Alachua County Planning Commission - Jul 15, 2026

yes no yeah you're good okay that's too bad okay welcome we're going to call the order and um approval of the agenda please i so moved second comments all in favor aye opposed um we have an item that says public comment but not for the any items on the agenda does anybody have any items that are not on our agenda okay then we are going to move forward into the uh the primary function here tonight c26000005 everly uh farm a large scale comprehensive um amendment it's a re do you want me to read this i can do that no okay good idea thank you mr chair good evening chris dawson principal planner for development services at alachua county growth management department and the first item and only item for you tonight is um c26000005 this is a large scale comprehensive plan amendment for the everly farmstead community mr chair this application includes really two parts it's a future land use map amendment which will change a portion of alachua county from rural agriculture to everly farmstead community that's approximately 996 acres about 820 of those are inside the hickory sink special area plan and about 176 acres are outside and the application would also create policies implementing the everly farmstead community as part of the hickory sink special area plan i did just want to talk about the hickory sink special area study briefly and that was adopted by the board of county commissioners accepted by the board of county commissioners in november 2023 that resolution included conditions phase related to phasing specifically the phase one uf golf development that you all saw in previous months identification of conservation areas and areas for potential future development and specific direction on protection of environmental resources within the special area study application z 26 000 0002 which was the uf gulf application which was adopted by the board of county commissioners in june 2026 established the hickory sink special area plan so in our comprehensive plan and the initial policies related to that um the current project um now the the hickory precinct special area study has really three distinct ownership components now um there's 580 acres 80 acres east of parker road and just south of oakmont those are owned by the uf golf the uf foundation that's the subject of the uf golf application that you've previously seen there's lands west of parker road that are owned by uf ifas and then lands south of the golf course property where the lee family retains ownership um this application also includes property outside the special area study um and just generally it's located south of oakmont west of hail plantation north of archer road and i think this next map will show you where that location is um so just for those of you who can't see it very well or it's um it's not always intuitive exactly what these lines mean um state road 24 archer road is kind of cutting diagonally across here parker road or southwest 122nd street um is located here just west of the red line hail plantation is right here that's the golf course that you can kind of see in green and then oakmont is just off the screen here to the north uf golf here so again this is about 996 acres in that general location and then an aerial of the project site the current future land use designation is rural agriculture as is almost everything surrounding except to the east where it's rural ag i mean it's low density and that is within the urban cluster there is some low density residential that's sort of a historic um one acre lot development to the south the proposed future land use designation would be the everly farmstead community and again that's a brand new future land use designation so the bocc approved a series of conditions with the special area study for future incorporation as as policies goals and objectives in the comprehensive plan or as conditions of an implementing zoning district potentially the present request is an application for properties both in and outside the hickory sink special area plan and staff are proposing policies that create the everly farmstead community future land use designation which would be applied to approximately that 996 acres so the special area planning process just as again a little bit of background for the hickory sink special area study the scope was approved by the board of county commissioners on june 9 2020 for that and that identified an area issues and process for conducting the special area study that study continued through november 2023 when the resolution was accepted or adopted by the board including conditions and that plan included stakeholder workshops um and a ton of field work on the property data and analysis to support um what came out of the special area study and then where we are now is the special area plan we're implementing um that uh the the findings of the special area study the conditions the recommendations and that's comprehensive plan amendments and rezonings um both um and there are separate neighborhood workshops and public hearings required for implementation of those um plan amendments so i just wanted to sort of show in the context of the hickory sink special area study where this lies so um there's property west of parker road the uf golf property and then again the area that's subject to the current application that's the everly farmstead community so as i mentioned mr chair there's really two parts to this application the first part is um a couple of map changes one is to change the future land use designation of the property that's subject to the application that's from rural agriculture which is one dwelling unit per five acres to everly farmstead community and the second change is to the adopted future land use map 17 to show this property in con in the context of the hickory sink special area plan so this is the map that was adopted um with c26 0002 or at least how it would how it appear if amended and again it's really intended to show that everly farmstead community as part of the hickory sink special area plan the second part mr chair is um proposed text amendments to the comprehensive plan and again the majority of these i would say the way they're set up is to implement that everly farmstead community future land use designation there are other policies um already adopted in the plan policies what 861 through 864 which would also apply to this property because of the way that that amendment was structured and then this amendment would include policies in 8.6.6 and those would all apply to the early farmstead community i wanted to just run through some of the conditions in the special area study that were accepted by the board and these are conditions that would apply to any application for a special area plan or an amendment to the comprehensive plan condition eight included the prioritization and protection of conservation management areas and the idea of clustering development as close as possible to the urban cluster if there were going to be urban development as part of the boundary of the special area study it required any application to address the requirements of policy 7.13.3 which is related to the expansion of the urban cluster and requirements that go along with that it required any development to be served by urban infrastructure and services so that includes things like potable water sanitary school sewer urban fire services schools all of the things that we would otherwise expect urban development to be served by this property would also have to be served by it required an analysis of the potable water and sanitary sewer facilities element policy 3.1.5 which relates to the extension of potable water and sanitary sewer outside of the