A number of Boca Grande residents attended the June 24 Charlotte County Commission hearing to speak both for and against proposed amendments to the county’s planned coastal development ordinance. Discussions were continued to July 8, however, after the community group that was debating the issue came to a surprise consensus just minutes after the meeting came to order.

The amendment specifies that all road setbacks will be restored to 20 feet, and that while developers may build above the current 35-foot height restriction, they must compensate each square foot of growth with a comparable amount of green space.

In addition, any large project must be governed and accepted by commissioners in individual modification requests.

“We can always throw the bums out - it’s an election year.”
- Lynne Seibert

The amendment also includes the fact that no modifications will be made to the ordinance in reference to barrier islands, any Charlotte County keys or the Manasota Key Overlay District. On Friday, June 20, a version of the ordinance revision governing high-rise buildings was posted on the Charlotte County commissioner’s website that many who attended the meeting disagreed with.

Misty Nabers, the executive director of the Gasparilla Island Conservation and Improvement Association who attended Tuesday’s meeting, said that her interpretation of Friday’s posting was “disturbing.”

“Revisions had been made that allowed additional height up to 65 feet while removing the few protections that were in place for the coastal areas when it went before the BCC on June 10,” Nabers said. “The new version of the code was also extremely confusing making it nearly impossible to determine what future projects would be allowed regarding height, open space, and setbacks.”

The revisions had so many up in arms Tuesday morning that many of the people involved in the public workshops on the matter got together in the hallway outside commission chambers and rallied to find common ground. It worked.

Led by Percy Angelo, a Democratic candidate for the Charlotte County Commission, the group approached the podium en masse to express why the newest amendment seemed to please both sides of the issue. Angelo has been endorsed by several island residents, including Reynolds Guyer who created a non-profit corporation called 3ch and distributed literature to many island residents on Angelo’s beliefs regarding this issue.

“The outcome seems to be a true compromise on both sides, which means that no one is totally happy,” Nabers said. “However, representatives from both sides feel the outcome of the meeting is a fair document that allows some flexibility in height, while assuring a genuine trade off of height for open space and ample opportunities for public input on every modification to every proposed project.”

Lynne Seibert, the chairman of the Boca Grande Community Panel, was also at the meeting and supported the new documentation, at least as much as she could.

“I’m very much against any revision to the height restrictions,” she said. “It’s the best of the two evils. This will ensure more open space. The only problem is, the old ordinance wasn’t killed so they will both be brought up on July 8, and it could go either way. The real problem in my mind is that one of the things that held density down by the causeway was the zoning envelope. The height restriction was holding down some of the over-platted density we have in Cape Haze, and it’s going to mean terrible problems for us if this growth occurs. Most of the property that would be using the height variance is clustered around our causeway.”

Seibert also said that commissioners aren’t paying attention to road impacts from added density, and that even though she had provided documentation to them in the form of the panel’s traffic study, she felt she had received little acknowledgement of that fact.

“There are no new projects slated for these roads until 2030,” she said. “County Road 771 is already failing at the intersection of 776, and the recent traffic study revealed that the intersection of Placida Road and Rotonda Boulevard is already at a Level of Service D. Added up, with current and new traffic impacts of the new projects, they are now exceeding their level of service. Commissioners are being very short-sighted about this and they are making a big mistake that will forever change the look of this area.”