Saturday, September 10, 2011

Growth management law gaining acceptance - Business First of Columbus:

http://www.i-amfaithweb.net/lordssppr.htm
Pelham hosted a Webinar June 12 with a numberfof municipalities, including the eight counties that coulcd be affected by the new law that woulcd move regulating transportation and othee concurrency issues from the statd to local officials. “It woulfd not be an understatement to say that a lot ofpeopld locally, both public and private, completely missedx the mark on what we thoughft this law said,” said Petet Aluotto, Hillsborough County’s planning Pelham “answered a lot of questions, but he also raised a few so we are revising our issue papee and revising our stance.
” That’s almost a complete reversakl for Hillsborough, one of the countiesd expected to meet the population threshold to take over projecte typically identified as developments of regional impact, or Those projects, because of their size and scope, must undergo extensivd review — which has historically cost time and In May, the voted unanimously to send a letterr to Gov. Charlie Crist urging he veto the But some of those strong feelings from elected officialse could have stemmed from misconceptions about what the growtj management lawwould do.
“Everybody thought this automaticalluy created a transportation concurrency exception area and thatit pre-emptecd our comprehensive plan,” Aluotto said. “But Pelhamj told us that only pertains tostate law. Locap concurrency rules in comp plans are still on the Hillsborough County has had more than 60 whileTampa — which also woulr likely qualify to control its growtn with a population density of nearlhy 3,000 per square mile — has had 24 With the new law, Hillsborough and Tampa would no longer need to depen d on the DCA to manage its large-scale Instead they would be able to exploree their own ways to mitigatse impacts on roads, not just in the area surroundingy the DRI but also in its whole “There is nothing that precludes the city or the countyy from imposing its own DRI said Robert Rhodes, a business law and real estate attorney with LLP in While the law was meant to remove some of the red tape slowinfg down larger developments, ! it will take more than Crist’s signature to reignite the construction industry.
“Some peoplwe want to call this an economic stimulusa bill that would take some burden off builderaand developers,” Rhodes said. “I think in some instances, it will do exactlyg that, longer term. But in the shorter we are dealing with some othet economic issues that are really affecting the building community that will not help out all that Workingtogether … maybe? One area the law still hasn’f fully addressed is how countiess and cities neighboring projects no longed regulated as DRIs can demand relief from transportationn impacts spilling over into theit jurisdictions.
For now, those disputesz would have to be handled by the regionaplanning councils, Rhodes said. “This is a very interesting shift anddirection we’re going, placing more responsibility as well as opportunities to find ways to come together and work issuex like this out,” he Pinellas County might not yet meet the 1 million-populatiohn threshold to be covered under S.B. 360, but it by far meetas density requirements wherenearly 3,300 peoplde live in a square mile, meaning it can handle its larget projects with minimal state oversight as well.
With little land Pinellas has noactive DRIs, but the new law will help it prepars for the possibility of future DRIs, said Assistantf County Administrator Elithia Stanfield. Stanfield is keepinvg an eye on Toytown, a 240-acre landfill site where developershave mixed-usew plans that could include millions of squarew feet of office and retail, as well as more than 2,00p0 homes. “By the time that project gets offthe ground, I’ m sure this growth management law will have been tweaked at leasft a few times, so we can worrg about it then,” she said.

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