After years of anticipation, altered deadlines, studies, surveys, proposals and delays, the public finally got a glimpse at what was in store for the North Park Isle Planned Development District.
During the Nov. 23 city commission meeting, a full presentation was shared on the detailed plans for the North Park Isle Planned Development District, including total acreage, total residential units, lot width, access points and more.
This was the follow-up to a commission meeting on Feb. 24 where smaller lots and some of the other proposed changes were examined. The city held a special commission workshop on Aug. 10 regarding smaller lots and the applicant addressed those concerns before bringing it back to the commission last week.
“I’m voting for this tonight and we’ve been working on this a long time,” Mayor Rick Lott said. “We’ve had some very hard meetings where we were going, ‘We will do this, we won’t do that’ and I just want to recognize that you never get 100 percent of what you want. I can tell you that this is very close. This is a great example of how you have listened to us and you’ve gone back to the paths and the parks and the amount of open space being at 40 percent, not many communities are built that have 40 percent of space like that. I counted the roads and there’s only homes on eight roads that will not be on water, so the majority of people will have water in their backyards so they’ll have that and not a neighbor in the backyard. I like the two community centers, I like the signage, I like the buffering, I like that we got away from just shrubs to actual walls that border between the roads and communities. So there’s a lot of things I like.”
The evening came after a lot of back and forth between the city and the developer. Some of the modifications the applicant added to their proposed items were:
-Reduced the total residential units from 3,308 to 2,500 [2,250 single-family + 250 townhomes]
-Added a table to show size and number of lots within Village areas
-Provided hatched area to the north at potential access location to note “no lots proposed”
-Added architectural feature requirements
-Added enhanced landscape buffer detail
-Added a note to limit 40-foot-wide lots to 30% of 2,250 single-family units, a maximum of 675 lots
North Park Isle now encompasses 694.8 acres. The project was first approved by commissioners in 2006, then modified in 2016 and again in 2018. The PD district was approved as a mixed-use residential development allowing maximums of 1,100 single-family lots and 250 multi-family lots. Construction plans for Phase 1A and 1B were approved by staff on Jan 29.
Last week, the applicant approached the commissioners for permission to increase the total acreage from 460.19 to 694.8 acres, increase the total residential units from 1,350 to 2,500, 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, limit the number of 40-foot-wide lots to 30 percent of the proposed single-family lots, a maximum 675 40-foot-wide lots, decrease the overall open space acreage and percentage, add additional access points onto Wilder Road, add detail to the northern portion of the site to provide a hatched area to show that no units are to be built in that area, add architectural feature requirements, add enhanced landscape buffer details and change the name of the district from North Park Isles Planned Development District to North Park Isle Planned Development District.
The revised PD continues to be mixed-use residential and the majority of the site will be allocated toward single-family with a small portion in the southeast corner being townhomes. Within the single-family portion of the site, the proposed lot sizes range from 4,400 to 7,700 square feet. There will also be useable open space via lakes that can be used for fishing, canoeing and kayaking, nature trails and pocket parks.
Lott and Commissioner Bill Dodson both expressed they were not thrilled with some of the lot sizes, but Lott added that the developer was listening to them and worked toward a compromise. He added that this was the first development with more than 2,000 homes the city has seen since the creation of Walden Lake. He said this project set the “bar and the tone” for the other communities the city will build in that area.
Dodson later told the Observer he was concerned that “with 40-foot lots you were having to deal with the reality that if a young family has children, they will play wherever they have room. Which means that if they are playing ball in the front yard and it gets away from them they will inevitably chase after it, even if that means they’re running into the streets.”
While Dodson said the applicant did listen to many of the city’s concerns, he does not feel the commissioners’ worries regarding lot sizes were addressed. He said he thought they were heard “loud and clear,” but after Monday’s meeting it became evident that while the developer changed many of its proposals, the lot size still did not make sense for such a groundbreaking development. Dodson said he wanted to “set the bar higher” and focus on quality over quantity.
On the 694.8-acre site there is 174.4 acres of wetlands, which are part of 338.7 acres located within the 100-year floodplain. According to the report, the applicant “will be subject to all requirements of Hillsborough County Environmental Protection Commission (EPC), the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD), and the Plant City Engineering Department” if they wish do do any development impacting that area.
Commissioners voted 4 to 1 to approve the district, with Dodson dissenting, and now that it was approved NPI can move toward the rest of the permitting process. There is still a few design elements left to nail down, but for the most part the overall picture is complete.
For a full breakdown of all of the details you can watch the presentation by streaming the commission meeting on the City of Plant City Government’s YouTube page.