Time for the Signs

I hope everyone is having a great week so far. I am just getting back from my conference in Nashville, so back to sharing information with you all. I am working on something that will be pretty big, so stay tuned for that. Hoping to get the final details of what I need this week. Waiting on public records is always fun.

Today, I am going back to my post from last week on my Facebook page.

I posted this simple graphic and detailed the businesses that are moving into the next phase of the construction on 486 next to Target. It went viral. Over 78 shares and 333 comments thus far.

It is clear... Most people do not like what they are seeing, at least the ones who participate in the conversation. It is not so much that they are anti-growth (although there is a lot of that)... it is more like they want "better" jobs and options. Retail jobs do not pay great wages and we continue to add retail jobs.

However, these companies spend millions of dollars each year on market research and they would not be moving here if they did not have demand for their businesses. This is not Field of Dreams where it was "If you build it they will come." Businesses cannot move into a new space and hope that people will come shop with them. That is not how this works.

I am working on an interview with the developer of this project, Cory Presnick. He grew up here in Citrus and graduated Citrus High School in 2000. He is now a principal with Corta Development that has been working on that intersection, as well as other projects in Citrus County. But he is NOT who came to the board originally for this project.

Look for that in a couple of weeks.

The reason I brought all this up to begin with was that they (Corta) are at the PDC today to discuss signage for the Sprouts and the Longhorn Steakhouse. They are asking the county to allow larger signs to be placed on their buildings than what is allowed under the LDC. The reason for the request is so they can be consistent with the branding these businesses use nationally and throughout Florida.

The application to change the master plan of the project will only change what is allowed to be on the buildings, NOT the monument signs that are allowed.

I won't go into the specifics of sign sizes, where they are going and all of that. There are several pages on the application that show the buildings and what they would look like with the new signage.

Here is what they are asking for:

Basically, for Longhorn, they want 303 square feet of signage. They are allowed 121 square feet. That is 150.4% more signage than allowed under the LDC.

For Sprouts, they want 464 square feet of signage. They are allowed 228 square feet. This is 103.5% more signage than allowed under LDC.

Pretty significant difference.

The idea with the LDC and the ordinance that was passed back in 2023 for this project was to create consistency across projects, particularly among this corridor. They wanted the buildings to be consistent with one another. Make sense.

But how did we get here?

As I mentioned in the Facebook post last week, commissioners debated this project quite a bit. Most of the conversation was around what the buildings would look like and the fencing surrounding it. Commissioners wanted an "upscale" look since this was the "Shoppes of Black Diamond" at the time. They were pitched a 86k sqft building that was proposed to have 3 or 4 tenants.

In the original plans presented to the board, this project also included 5 out parcels.

The commissioners talked about the outparcels and were concerned that they may be too small to allow for businesses to be there, so they changed the wording of the ordinance to allow "Up to 5 outparcels". This will allow the developer to have flexibility in its design.

There was also talk of not wanting this to look like SR200 in Ocala or Cortez Blvd (50) in Hernando County. They certainly did not envision a 3 store strip plaza being along the road frontage of this project... which is likely what we are getting.

How did we get here? Because commissioners did not fully understand what was happening. Remember back at a meeting in 2024, commissioners stated they were "hood-winked" by developers and they would be more cautious going forward? This is what they were talking about.

Developers came in for a PUD to allow them to build this. They wooed them with a bunch of things... got approval.. and then bailed on those things. Why? Because they were not bound by them. The only thing they were approving was the PUD and deviations, like parking. They were not approving the businesses, looks, etc.

Since this was up zoning from residential to commercial, the commissioners could have negotiated whatever they wanted to and tied those things to approval. If those were not agreed to, they could deny the project. A bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea. They failed to do that and fell in love with the future development and the potential tax revenue.

And here we are... another strip plaza. I bet if you asked them today, they will regret not making more conditions on these projects.... and there are A LOT more coming that have already been approved.

Stay tuned!

Many people have asked how these developments are related to one another. I will have a post tomorrow that outlines how all this works... get ready for mental gymnastics.

But it is interesting to see how developers create multiple LLCs to go through these processes... which make it difficult to really know who is running things. See you tomorrow!