urban cluster or into new areas it required transportation connections consistent with the urban mobility districts and that includes connectivity to surrounding development required the use of urban design concepts concepts that support non-automotive modes of transportation and it included the requirement for affordable housing so that condition eight covered a lot of things in just one one condition but all of those are addressed as part of the proposed policies condition nine of the special area study dealt with policy 6.2.2 of the future land use element related to extension of central water and sanitary sewer lines and also policies 3.1.5 and 3.1.6 not 16 apologies of the pws fe and again those relate to the requirements that must be met in order for water and sewer to be extended outside of the urban cluster condition 10 related to water conservation and low water use landscaping such as specific limits on irrigation or irrigation or irrigable area and adherence to a water budget the prohibition of irrigation on private residential lots and the requirement to retain existing vegetation and use native vegetation and landscaping and then finally condition number 13 which related to stormwater treatment and the idea of using low impact design and engineered soils for denitrification as well as lid approaches that reduce runoff such as disconnecting impervious surfaces i'm going to say a lot of words and if you have questions about them i have people here who can answer them uh pervious pavement and vegetated natural buffers um so i did want to just um talk a little bit about um some of the policies um that we're proposing um they're all all the policies that we're proposing are in the staff report um and we'll get to to most of them in this presentation some of them are um are less um necessary to discuss they're kind of pretty straightforward um but i did want to talk about policy 8.6.6 which relates to the additional development entitlements that are being requested as part of this application um we've broadly taken a look at what could be developed on this 996 acres um generally the future land use designation the rural agriculture future land use designation allows one dwelling unit per five acres so you could just do that calculation which would be a little less than 200 but we also allow for clustered subdivisions in the rural area and along with that come some bonus units for set asides so we've roughly estimated that it would be reasonable that 275 units could currently be developed on this 996 acres that would include a 50 percent set aside of the property either as agriculture or conservation land so again rough calculation we think it's reasonable the proposed policies would include 2 500 residential units plus 250 affordable units so 2750 total units and 200 000 square feet of non-residential development and as proposed are the policies would require 5 000 acres to be the basis for a transfer of development rights or a fee in lieu acquisition the applicant did include an analysis of policy 7.1.3 which relates to the need for expanding the urban cluster they're not proposing to expand the urban cluster and so whether those policies specifically apply or not is a little bit of a gray area i would say the applicant did indicate that there was a need for single family development specifically in the southwest portion of the urban cluster staff didn't really find that the county's evaluation and appraisal methodology for the urban cluster which indicated there wasn't a need to expand the cluster was invalid so we don't believe that's the case but we did focus on the idea that the outcomes provided by the proposal in this application may be better or certainly provide better goals better outcomes than would in under the proposed policies than might be under the rural ag policies in policy 7.1.3 e this is again in that policy about what you have to do if you want to expand the urban cluster there's really two big requirements one is that the 25 of any new units in the area have to be affordable at 80 of area median income or and this is the way our comp plan is written today it's an either or there's a transfer of development rights for new units authorized by the amendment so those are two options because they're not strictly expanding the cluster we really took a look at this as sort of a trade-off between the two and so on the one hand you could say well if you did a transfer to development rights for the 2225 new units so that's the 2500 minus 275 at about one dwelling unit per four acres which is a reasonable yield for development in the unincorporated area if you're looking at a clustered subdivision that would be about 8 900 acres that would need to be purchased in order for those development rights to be transferred on the flip side if you said 25 percent of all of the new units were affordable at 80 percent of area median income that would be 557 units so those are sort of the two extremes right if you did the tdr it'd be 8900 acres if you did the affordable units it's 557 so staff sort of thought of this as a sliding scale then so if you sort of did half of each it'd be 4 450 acres and 279 units it'd be 50 of one 50 of the other and that gets you to that full 100 so it's a trade-off if you will likewise you could sort of slide the bar and you could say well i want to do more affordable units and less acres so that would be like this is at 25 of the acres and 75 of the units that'd be 418 units 2225 acres so that would be another sort of trade-off that you could do i'm going to belabor this point and then you could sort of go the other way and do more acres and fewer units again this is sort of 25 of the units and 75 of the acres so the applicant has sort of landed somewhere a little bit less than 50 of the units and a little bit more than 50 of the acreage this is about 45 of the affordable units and 55 of the acreage so when you're wondering where did these numbers in these proposed policies come from this is how we arrived at them so the policies that are proposed today would require the development to provide 250 units that are at or below 80 of area median income and that would be for a period of 30 years they have to be throughout the development they can't have a different development standard than other units we have some other requirements on our comprehensive plan that make them sort of not like a you can't have a square over here where you put all the units they really have to be dispersed throughout the development and the policies would also require either acquisition of 5 000 acres or a fee in lieu that would cover the acquisition of 5 000 acres so i just covered that again it's 55 of the full tdr 45 of the full affordability and that's how we get to that sort of 100 percent of what would be required in 7.1.3 um policy 3.1.5 and 3.1.6 we didn't get to 3.1.6 um 3.1.5 says that if you want to extend sewer water outside of the urban cluster then the board of county commissioners really needs to make a finding or have a basis and there are four things listed and what we found is that c um really applied which is that the board of county commissioners finds that the extension of such facilities would serve a purpose consistent with the alachua county comprehensive plan and there's some such as is here but what staff found in their analysis was that there were two items that the county has been very focused on lately one of those is the provision of affordable housing units which this development would provide and the other is the protection of rural especially agricultural but sometimes conservation lands as well and this application would also provide for that so that's really where that c comes in it's that there