North Park Isle is one step closer to becoming a reality after the developer agreed to take a continuance, clarify its planned district and address the concerns commissioners raised during Monday night’s meeting.
The room was packed. Approximately a quarter of those in attendance were patiently waiting to learn about the NPI presentation. When the time finally came, however, the developer didn’t get past the first slide of his presentation.
“It just seems incredible that we are even considering this,” Commissioner Bill Dodson said. “So I don’t have any desire at all, whatsoever, to approve a plan that calls for 40-foot lots and I will continue that position because for me it’s a question of being entrusted with a community and we are required to provide a quality product, not something we will live to regret. The quantity required in this proposal far outreaches the quality that we’re coming from.”
Prior to NPI taking the podium, Robyn Baker, senior planner for the City of Plant City, ran through a summary of what the potential modifications to the NPI Planned Development District entailed.
There were eight items that would potentially be altered following the vote that evening. The North Park Isles Planned Development District would be changed to North Park Isle Planned Development District — the ’s’ would be dropped. The district would increase the total acreage from 460.19 to 694.8 acres, which would in turn increase the total residential units from 1,350 to 3,308.
Because of the addition of so many new homes, the developer wanted to reduce the minimum lot width from 45 feet to 40 feet and reduce the minimum lot area from 4,950 square feet to 4,400 square feet.
The developer also wished to have commissioners agree to the increase of open space acreage, but also allow the decrease of overall open space percentage. They wanted to have the village detail that showed lot width and unit counts removed as well and add an another access point to the district from Wilder Road.
The traffic study by Hillsborough County called for the addition of two turn lanes into the district, which the developer would be responsible for adding, and one day further down the road the district would need to provide for a school site either within the district or nearby on an off-site location.
There were two red flags in Baker’s summary presentation that caused commissioners to hash out a variety of concerns from the dais. First, the question of reducing lot sizes from 45 feet to 40 feet is one that did not sit well with at least Dodson and Mayor Rick Lott. While Lott said it could be done well, it was something that caught him by surprise and he pushed for further explanation as to why that reduction was being presented.
Baker explained the city code didn’t currently have anything in it that could restrict staff from approving the development based off of the proposed reduced lot-size so, from a legal standpoint, staff had to analyze the project and say this technically could be approved according to the code. It was up to the commissioners to act as judges of the vision of the city to determine if the proposed plan aligned with where they wanted to see the city in 10, 20 or even 30 years.
The second — and far more alarming to the entire commission board — flag that arose that evening was verbiage in the ordinance that essentially would have ceded control of the future plans in the development from the city to the developer.
The developer presented a fraction of the preliminary plans for NPI and asked commissioners to look over and then approve that initial concept. However, if they had done so then essentially any say on the rest of the development would have been out of their hands.
“My number one issue is the unknown,” Lott said. “If we vote on this tonight, there is a lot of uncertainty about what can be and will be done in this development in the future. I don’t like that… What you’re hearing from us tonight is this development in our northeast master plan, which we’ve spent a lot of time getting to this point, this development will set the standard. So someone will build a little better or a little less, but I doubt they’ll go a whole lot better. When you look at the standard, I think that’s where it gets to the quality versus quantity. We need homes for people to live in, but it’s that quality issue that I’m concerned about. When I see homes that are 40 foot lots and the red flag where it is possibly unlimited, that all of the sudden strikes me as, ‘Wow, are we just going after quantity or are we really trying to build a quality project that sets the standard for the community we are very proud about?’”
The applicant was in the room and told commissioners they were listening and taking notes of all the concerns those at the dais held. They asked for a continuance until March 23 and promised they would come back with a more in-depth presentation so commissioners could see a full plan and decide from there what they thought about NPI.
“What it comes down to is they were looking to make these concept modifications without providing a lot of detail of what they wanted to do with them and that’s really what the whole conversation was, and I think it’s very positive on their part that they were willing to get up and say ‘Hey, we hear you and we will bring you back the details,’ and they just asked for the continuance,” City Manager Bill McDaniel said. “I think that reflects well on them as a developer that they were willing to do that and didn’t try to argue or debate it. They understood and I’m looking forward to getting that much more detailed view on what they plan to do with all of that land.”