Tuscany Agreement

The Tuscany Ranch agreement has been sent to me. It has been about 10 months since the hearing at the BOCC and the approval on a 3-2 vote back in July of 2025. You can read some of what I have written about it in the past here.

For those not familiar, this is a large housing project on 491 in Beverly Hills. This will include about 4,900 homes including apartments, townhomes, single family and so on. There is a potential for a life care center and a school. There will also be pretty significant commercial developments along 491, including a potential lagoon.

It was a long 6.5 hours, so I will not rehash the whole thing, but it was a pretty big deal. One thing that happened here that we do not typically see is the applicant negotiating on the fly regarding things they will include in the final agreement. We have not really seen that in past hearings... but all that did was muddy the water. Ask anyone what was agreed to and they likely have no clue.

Well, we now have the development agreement in place. This is what has been approved and agreed to.

A few notes.

The developer will do a shared Drainage Retention pond(s) along 491 to help with the expansion of the road. This will be shared responsibility with the county.

There is a lot of requirements for the irrigation systems, toilets and so on to require less water across the development. There is specific mention of what type of landscaping will be allowed. They must be drought tolerant.

There was some concern about the impact to schools. The developer stopped short of guaranteeing that there would be a school, but did say they would keep the school board up to date on the total number of homes being built to allow them to plan for future growth.

Roads.. How will this impact 491? Well the project is giving right of way for the expansion of 491 along its property as well as the expansion of the Hampshire intersection. The developer will be reimbursed for that right of way dedication. This will likely be impact fee credits.

Developer is to convey to the county money to pay for one lane of the expansion of 491. I am curious if this was factored into the 491 expansion plans to Deltona that were discussed a few months ago and would cost around $30 million or more if I recall correctly.

This is an interesting one. The county had started to do a signal warrant analysis prior to the Tuscany project. If this study shows the need to expand the Hampshire intersection (it does), then the county is on the hook for that. So tax payers will be paying to expand the intersection at Hampshire and NOT Tuscany.

At the issuance of the 1000th building permit, the developer will give the county the funds to build a 2 bay fire station. The county does not do 2 bay stations any longer, so this will become a 4 bay station in which the county pays half.

Developer has a right to build a 400 bed life care center if they desire to do so.

Part of the negotiations included talk of reducing how many apartment type buildings would be needed if they allowed an increase from 3 stories to 4. But there was no requirement to reduce the number of buildings, yet allows them to build to 4 stories.

The county is allowing up to 20 units per acre in some portions of the project.

Those are some of the highlights.

I am not sure this is the best deal that the county could have gotten. There was talk from some of the commissioners to try to get them to pay for the expansion of all of 491 in front of their project, but others did not want to go along with that. The commissioners held all the cards but failed to push for a better deal.

Instead, Tuscany gets a free signal and expansion of the Hampshire intersection...

They get taller buildings without having to give up floor area ratio, meaning they can have the same footprint they proposed, but the taller building allowance. There is a cap on the total number of apartment type uses, so that may come into play here...

But we do get a bit of a discount on the road expansion, so there is that.

Have a great day!