are these other things that are out there that are being proposed as part of this application that really sort of support the extension of sewer and water into the area so and again the urban form of development and then as i said policy 3.1.6 doesn't apply um because the urban cluster isn't being expanded um on transportation mobility um proposed policy 8.6.6.3 um requires development of of substantial portions of the developments um and i'm going to come back to that in a minute um consistent with the traditional neighborhood development standards that we already have in our comprehensive plan and our land development regulations so again this is an urban form of development um that is generally denser um follows a block pattern provides for mobility either through automobiles but also through non-automobile uses pedestrian bicycle uses and proposed policy 8.6.6.13 requires the implementation of a mobility district specific to the development with a fee that includes transit service to the project so today it's part of our southwest mobility district it's outside of the urban cluster so it's a rural fee and what staff's proposed policies would do is to create a separate mobility district for this project because it is so large that would include all of the projects that are sort of already in the southwest mobility district as a basis and then additional projects to support mobility that are sort of in response to the demand created by this project and that would require um the construction of internal infrastructure that enhances mobility within the development and also provides a limitation on development prior to the programming of state road 24 four laning which is a project that's already within our comprehensive plan county's already doing planning projects for that although there's no money funded for construction at this point um the project proposes development in a set of character areas um so this is a concept that we don't otherwise have in our comprehensive plan um but generally these are areas that are um it sort of sets up the development pattern within each of these um and i'm going to go through these briefly and i'm going to talk a little bit more in deal detail about the farmstead um character area it's the one that's sort of most detailed um in the policies that we've proposed generally the farmstead area allows densities up to one dwelling unit per three acres which is a little bit more dense um than our rural agriculture land use and some of those areas require clustering within that development space the hamlet is generally sort of a suburban area in nature it's probably likely to be mostly residential although the area does allow for some limited uh non-residential uses um and that would be with densities up to five dwelling units per acre the village edge is a mixed use area with up to 10 dwelling units per acre and non-residential uses a minimum of 300 units and then the village core is sort of the densest portion of those we would anticipate those would be either on parker road or archer road um with a minimum with a minimum of 600 units and up to 16 dwelling units per acre those last three are the portions the hamlet the village edge the village core that would be implemented similar to our going backwards um our uh tnd areas including our transit supportive and outside transit supportive areas so those would use existing sort of development standards that we have in our code to implement and again those are the sort of walkable um drivable as well but more pedestrian friendly um development areas i do want to talk about the farmstead character area because we have some unique requirements in here the this farmstead character area is required to be a minimum of 400 acres of the development so again the total development is 996 acres at least 400 have to be in the farmstead character area um that's a with a minimum of 50 percent set aside for uses consistent with policy 6.2.12 c that's in our world clustered subdivision um open space that's what that policy refers to and just to sort of have an idea about what that means in some subdivisions that would likely be conservation land so on this property it would be the identified conservation management areas would fall into that there's some additional strategic ecosystem area on the property that's not set aside as a cma those properties would be included in this it would also allow um sort of ag uh ag uses um so you know active farming community gardens those kinds of things could also be included um in this rural clustered subdivision open space so 50 at least 50 percent of that 400 acres has to be that it can't just be large lot residential development it has to be some of this set aside so again that's 20 of the development that would fit into that um policy 86611 um introduces the idea of a working farm as part of the development um this by policy must be at least 20 acres um it has to be located out of the cma or the additional strategic ecosystem area um and it generally supports agricultural and community-based agriculture related activities so again you might have um uh you know farms you would have markets you could have farm to table kind of activities those kinds of things that are ag related within that working farm um related to the land disturbance conditions in the special area study resolution our policies 8 6 6 15 and 16 15 requires the pd that will follow on to include limitations on disturbance of land both for vertical and horizontal construction so the idea here is that rather than you know clearing 100 feet for a 20-foot road you might clear much less and retain the existing vegetation outside of there i'm certain i could talk about that but there are better people if you do have questions when we get there um and it also provides for selective clearing in the cmas um because those might be habitat restoration sort of things or the development of passive recreation within the cmas areas um and then 8 6 6 16 requires geophysical testing prior to stormwater management facility design this is a karst sensitive area and it requires a stormwater best management practices document at the plant development and then there is a water conservation policy that's 8 6 6 17. there's a lot of things in 8 6 6 17. so i'm going to just sort of refer to this general list that i have we can certainly talk in more detail about what's in there if there are questions but it establishes a maximum landscape irrigation limit requires florida native or florida friendly landscaping sets limits on fertilizer and provides for soil amendments limits the irregular area on private lots and in common areas and then establishes irrigation water sources and rules and it introduces the idea of an irrigation utility that would monitor and sort of set rules on the irrigation on private lots so where are we in this process today we're we're here at the planning commission that's here and you all are making a recommendation to the board of county commissioners on this large-scale comprehensive plan amendment again the map amendment and also the adoption of the policies and that recommendation to the board of county commissioners is whether you think they should transmit this application to florida commerce for review the board whatever your recommendation is tonight the board will hold a public hearing on it as well and we'll make a decision then to transmit or not and then if they decide to transmit we'll send it to the state for their review for other state agencies to review as well and then uh coming back the board can choose to adopt um any comp plan amendment and with that mr chair um staff recommends that the planning commission find application z 26 000 0005 with staff's proposed