May 19th meeting has been postponed!
LPN cancellation notice
LPS cancellation notice
Last night was a very interesting meeting which was attended by roughly 300+ people.
There was confusion over the agenda for the meeting as many people thought it was about traffic but Orange County had planned to discuss the actual text amendment that the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) will vote on on July 28th. Some people were very upset traffic was not the topic.
Dwight Saathoff
Orange County staff began the meeting and then turned it over to Dwight Saathoff from “The Grow”. Mr. Saathoff went through a presentation on the development and then answered questions. The tone of the meeting started with the first speaker who was very vocal and upset that the meeting was not to discuss traffic. As a parade of residents lined up at the microphone most of the questions revolved around traffic and how it would be fixed. This lasted for quite some time with Mr. Saathoff offering some answers but mostly deferring to Orange County. Mr. Saathoff did say the density of the development would be around 2,200 units, down from 2,900 units.
After this presentation, Sean Froelich from “Sustany” did a presentation on that property which did not last too long and again, lines of residents fromed at the microphone to ask questions mostly about traffic.
Renzo Nastasi, Manager of Transportation Planning Division
Due to the overwhelming number of questions about traffic, some time at the end was devoted to traffic with Renzo Nastasi from Orange County answering the questions. Near the end of the meeting he made a comment that most likely the next meeting will center around traffic. In addition to traffic, the plan for the next meeting is to wrap up the meeetings so Orange County staff can gather their notes and prepare a document for the Local Planning Agency (LPA) and the BCC to review and vote to approve or deny the text amendment.
It is very important to keep the target in the front of our minds. This vote is not about approving the developments and the concepts you saw at the meeting. It is about approving a re-zoning change to the Comprehensive Plan that will allow these developments to be built at a higher density than is currently allowed.
My concern from the meeting last night was not about traffic. We will get into that at the next meeting. It was more about the consistency between what the developers are telling us their density will be and what the text amendment allows. If you listened closely to Mr. Saathoff he talked about Transect (T1, T2, T3 and T4) But he spoke of them as “T2 South” and his T2 was different from the text amendment T2 in that it was less dense. These need to come together as one. If the density that Mr. Saathoff is asking for in T2 is 3 units per acre but the text amendment says 5 units per acre, there is a disparity that needs to be fixed. The text amendment should say T2 is 3 units per acre and the maximum allowable number of units on the property is 2,200.
I will express this concern to Commissioner Edwards and the staff through an email.
I have heard that there will most likely not be a meeting next week and will post as soon as it is official but my educated guess is there will be no meeting.