Coastal
development hearing draws islanders
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.”