policies consistent with the comprehensive plan and recommend the board transmit the proposed comprehensive plan amendment florida commerce and other agencies for their review and comments mr chair that is my presentation um i will note that there is one additional public comment after we publish the agenda that i placed up there for each of you um and we would be happy to answer any questions is also here and has a presentation questions chris can you explain the the 5 000 acres that that sliding scale you know for the 250 um ahu units and the 5 000 i mean the developer is required to purchase 5 000 acres is that what i'm so mr chair the policy that um that we've written sets up the idea of a fee in lieu um or uh an acquisition fee simple so um there's some policies in the comprehensive plan that sort of outline what the um requirement for purchase of those lands would be but as it state sits today in our comprehensive plan if you want to expand the urban cluster we have this requirement that sort of says okay you want to you want to put additional density on this property you've got to find someplace else to take it from so that's the transfer of development right rights part um and yeah that i mean this is a lot of acres and a lot of units um so that's why that number seems kind of big about 8 900 but that's that's sort of one part that our comprehensive plan has set up today you want to expand the cluster you got to find someplace else to get those from and then the flip side of that is if you want to expand the cluster you could also provide this 25 percent of affordable units so there's those two um sort of routes if you were expanding the cluster now we're not expanding the cluster here but we're applying the same sort of methodology i think for those things so we're saying it's like you're expanding the cluster you're right next to it and you're adding these mostly urban style densities and so we're imposing the similar sort of uh requirement on them and so yeah that's that's basically where it is is you're going to provide 250 affordable units within the development over time and then the other part is the idea of a fee and lose so we don't have that hammered out i can't tell you what the cost of that would be but the idea is that through a developer's agreement the county and the applicant would agree on what that what that fee in lieu would be and then the county would use that money to acquire land in the 250 affordable housing units would they be built at the same time as the rest of development or i mean i guess the intent would hopefully not to be to do these at the tail end of the development or something like that right so yeah so mr chair again we we have some requirements already in our comprehensive plan related to developments that provide affordable housing sort of as a requirement of their development this isn't the only development scenario where affordable units are required or provided um and we we generally look at that with a sort of land use restriction agreement is what we call it and that would spell out the sort of um agreement to have a timing or a phasing of those units along with the rest of the development just like we would say you can't take all of them put them all in apartments you need to have some detached homes as well um so that they're kind of spread out throughout the development a lot so if anyone wants to go before me okay okay so um how will the affordable units um how do you ensure that affordable units will be continued the affordable unit yeah so again mr chair that's what i was really just discussing was this idea of a land use restriction agreement which we kind of already have outlined as an idea in our comprehensive plan for for other kinds of developments so we use that we would use this sort of agreement uh it's a basically a uh a deed restriction um that the counter easement that the county has um and the county would ensure that the developer is is enforcing those requirements um the specifics of how they would be provided might be a little bit different depending on whether those were um units that are provided in a sort of rental setting versus an acquisition setting um but but generally that land use restriction agreement would be the the mechanism that the county would require in order to um have that happen and then um it's um 80 or lower am i 80 or or lower of of an area median income which is the target threshold that the county has set in their comprehensive plan is there a reason why there's not a tiered structure because i mean all of it could be 79 ami it's you know why is there not 30 and 50 um well to be frank it's because that's the sort of threshold that we've set in the comprehensive plan is that 80 percent um i i think certainly there could be some approach to to tiering it um i'm just not exactly certain how that would play out or exactly what those numbers would be and then um so some of the um the cma the conservation management area comes into this part uh um it's not on the golf course so um please remind me um will any of this be under easement the um yes mr chair the the cma portion of this property will i believe be covered by a conservation easement um or other similar um uh tools so we also have development plans that'll happen that can carry enforceable um restrictions um so that that would be this and that's again on this map this sort of green area that's right here yes that conservation management area would be under some sort of deed restriction um so no idea who would own the easement it would likely be enforced by the county enforced or held held by the county yes um has um so the open space area that includes the agricultural area in the cma and potentially other parts too does that include um retention ponds it could potentially include retention ponds yes okay um so the open space could be retention ponds um will are there any restrictions against um gated communities or cul-de-sacs not in this set of policies specifically we we already have that policy within our comprehensive plan um and there's no exception to that so generally if we have requirements in our comp plan or our code for something that aren't um sort of explicitly accepted for in the policies then the plan would continue to apply okay so the cop plan for gay communities and cul-de-sac supply yes okay um so who will pay for the expansion of the water and sewer so um all of the infrastructure that is required for the development would be paid for by the development um that's going to include sort of two different buckets of things one is the infrastructure that's sort of on site and serving the the development itself that clearly is in the pocket of the developer there are likely upgrades um throughout gru's system that will be required in order to support the development and gru generally when those sorts of improvements are required throughout the system gru generally requires the developer whoever is needing the improvement um to pay for that there are cases that my this is my my historical recollection where gru identifies a need already in its system and asks for something to be oversized where gru might contribute some funds to the that infrastructure project so um so the impacts of on this on the water and sewer on site of course by developer but the impacts off-site will be paid by the developer beyond your yes example yes um so who will pay for the widening of archer road yeah so um archer road the there is already a project in our comprehensive plan um that is a four laning from uh generally 75th out to 122nd that's the phase that's in there um that project is uh slated to be paid with mobility fees um which is what we currently charge in eletra county all new development