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Land-use proposal warrants close study
A Times Editorial
Published December 12, 2007
Brooksville planners are weighing yet another proposal to amend the city's comprehensive growth management plan to reclassify rural land as residential. The latest request involves 456 acres on the city's southeastern border and adjacent to the housing developments of Southern Hills Plantation and Cascades.
There is room for reasonable debate about whether there is a need to change the comprehensive plan to accommodate more residential development, especially when the housing market is in such a slump and there are plenty of housing options for those who wish to buy or build. That debate should be preceded by the due diligence of city planners and the City Council.
However, there should be no question that if the council eventually decides to forward the amended plan to the Department of Community Affairs, that it do so with a recommendation that the state evaluate it as a development of regional impact.
This parcel is but one part of a larger and similar land use on the city's southern border. LandMar Group LLC developed Southern Hills Plantation, which was approved for 999 units. The company that now is requesting the comprehensive plan amendment, Brooksville East Developers, is a subsidiary of LandMar. Landowner Derrill McAteer is the owner of the 456 acres on which Brooksville East wants permission to build another 999 homes.
In addition, those properties lie adjacent to Cascades, which LandMar sold to developer Levitt and Sons, a company that filed for bankruptcy last month with only 56 building permits issued for its community, which was scaled back from 925 lots to about 400.
All these developments fall below the 999-unit threshold that triggers a more meticulous review by the state and a regional planning agency: the designation as a development of regional impact. But it is manipulative and not in the public's interest to approach these projects in piecemeal fashion.
It is the council's responsibility to recognize that exploitation of land-use law and to force the developers to undergo greater scrutiny by the state. In addition, because the collector road that will carry the traffic from these developments, Powell Road east of U.S. 41, belong to county government, the Hernando County Commission should use its influence to persuade the City Council to treat this proposed comprehensive plan amendment as one element of a DRI in disguise.
The developer, which submitted its proposal for the amendment in October, has implored the council to move quickly because he fears the outcome of a 2008 ballot referendum, Hometown Democracy, which would put some of these land-use decisions in the voters' hands. That plea for fast-tracking the request is understandable, but should be of absolutely no concern to planners and the council. Their job is to make sure this proposal is studied thoroughly - and in the appropriate context of overall size and impact on the infrastructure - no matter how long it takes.
[Last modified December 11, 2007, 20:47:14]
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