New Land Zoning?

Its PDC Thursday. Today will be interesting.

The big talk will be about Cabot Farms and their desire to create a new land district call CCR... Cabot Citrus Farms Resort. If approved, this new land district will take the place of the current RUR zoning.

Keep in mind here that it was Cabot that was trying to buy part of the Withlacoochee State Forest from the state to expand their golf course property. I assume that would have been part of this project. This particular project will expand their project that was approved in Hernando County.

This gives you an idea on where it is. It is the southern end of the county.

More importantly, this shows you the current zoning of the land and surrounding parcels.

As you can see, this is zoned Rural Residential with Mobile Homes allowed. It is surrounded by Conservation (State Forest) to the west and Agriculture to the east. This is among the least intense usage in our county.

The allowed density in RUR zoning is 1 unit per 10 acres. It can go up to 1 unit per 5 acres if 50% of the development is open space.

This is what they are asking for.

This is the planned expansion into Citrus from the project that was approved in Hernando County that includes 980 homes.

They also show pretty conceptual pictures of what these homes/cottages will look like, but remember, the developers are not bound by those drawings.

This is the site plan overlay. The yellow area is residential. The brown is residential and non-residential. The green is recreation. Entrance will be gated.

As you can see, this includes 3 units per acre with 50% open space. That is significantly higher than the density currently allowed by right.

Further, this area is outside of the planned service area, which is why they are seeking a new land category.

Here is their narrative.

Notably, the project seeks a Floor Area Ratio of .7 which is higher than most other residential uses in the county. This is the ratio of a building’s total gross floor area to the size of the land it is built on.

This has a maximum FAR greater than high density residential zoning. It appears this project would allow multiple floors. Staff expresses concerns with this fitting into the urban area that this will exist in.

The project is 220 acres and with the ability to build up to 3 units per acre, that is up to 660 units that could be built here. Cabot is not providing an exact number.

Further, the project proposes to connect to Hernando County water and sewer facilities. Staff is concerned about this as it will require some type of interlocal agreement with Hernando County that has not yet been discussed. Citrus has capacity to handle this project, but cited the need for upgrades to the system to have the ability to service this project.

Staff has expressed major concerns with this project.

This is another example of a corporation buying property and trying to up-zone it beyond what they are allowed to do. This has been the MO in Citrus County the last few years and the BOCC has largely given approvals for these left and right.

I do not see how the PDC approves this project based on what is in here. Far exceeding the density of the area outside the PSA in the most rural area of the County is asking for chaos. Just because Hernando County approved their side of it does not mean Citrus needs to follow.