pays for mobility fees those can be used on any of the projects projects that are within our comprehensive plan but to be honest the size of that project is such that we would anticipate a substantial portion to be funded by fdot so and fdot meaning taxpayers so um so there are some assumptions about um um the on-site the internal capture um and i think that has probably dependent on the commercial that's developed it's a gross store there's going to be significant internal capture if not so um how is that determined um i'm going to tell you uh from my historic transportation planner background um but we also have public works and the applicant are here what i would tell you is that in any study like this um the sort of first part is a trip generation and that includes identification of the individual uses that will be on in the project so that might be single family multi-family whatever it is with a certain number of units um in this project that used uh we used and they used an 820 code eight i think it was an 820 or 810 i can't remember it's changed now but it's generally shopping center um and so it's a fairly non-specific use um and that generally has some internal trip capture that's associated with it and these shopping centers they change back and forth they may have retail one day and a restaurant or a you know a bank or an office and so yes those things change but the study sort of takes that into account that there's this variety of them that's been studied and they have this variety of uses in them and then um the the assessment of um they increased the that was a long study so i didn't read every page um but um i know that it really looks at um trip generation and then level of service is the main impacts um um i probably need the talks um does it look at the um the distance that people living there will travel for commute and the impacts on the transportation system upstream yeah so um as part of the traffic study we've we asked the applicant to look at where those so they use the transportation demand model that is adopted for alachua county um to project those impacts onto the roadway network we asked them to look out as far as there were significant impacts and we define that as where the project um has more than five percent of the volume that's on the roadway so we look for them to look out that far can you explain that five percent sure and i'm not i'm not going to be able to tell you where the five percent comes from because it's it's been sort of this standard um methodology for transportation planning in florida since probably the 70s um but basically it's looking and saying where is the traffic that's due to the project where does that contribute like five percent of all the trips that are on that roadway um so we we've looked asked them to look out to be honest the the most significant impacts from this project are on archer road parker road and 24th avenue i imagine um the majority of trips will be at uf shans va um santa fe but mostly down archer road um by car um so i mean um for example under i-75 on archer that's a pitch point in the system so i mean the expansion of that is multi-million millions of dollars so it i see it having impacts because of the long distance of travel maybe five percent won't be going under i-75 but it will have this impact um so transit and multimodal is part of the conversation um have the daily trips by transit been estimated no um no they haven't because that's that's difficult because um to have good transit you need um short times and you need frequency right and you need to connect you need to have a lot larger number of people going to a small amount of places so um so there will be a mobility district created and funded is that long-term funding for transit for example the route costs so mr chair i can't speak to exactly what this one would look like i can tell you that in our current mobility plan we identify funding for transit operations so that's sort of the longer term day to day as well as the cost of providing the initial infrastructure so buying buses or whatever for routes um it's at some point it's problematic to say that those mobility fees can fund a route for you know 30 years because sort of that impact is is gone that initial impact and at some point you know the county is going to have to make a commitment to find other ways to fund that service we do that like with the route 52 that goes to jonesville that's a route that was initially funded by mmtm and mobility fees and is transitioning into the general fund um and so that is some that's how we would anticipate this happening as to exactly how long that funding would be for um or what exactly it would pay for i don't know exactly what those projects are today so i i do one of the um um one of the things that's highlighted about this is the multimodal um bicycle pedestrian and transit but um there can be plans but it's how those plans are implemented that really impacts the way that the multimodal is used and taking car trips off the road um it's going to be difficult for people who are at uf shands to i mean i know people who commute from hail to to shands um by bike but it's not gonna be a huge capture um and so and so there is room within the cluster right now for this level of development staff has analyzed that so what would be the impact of developing that number within the urban cluster versus this on the vehicle miles traveled i think it depends mr chair on where in the urban cluster it's developed obviously so if you took this and you stuck it right inside the cluster um you know just next door the impact wouldn't be terribly different to be honest they'd likely use many of the same routes to get to where they're going if you drop this into say you know northwest gainesville um obviously the routes would be different um the difference i think mr chair is that within the urban mobility districts which generally follow the urban cluster we've sort of already anticipated what those infrastructure projects are and i and so we have a plan for the for those areas so if you develop 2700 units within you know the northwest mobility district we've already already said well that's going to happen so we're anticipating that that's why we propose the idea of a transportation mobility district specifically for you specifically for this project outside the cluster i think what we're saying is it's going to contribute to those same projects that would be inside the cluster just based on its location but we also haven't identified these other projects that might serve this location specifically because it's outside the cluster and so that's why we're sort of anticipating this need for you know an additional project or potentially more depending on how it's broken up to really serve this development thank you and then um the agricultural the homestead um who proposed that in the special area study was that the developer yeah who proposed that the the which the agri the homestead um what is the agricultural homestead what's it oh so we've got the farmstead area yeah so that was proposed by the applicant oh really okay and then so um nitrates there's not an explicit um uh um in here about um fertilizer but it does mention for um lower fertilizers but the um the farmstead would be able to use well not all of the farmstead um there is an exception in the policies that's related specifically to bona fide agricultural activities so like the working farm or if there are other agricultural activities that are that are in there we get into a little bit of a an issue where we're the state says we can't regulate bona fide ag so um even if we were to put a policy in our comprehensive plan that did regulate bona fide ag operations