Hi Hat hearing to be postponed after procedural errors were identified by a citizen

A Public Hearing for a giant development in North Sarasota that had been scheduled for March 23, 2021, will be postponed after several rather glaring errors in the procedures used to publish the hearing and to allow for public participation were spotted by a former county attorney.

East Sarasota attorney Susan Schoettle-Gumm wrote to Jim Turner, the land use lawyer and family member of the owners of Hi Hat Ranch, citing certain violations of required procedures. Turner soon replied that he would request that the hearing be postponed in order to address the issues. 

One concern was the amount of time allowed for public awareness. Hi Hat Ranch is a complex project involving 12,000 acres and perhaps 30 years of developmental actions. Citizens were surprised when they saw they had been given just four days - from Friday afternoon, March 19, to noon on Monday, March 22, to receive, read and digest, and formally comment and testify. Elsewhere counties typically provide necessary documents two or more weeks in advance of public hearings.  

The errors included four violations of county requirements:

1. Noticing the proposed amendment as both a privately initiated amendment and a public initiated amendment in both the legal notice and the postcard. 

2. The Hearing has to be within 60 days of the Planning Commission's decision (the PC is Sarasota's Land Planning Agency) and today, March 23, is the 61st day.

3. The staff report and supporting documents had to be made available to the public two Fridays before the hearing. on the proposed development  The County only made them available on Friday, March 19 -- 5 days before the scheduled hearing.

4. The hearing Agenda listed two items, but only allowed one opportunity for Public input.

The exchange between Schoettle-Gumm and Turner was cordial. After receiving her email, Turner replied: 

While I believe most of the procedural issues you have raised are not fatal to the process , I have made the decision to postpone the Board hearing scheduled for tomorrow to ensure these issues are addressed. We will appear before the Board at the scheduled time, explain the situation and then reschedule.

A full copy of Schoettle's letter is here, and an image of the key points is below.

March 22 letter from Schoettle-Gumm to Jim Turner

Citizens who have followed or participated in many public hearings have suggested that the "public" component of Public Hearings has diminished. Citizens often prepare detailed analyses and are allowed 5 minutes - sometimes just 3 minutes - to present their findings. 

Bending requirements such as merging two distinct matters into a single opportunity for public comment could ignore significant issues and relevant data."Another example of how this County cares nothing about following the rules—breaking several, not just one," was one longtime activist's comment.

More on the Hi Hat Proposed Development here and here.

UPDATE: Four housing tracts will overrun east Sarasota County without a public long range plan

Updated as of July 24, 2018:

If you live in Sarasota east of the Interstate, or if you like to experience the country roads of rural Florida, prepare for the shock of large-scale development. Several super-sized housing tracts are coming to East Sarasota. Four projects alone will add nearly 28,000 housing units on 20,705 acres.

Major developable swaths of east Sarasota County are either already underway or set to be approved before the inevitable next crash in the Sunshine State's housing cycle.

Sarasota County Map of developments to the East of I-75, north of Palmer Boulevard 

One of the four largest, Lakewood Ranch (LWR), ranks #5 among the "fastest growing suburbs in the US":

Sprawl: Fastest burbs in the US: LWR = #5

The four largest are Waterside at Lakewood Ranch (Rex Jensen), Hi Hat (Turner), LT Ranch (Turner) and Grand Lakes (Pat Neal). Stretching from University down to 681 near Venice in East Sarasota, these ambitious projects will replace East Sarasota's rural ranchlands and open space with huge tracts of housing.

And more gated housing projects are coming, including Lindvest, Lakepark Estates, Worthington, Palmer Place, Sylvan Lea, Hidden Creek, Rivo Lakes and more.

While quickly granting concessions to private developers, Sarasota County's elected Board displays no evident awareness of its civic responsibility to gauge cumulative impacts, nor, as the public steward of the land, to integrate these impacts within a larger vision of intrinsic tradition and commitment to public uses. One looks in vain for a discussion of bringing greenways or waterways into alignment to create walking paths, wildlife corridors, kayakable sloughs and riding trails that could offer the people of Sarasota public recreation North to South, and East to West.

During a public discussion of a County proposal to reduce open space requirements for developers, one resident put it this way: "If we make changes like this, it changes the character of Sarasota County that was the reason many of us came here."

Here's a brief overview of the four largest developments that are either underway or whose plans have received approval:

Rex Jensen's Waterside at Lakewood Ranch

It’s the first project coming to fruition in Schroeder-Manatee Ranch’s Waterside at Lakewood Ranch, a 5,144-home, 5,500-acre development in Sarasota County set around a series of seven large lakes left over from SMR’s aggregate mining operations. 

The Waterside project generally runs from Interstate 75 to east of Lorraine Road and between University Parkway and Fruitville Road. It is located south of the Sarasota Polo Club and the Lakewood Ranch Corporate Park.

"Waterside"

"Waterside" will add 5,144 units, 5,500 acres

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Turner Family: Hi Hat Ranch 

Stretching from Fruitville Road to Clark Road, this 10,000-acre mega-development of a former ranch will add an estimated 12,000 homes. 

Hearing July 11, 9 a.m. County Commission Chambers.

UPDATE: Board Action: Hi Hat Petition Approved July 11.

Add: 12,000-13,000 units, 10,000 acres

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Turner Family: LT Ranch

This former ranch is approved and underway. It will start with 3,450 units.

LT Ranch

". . . the 1,725-acre property owned by the Turner family will break ground in the “2050 South Village” mixed-use development plan for the largely rural stretch leading out to the Myakka River State Park. 

