Emily Schemper, Senior Director of Planning and Environmental Resources for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
An upcoming meeting will discuss a project in Tavernier.
Schemper said, “There’s a special meeting of the BOCC this Thursday, the 15th. That starts at 10am in Key Largo, but it’s also available by the Zoom webinar link. So this is a project it’s a site, the former CEMEX Concrete Plant in Tavernier. That’s around mile marker 92 and a half on the ocean side up in Tavernier. It’s just north of the historic district. It’s not within the historic district, but it’s just north of there. The site is currently zoned for a mixed use type of development, but more smaller scale commercial plus residential if wanted. So some sort of mix of commercial and affordable residential could be permitted on the site under its current zoning, the current community master plan, etc. But the proposal in front of the commissioners on Thursday is one of six applications that they would need to approve for this development to go forward. It’s being talked about as a Publix. We cannot approve specifically for a Publix, but it’s for a large footprint store.”
The proposal includes a 49,000 square foot store as well as 86 affordable housing units on the back portion of the property.
Schemper said, “The reason this needs board approval is because the code and comp plan currently require new development to get, it’s sort of like a ROGO allocation, but it’s for non residential, we call it NROGO. To get more non residential square footage permitted, you have to get an allocation out of our pool of square footage, similar to the residential building permits. There’s a cap on that of 10,000 square feet per building. So there was a deliberate policy decision made to only permit buildings of less than 10,000 square feet. This is obviously bigger. These are these are things like your grocery stores, Home Depot, Target, Walmart, those types of things. They can only get 10,000 square feet per building at this point. So the larger things are difficult to build. This is true. But that was a policy decision made years ago.”
The proposal is requesting a waiver of that cap.
Schemper explained, “One way to get past that cap is to create an overlay district in the code. So it does say in the code, if you create an overlay district like this, you can have a larger building. So they’re requesting this overlay district to get to 49,000 square feet. It goes along with then a map amendment that applies the overlay to the property. That application they’ve asked to hold off on the vote, but this one they want it voted on now. It’s important to note that the map amendment portion will require a four fifths vote of the Commission, a super majority. This text amendment just to establish the overlay does not. But the staff recommendation on this is that they continue the item until all of the applications associated with it can all be heard together as a package deal. We want to make sure everything is consistent. All of the details are worked out. If the board wants to move forward on it, then everything would be in place together. The community has expressed concerns about this store. We have also gotten some letters of support. But there is an organized group that is not in favor of this. The staff overall recommendation is actually denial. We do not feel that it’s consistent with a comprehensive plan. Tavernier has a very strong CommuniKeys Plan, we call it. It’s like the community master plan for that specific area. This particular CommuniKeys Plan is much more specific than many of the others up and down the Keys. It has design guidelines associated with it and it also has different areas laid out for what they call urban development, suburban development, ex-urban development, which is a little more rural. This property is not within the urban development area, which is where the larger, more intense growth is supposed to be located per that community master plan. Staff is not recommending approval. There are community members who are also not in favor of this. We have gotten some letters of support as well, though. We have not gotten a lot of comments regarding the affordable housing, people are generally supportive of the affordable housing units, again, it would be 86 units. However, currently, we do not have the ROGO building rights to give them. We don’t have 86 units available to give them. So it complicates it. If you want to approve the whole project, it would still be held up at this point by the permits available. So complicated.”
The meeting will be at the Murray Nelson Center in Key Largo at 10 a.m.
Schemper said, “This is the only item scheduled for that meeting, as far as I know, unless sometimes they have last minute items that pop up that just need a quick approval. But this Thursday should focus on this item only.”
Is this the first special meeting on this topic?
Schemper said, “So in order to get an amendment to our code approved, it has to go through a series of steps. So it was required to have a community meeting way back in the beginning after the application was submitted, a community meeting that was noticed publicly and to gather some comments. Then it goes to the Development Review Committee, which is also a meeting that’s open to the public. That’s more staff and internal staff, different agencies. So we have people from the state, we have the sheriff’s office, we have the fire, we have everyone sort of looped in on that to make sure everyone is on the same page and get everybody’s comments. Then it goes to a public hearing before the planning commission, both the DRC and the planning commission recommendations were denial on this. Then this was scheduled for the December be BOCC meeting, but some people may recall that the board at the beginning of the meeting, they voted to continue it. Then there was a recall of that vote later in the meeting and they then shifted gears a bit and scheduled this special meeting instead. So that’s sort of how we got here. But there is a process for the public meetings that’s laid out in our code and comp plan and is required before the board actually gets to the final vote on something.”
Could that area support a complex like that?
Schemper said, “That question is not completely my area of expertise, because Publix must think so. So in terms of their market analysis, they truly believe that it can be supported there. So I can’t necessarily argue for or against that. The comments we’ve been getting are more about a lot of comments about traffic. The site is on the outside of a curve. It’s a divided highway at that point. So people are concerned that there will be accidents. There’s no traffic light proposed at this point at that location. So traffic is definitely a concern. There are also people who just feel that it does not fit within the community character of that area of Tavernier and what the community’s vision is going forward as well. The Tavernier Community Master Plan is a bit more specific than some of the others in the Keys and they are trying to establish areas with a certain feel outside of the area that is designated for urban development. So that’s more like the Tavernier town shopping center where the current grocery store is, it’s a shopping center with multiple tenants, movie theater, it’s right next door to Mariners Hospital. That area currently does have an existing grocery store, I don’t know much about how the market works in terms of tenants coming and going, but this area is the suburban and the largest building in the suburban district currently is only 12,000 square feet. So this is much larger than any other building in that district already.”
If the plan doesn’t go forward, are there other plans for that site?
Schemper said, “I have not had any other inquiries. The zoning would allow quite a bit of commercial development, but it would be in smaller sized buildings. Whether it remains one site or split up, it could be smaller buildings, again, the affordable housing currently they’re proposing 86 units, I believe they could actually fit more. So there are different options. It’s in one of the zoning categories that does allow quite a few different uses. It would just be a matter of how they divide that up and move forward. But I have not gotten any other specific proposals for it.”
The regular meeting of the BOCC will be on February 21.
Schemper said, “Planning doesn’t have any huge items on that agenda. I do think the discussion about future building permit allocations will probably come up but in a more general sense of how are we going to move forward over the next six to eight months to gather public input, etc. The board passed a resolution to specifically request that the legislature not make a decision on units, this legislative session, which is over within a month. So we are putting together a plan for gathering public input, making sure we have a lot of public hearings available and engaging with the other jurisdictions in the Keys as well. So everyone can be on the same page when we do make a request to the legislature later on.”
For more information on all the upcoming meetings, click here: https://monroecounty-fl.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=1