i don't think we could enforce it and then um if the if the applicant goes through this process and um does not come out on the other end the way they want could this um the area owned by uf or bought by uf be under the put under the campus master plan well mr chair i i mean i guess what i would say is that the area that is owned by uf and managed by ifas could be put under the campus master plan either way regardless of whether this property goes through or not none of the property that's that's currently subject to the application is owned by uf or or ifas or by the state it's all privately owned um if this application were to not be transmitted or not be adopted or if it were um the university of florida could come and put the property that's west of parker road that they control today in the campus master plan and um while uf consults with the county on the campus master plan um the county does not um the county's comp plan does not override the campus master plan um that's not my question for now thank you thank you um really kind of want to delve down more into the the transit service and um and densities um and just i guess in the the village core and the village edge village core it's a 16 units max is that correct and then there are 600 units minimum is that correct mr chair give me just a second while i want to make sure i understand that slide correctly or that yeah so kind of as you go through yeah so so mr chair yes the the village edge and village core so these are actually they're a little more intense than our tnd um the minimums are a little different we don't normally do a minimum unit count we normally do a minimum density these probably work out in about that same place but the both the village edge and village core are a little bit more intense than our our normal tnd would be so i guess the comments kind of delve down into um and transit service and transit service working this is a very large area a thousand acres in essence and 494 acres that are going to be developed even at while at 2500 seems like a a large number when you put it kind of on the density i think it's like five units an acre across the developable area and looking at transit service that actually would work that it doesn't really work at that level did the did staff look at um at increasing densities in the in the core in the village on really throughout kind of and looking at how could it actually be like an effective um uh density that would actually support transit service mr chair that's a pretty broad question um i think what i would say is that in terms of the number of units that's really what was requested by the applicant um i think one thing is that um just increasing the maximum density doesn't necessarily get you to what is being suggested you really would have to increase the minimum density as well in a situation like this i would guess that the developer has some pro forma that's going to work for them and this unit count is in that and maybe they could do more um they probably couldn't do a whole lot less um but in that instance where staff might say no you need to do 5 000 or 10 000 units in this i don't know how that would um you know does that make the project viable for the developer and i don't know the answer to that um that's not a density that's really consistent with what we do throughout the rest of the urban cluster for better or worse um we allow for these tnds to be a portion of that and we provide for you know density or development at what other densities there might be within the cluster yeah i guess that's kind of we the county has been approving and moving forward i mean just to the east of this is one to four units an acre um and we've been seeing continuing traffic and continuing building things that will not support um transit uh and to i think um commissioner young's point about more traffic and these connections if we don't build at a density that actually will support traffic this far out it will just be all cars and i think to um i think your question about tiered amis as well i mean at 30 ami it's difficult to have a car that works that level so you have to have transit i think putting that low of ami out here probably wouldn't be good um so that's something i'd like for like as we're looking at this is to to look at increasing both the maximum density and then the minimum density in the village core and village edge just something that would support more of a um more transit that would actually work thank you chair other questions i have one comment traveling and looking at housing another mr chair your microphone introduced to my microphone on the um i've seen at the old austin airport in texas something that was different than what i had seen before and i saw it one time afterwards another part of the austin market north what they did is they had a good basis in the land and they were able to put in housing that was right in um it was slightly different like maybe 10 percent in price but you could not tell from the outside and they had a program that if you rented it for 30 years on the 30th anniversary they would deed it to you and that would also work out with the financing it's kind of an interesting gig if you jumped off you lost everything there was nothing that was built up into equity but if you stayed there 30 years it would be deeded i went into the um their model homes that both the ones they had both the non um subsidized and the um regular um housing and it was very hard it was very minor differences in what they were doing it was it was good and that was a very good way of putting different people together and so for people who are out there it's something that i saw once or twice in that trip and it's i think it's a good idea that somewhere it might maybe not here but somewhere it may be good for some other development it's an idea that's worth thinking about and if anybody wants to talk to me about it more in detail i'd be glad to talk to them later thank you mr chair it was a good presentation mr chair i'm sure the applicant has a presentation good evening mr chairman board members my name is lindsay haiga i'm a land planner with england thames and miller and thank you for this opportunity to be in front of you today and discuss our everly farms project uh chris did a wonderful job walking us through the regulatory aspects of what this comprehensive plan amendment map and policy amendment is for your consideration this evening for transmittal i'm just one of many experts that have been collected so that we get this right for the properties here that we're familiar with and we get to work together all as a team here and many of them are with us in the in the auditorium today and can answer any questions that i can't feel for you and we'll hear from a couple of them this evening we're we're familiar with the site chris walked us through the property we've looked at this in several fashions mainly through your special area study and then when the county took action to designate this right as a special area giving us regulations to move forward and you've seen some of that traction come forward both in your review and the county commissioner's review and acceptance of the special area study and then that traction that we saw with the university when they came before you for their amendments and their special area plan and their plan development and that action with the state purchasing the 2600 acres west of parker and then the lee's family's donation to the uf foundation of that acreage this timeline that we're looking at shows a lot of work and effort on the county's part the family's part and the community's part to look at this property and help inform what you're going to be in the state of