"The massive project includes up to 3,450 residential units throughout the neighborhoods, up to 300,000 square feet of commercial space at the corner of Clark Road and Bee Ridge Extension, and a host of environmental and road improvements throughout the area, according to the plans." Herald Tribune 11.9.2016

UPDATE: Apparently this wasn't "massive" enough, because the Sarasota County Board in 2014 deviated from the Comp Plan to allow a more ambitious development:

Property owners planning to add a village on 4,672 acres near Clark Road and Interstate 75 got a lot more leeway Wednesday on how and when they build. 

County commissioners decided to amend the county’s 2050 growth plan to allow the owners, 3H Ranch LLC and LT Partners LLLP, to create 9,344 homes on the land, roughly 5,500 to 6,300 more than the guidelines permit. Herald Tribune 3.5.2014

        Update June 2024: Pat Neal's 3H Ranch proposal plans to construct 6,576 units. 

Skye Ranch + 3H Ranch together will add some 10,026 units on 4,672 acres.

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West of LT Ranch, Pat Neal's "Grand Lakes" proposes to put 1,000 homes on 533 acres south of Clark Road at Ibis. The number of Pat Neal dwellings all told in Sarasota County will soon approach 10,000 units.

Hearing continued to July 11, 1:30 pm at Commission Chambers.

UPDATE: Board Action: Neal's Grand Lakes approved despite one-road access* was approved. The action raised a potential public safety issue for this giant cul de sac -- an issue acknowledged, but not addressed, by the Commissioners. Neighbors are considering options for an appeal, and say the Board ruling could open the way to sprawl across East Sarasota County.

See also the Letter to the Editor titled "Something is suspicious in Neal project approval":

All of the 300 current homeowners on Ibis were confined to their property earlier this year when a fire closed the road for hours. Now the county approves 1,100 additional homes, nearly a 400 percent increase, without fixing the egress issue on a dead-end street.

Grand Lakes

Add: 1,000 units, 533 acres

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If all these tracts are approved as planned, they'll add more than 27,600 units to 20,705 acres of a rural area sparsely connected by two-lane country roads, which has no commercial, park or recreational areas. More are on the drawing boards -- including the 450-acre Lindvest tract at Fruitville and Dog Kennel Road, with 900 units. Changes to the 2050 Comprehensive Plan have helped Lindvest progress. Is Sarasota County going to answer these private developments with a balancing vision of public uses -- open spaces, trails, adequate roads and and recreational areas available to all? 

Here's a December 2017 Sarasota County map of developments between Fruitville Road and University Parkway:

Developments in NE Sarasota County: Source: Sarasota County

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It's time to ask our elected officials: What are you thinking? Are you even thinking? What is this Board, as our representative, doing in response to this appetite for rampant growth? 

Here, for example, is a map of East County, with athletic fields open to the public. For those living east of the highway, one must drive 9-10 miles to the west or south.

Will our elected commissioners address the need for public planning and adjust impact fees to prepare for the coming demand for roads, trails, amenities, commerce, arts and recreation, or will they abdicate responsible governance, do nothing, and have us all go hang?

*Sarasota News Leader story made available through kind permission of the publisher.

FPL: Three current options for power lines

(Eds. note: Details about the comparative quantities of residential housing on each of the three main roadways for the power line options have been clarified and updated.)

This is quick summary of the March 26th meeting of FPL reps with the Bee Ridge neighborhoods at Laurel Oak regarding possible routes for new powerlines. For more on the plan, click here.

Each of the three possible routes would connect the Howard substation at Proctor by I-75 with the Bobwhite station at Lorraine Rd. on East Fruitville Rd. The project is deemed necessary to provide for present capacity in the area. Future construction, such as LT Ranch and Hi Hat Ranch, ultimately will add over 20,000 homes south of Clark Rd. and east of the Bee Ridge Extension, and will require further power installations at some point in the future, FPL spokesmen said.

Uwe Hinrichs chair of the Bee Ridge Neighborhoods Committee, opened the discussion by noting that representatives of more than a dozen communities had worked with Sarasota County for 15 years on the improvements to east Bee Ridge Rd. - widening, roundabouts, and low-impact landscaping were among the results that transformed East Bee Ridge into a quality thoroughfare. Hinrichs and others noted that this would be an unfortunate time to site tall power lines along Bee Ridge Rd.

Although FPL didn't ask for a show of hands or voice vote on which of three routes (shown below) is preferred, one man asked those who oppose siting the power line along Bee Ridge Rd. to raise their hands.

Pretty much every hand in the room went up.

The image below shows the three routes, but the Bee Ridge route shows two options at the right - east from Bee Ridge Extension. The FPL reps said the first choice had been for the route east of the extension to go north past Artistry, but after meeting with an unidentified advisory council made up of businesses, nonprofits, and residents (they declined to provide names of their council advisers), FPL decided to prefer the south option, going south of Rothenbach park, north of Misty Creek.

Lines will be 80-130 feet high

A woman from Aberdeen Pines noted that her research on Google Earth showed that the longest "footprint" for the power lines would be along the communities of Bee Ridge -- approximately 13,000 feet. On Clark, they would run by neighborhoods for 7,000 feet, and on Fruitville for 1,500 feet (or a little more if you count Sun 'n Fun).

To a question about the impact of tall power lines on property values, an FPL rep said that FPL studies show that the impact on the market for home sales and the values of homes was often "insignificant," eliciting a strong skeptical guffaw from the crowd.

Power lines typically might disrupt AM radio, but do not affect cellular service or FM transmissions, according to Daniel Hronec, an FPL engineer.

The ultimate decision on where the route goes is up to FPL and is not subject to higher approval. The company will decide by mid-year, said Rae Dowling, FPL manager for this area. More background here.