PETITION 06-0226)

BRANDON: Matthew Diaz wants to get the house that his great-grandfather built rezoned from residential to commercial. Diaz bought the two-bedroom house at 710 N Parsons Ave. in May from his grandmother, who was getting tired of listening to the traffic.

"She said it was like a raceway out there," Diaz said.

The surrounding blocks are already home to an attorney's office, a church, an antique shop, a fitness center and numerous other offices.

"Parsons (Avenue) has become a great place to work, not live," Vanessa Diaz wrote in the zoning request she and husband, Matthew, filed.

Diaz's grandmother inherited the home from her father, said Diaz, who bought it for $123,000. The couple would like to lease the house to a business.

The grandmother moved to a quieter place. Diaz's zoning request goes to the County Commission on Jan. 24. (PETITION 06-0045)

LITHIA: When Shafiq Chaudhry applied for permits to replace gas pumps and a canopy at his Marathon station in Lithia, he got an unwelcome surprise: Only half of the property his family had been running for 20 years was actually zoned commercial.

The other half was residential. Chaudhry is asking the county to zone the 3 acres at 11211 Lithia Pinecrest Road commercial.

Charles Hunt, who helped prepare Chaudhry's rezoning application, said a gas station was built in 1965 on the property, where it operated for several years without a zoning designation. When county workers zoned the property in the early 1970s, they assigned a residential classification to half of it. The request goes to the County Commission on Jan. 24. (PETITION 06-0010)

When and where

Hearings of county zoning hearing masters and land use hearing officers, and land use meetings of the County Commission are held on the second floor of the County Center, 601 E Kennedy Blvd. All hearings before a zoning hearing master begin at 6 p.m. on Mondays or Tuesdays; commission meetings begin at 9 a.m. on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. Both are televised on government access channels. Land use hearing officer hearings, which are not televised, begin at 9 a.m. every third Friday. Basic information about each petition is available online at http://www.hillsboroughcounty.org/pgm/zoning For information, call 309-4739.

Andrew Meacham is a staff writer in the Brandon bureau of the St. Petersburg Times. He can be reached at 661-2431 or ameacham@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 8, 2005, 07:50:08]