the state of parker and we held three additional meetings beyond the one picture code would require us to have as far as the neighborhood workshop to work in the state of parker and the foundation of that acreage this timeline that we're looking at shows a lot of working effort on the county's part the families part and the community's part to look at this property and help inform what can happen here for everly farms as a community planner my job was to host several community meetings and we held them over at elementary school gracious, and his staff to allow us to come into his multipurpose room, and we held three additional meetings beyond the one that your code would require us to have as far as a neighborhood workshop, and that helped inform and allow us to have an opportunity to educate and answer questions on a one-on-one basis in a schoolhouse style that we had, and some of those aspects that the community provided on our adjacent neighbors have made its way into the policies that are in front of you today. So, no person is better able to describe the vision for this property than Austin Roberts, and I'd like to have him come up and talk to us a little bit about that vision and aspect of what he sees for the land, what he's done for his company, and him as a resident here in the county. So, Austin? Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for having us. I'm Austin Roberts, president of the Roberts Companies. I'm a resident here of Alachua County, seventh generation from North Florida, born right here in Alachua General when that was still here. My family and I live here in Alachua County. My kids go to school a couple of miles around the corner from this property, so this is very near and dear to our heart and very much and very quickly become a passion project for us. We have a very unique opportunity to bring something special to this area and to this community and something that can provide value over 15, 20 years plus to this area, and so we've taken that very seriously throughout this process. I'll tell you from the beginning, our goal has been to create something special and something that we can be proud of that preserves agriculture and open space and wildlife and incorporates that into a walkable community, and that really for me was a primary point of priority and how we work this together is to not just create another neighborhood, but how do we do it special and how do we create a bar of what could be done in this region. My family has a long history of being passionately engaged in agriculture and land stewardship in this state. I've been here quite a while. And as a kid, I have many fond memories of walking through the woods, picking blackberries, or working on our family farm, and my passion and our vision for this was how do we bring a piece of that into this community? How do you give somebody an opportunity to leave their front porch, walk miles of trails, incorporate nature, pick fruit, or walk down to the professionally managed working farm and learn really where your food comes from? One of the primary goals for us is that I want our kids to grow up and know where their food comes from and have that in a community that they can live in. And I'm sure some of you know people too, I have friends of my kids that when you ask them where their food comes from, they'll say it comes from Publix, right? And that's something that as a society, we'd love to combat. And this is one small way of making sure that we keep agriculture and open space incorporated into community and neighborhood. And therefore, we've set a lot of these policies and proposals in place to make sure that we build this in a very special way, something that hasn't been done here. You know, the vision for this place is blending that walkable traditional neighborhood and into this large, you know, working farm into within over 200 acres of agriculture and open space. And that was a primary pillar and a very important part of anything we would bring forward to staff or to you, we had to first live up to that point. And, uh, I will tell you, um, you know, I live here in this community, I value the people in this community. We've spent a tremendous amount of time engaging with people in the community and around this property, um, and not only engaging, but those conversations have helped inform and shape in a material way what it is we're here with at this point. Um, you know, we, we've, the, the county requires one community meeting. We've already had four, um, the required, uh, notice distance. We doubled anywhere. It's split a, a road in half. We included the other side of the street. We've really tried to go above and beyond to make sure that we do this right. Um, we're grateful for the opportunity to have worked with the county staff. I can't tell you how impressed I am with them. We do this all over the region and you, you all, we all in this community are lucky to have, uh, a sophisticated staff that we do have here. Uh, we'll tell you that we worked tirelessly is a word I will use. I'm sure they probably feel the, feel the same in some aspects. We've worked tirelessly with them on a number of these, these points and, um, you know, their questions, their requirements, their guidance and careful review through this process has really helped us strengthen a proposal for the better to get us to where we are here today and, and to watch out for the betterment of the area. Um, you know, we're, we're also pleased, I will say that following that extensive review and working relationship with staff that they have recommended approval, uh, of the application that is before you here tonight. Um, I must say as a community with the approval of this project, we can really set the bar and become a leader in the region for what a resilient community looks like long-term planning of what a master, master plan community can, can look like in an area like this. Um, I, I will say something that integrates agriculture and nature, um, along with the growing need for continued housing opportunities that we face, uh, so that our kids and our families can continue to afford to live here, work here and build businesses here. And that, that is, that is our vision. That is the primary pillars of what we believe in and we stand by and that is, that is what is integrated into this vision and into this plan. At this time, um, I'd like to bring up Victor Dover from Dover Coal and Partners, uh, who's an expert in town planning and, uh, let him give you a little bit of their background. Thank you, Austin. My name is Victor Dover. Just by way of introduction, uh, our firm Dover Coal and Partners is located in Coral Gables. Uh, actually next month we'll start our 40th year in business. I'm a town planner, a neighborhood designer and, and for the record, a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners. I, this, I'm going to tell you why we're excited about this and I, I hope, uh, to use some images to make that clear. In our practice, our focus is on livable communities. Uh, some of y'all probably know we've had a hand in, uh, work here in, in Gainesville in the past along those lines. There are four livable community principles that were advanced by Austin and Lindsey and their team and they came to us as a directive, uh, for our work on Everlane, nature, legacy, our multiple. These four principles are all variations or kinds of connectedness. So really that's the overall, overall theme. And we took these to heart, um, these four principles aligned in my view with what's actually required to create real neighborhoods and strong towns and strong regions. And that's the kind of work we like to work on. But how do we do this, these, these words, how do we do these