CRA Looks At Land Use Change

The Community Redevelopment Agency voted Monday to take a couple of weeks and digest proposed land use changes for the downtown CRA district, a first step in submitting a major Comprehensive Plan Amendment to the Sebring City Council.

"The downtown is in need of progressive zoning that will attract growth in residential development as well as commercial," said CRA Executive Director Pete Pollard in his presentation.

The first step in restructuring the zoning in downtown is to ask the city council to submit a major amendment to the Comprehensive Plan, changing the future land use designation on any property within the district to mixed use, he said.

Most of the downtown is currently designated with a commercial land use, and that's not something that's attractive to developers.

"It restricts them," said Michael Joachim, owner of Michael Joachim Associates, a planning consultant. "It doesn't allow the flexibility to develop and redevelop the downtown because it restricts the type of use. In the standard commercial land uses second story residential is typically not allowed.

"We want to be flexible enough so that when someone comes to the city council and the community redevelopment agency, that they can present a mixed use flexible design that they still have to get approved by the city council."

Tracy Mullins is a certified urban planner with Michael Joachim Associates.

Land use and zoning are two different things, he said.

"Land use is the gross measure of the land," Mullins said Wednesday. "Everything in Florida has a land use designation and that land use is written up in the comprehensive plan for the city.

"Any changes in the land-use have to be approved by the Department of Community Affairs (DCA). On a broad picture, that determines if you can have residential, commercial, industrial or conservation."

Zoning is determined at the local level by a local ordinance, he said. And zoning has to agree with your land use.

"You can't have commercial zoning in a residential land use," he said. "One of the new things that's happening is creating a mixed use land use."

Amending the comprehensive plan would make it easier at a local level to define what kind of business can go in.

"This is to make it easier to allow more residential in the downtown," he said. "If you want to have an active downtown, you have to increase your residential to attract commercial."

Denser population centers attract business.

The DCA is cooperating with efforts to increase population density in downtown areas. The goal is to have "safe, walkable downtown areas" where people can access the services they need without having to drive long distances, he said.

What's interesting is that people are willing to walk the equivalent of two city blocks to in the hot sun to get from their cars to the front doors of some big box stores, (and then walk another block while inside) but they complain about parking a block away in a downtown environment, he said.

The advent of the big-box store not only has contributed to urban sprawl, but also to the movement of vast wealth and profits out of downtowns across the country, and out of the country.

"Local businesses keep your local money local, so your profits don't slide out of your community," he said.

Small businessmen have been the backbone of the community, serving on city councils, boards, the Kiwanis and other service organizations, he said.

"It diminishes the quality of the community to lose the small businesses to large or multi-national corporations," Mullins said.

This land-use change is a major step for economic development in the downtown, he said.

"Down the road this will benefit the community," he said. "New and existing businesses will be able to make the downtown more attractive to a developer."

Also, having to apply for land use amendments adds another level of costs to developing a project and this proposed comprehensive plan amendment if passed by city council and approved by the DCA would ease some of that.