policy ideas in a land plan? And there are really four key pieces. First, we, we do it by starting with the green parts, then by diversifying the housing types. So, um, and then by mixing land uses for all the trip shortening reasons that were discussed earlier and through street design, because the design of great neighborhoods begins with the design of streets. In the community meetings, uh, Lindsey covered all this in great detail, but, uh, and I know you all have seen some of this already in the past, but the idea that people in this, in this settlement will feel a different kind of different level, a better level of connectedness with their surroundings and their neighbors is really the ultimate, uh, goal of it. So this, this slide summarizes what I just told you. Now, uh, what is a farmstead community? I thought we might talk a little bit about one example. Um, it's, here's Newfield, which is a new town we designed, uh, not very long ago in Martin County that's being, uh, built out now. In Newfield, form follows food, if you've heard that phrase before, and they were something of a forerunner of this new generation of farmstead communities where, to make a long story short, the growing of food is a centerpiece of community life, uh, that allows a few things. That allows us to have the farm as an amenity, uh, for the lucky people who live there, the new neighbors, but it also allows smart development to take place in these sensitive locations that keeps touch with the historical tradition of rural food growing places. Now, design matters a lot, and so putting pen to paper, these big ideas depend on geometry. Um, so recently we held a design charrette. These are, these are some sketches that resulted from that, a gathering of many minds, uh, on Austin's behalf to translate the four principles and the big policy ideas you heard described by Chris into site-specific design forms, and then testing those forms. Uh, to make a plan like this, we designed together with the environmental scientist, and the engineer, and the clients, and the legal team, the stakeholders. It means a lot of drawing, a lot of refinement, and iteration, counting things up. But most importantly, this requires visualizing change before it occurs to get an idea of what it would be like. So in this case, we started with storyboard art, like filmmakers would draw storyboards before they go out to shoot a movie. Uh, and the questions we were asking in this, uh, storyboard art come down to the question, what if. For example, what if we could preserve that network of greenways and trails, uh, and forest and field in a way that they become part of the town, and you're, you have regular encounters with them, uh, all the time. And then what if we could mix the different housing types along great streets and share with them common gardens and greens, village greener, and plaza-type spaces, squares, at a range of scales and different ways of being used, along with the large-scale preserves and agricultural areas. And then last, speaking of agriculture, what if your favorite healthy snacks were being grown just a few steps from your front porch, and became part of how you got to know your neighbors and, uh, how you get to know your place? So what I'd like to do is introduce Justin Myers, who's the farmer, uh, let's, let's, uh, let's talk about that with the farmer. Good evening, everyone. My name is Justin Myers. I work with Agminity. Uh, we design and manage farm amenities and community farms. Uh, the community that Victor mentioned from Newfield, we were, we've been part of that, and we currently operate that farm. We originally started in Houston, and we have projects, uh, we have four projects in the Houston area, and we currently have three projects in Florida. Um, and I think oftentimes when we talk about farmstead communities, or farm amenities, or community farms, the big question is, like, well, what is the farm? Uh, farm is one of those words that can mean a lot of different things to different people. Um, and I think from what, how, what Austin shared, what Victor shared, really what's special about Everly is that, you know, the farm really is like a core element of, you know, the identity and the story and the narrative of who Everly is. And I think what, what is also special is that if you live in Everly, the farm will be a benefit to you, but it's also designed as a, this open to the public as well. Um, so as it's currently designed, there's a 20-acre working farm, uh, really with a, a focus on year-round diversified vegetables grown sustainably and organically, also grow herbs, flowers, fruits. Um, part of the farm is really, like, that core element of, like, getting food to people, uh, whether that's a CSA, a farm stand, a market, uh, that way, you know, people who live there and also in the surrounding communities can come purchase the, the vegetables that are grown on the farm. Um, the larger, larger kind of vision of that is, like, whether from a farm store or a farm shop, uh, what we're not growing, we can also source from other local farms or local food purveyors, uh, so that not only kind of expands the, the food that's available to people, but also creates additional, like, sales outlets and distribution channels for other, uh, local providers. Um, and beyond the, the food side of things, uh, because there's many people who love vegetables, uh, they love to cook, they understand, like, the, the power of good food. Other folks, they're, they haven't been introduced to that yet or they're, that's not their thing. Uh, so how can that farm really be of value beyond just food? And I think that's when you get into the, the community farm side or the farm being an amenity. It's really this, like, social hub and social connection. Um, and with the placement of this farm, it also is this beautiful green space. And so whether you go in the morning, uh, for a run, you walk your dog, um, you don't necessarily have to come to the farm just for food. It can really be this beautiful green space, this connection to nature in the everyday. Uh, in addition to that, it's also a place. So whether that's a, there's a, a community gathering, uh, a movie night, uh, a pizza night on the farm, uh, seasonal festivals, markets, uh, it's not just based on what we're growing. It's also this beautiful, uh, aesthetic in this area that we're creating that people can get connected with. Um, and then also on top of that would also be an educational realm. Uh, and whether that's farm tours or coming out to volunteer, uh, spring break or summer camps for kids, uh, there's really, the farm is a platform. Uh, you can really take that in many different directions for how people can get connected to it and how it can really improve the quality of their day-to-day life. Um, and I think that's where when you look at the immediate folks who will live in Neverly and the kind of like that resident and like know your neighbor, but also as you look at like beyond that of, of bringing people in from the snap surrounding neighborhoods and the, and the broader area of, of Gainesville, uh, there's, there's a lot of connection there. And Gainesville as a whole has a great agricultural community. Uh, so one of the, the larger elements is also getting connected to that. How can we support, uh, and kind of become one of the nodes in the local food system, uh, get connected to nonprofits, other local farms, UF and IFAS? Uh, so really this farm really kind of deepens that resiliency and robustness of the food system, uh, beyond just the, the single farm that we have here. Uh, and I think on a, on a, on a micro macro level, it's like you have this, this farm as part of Everly. It's really a core element of its story and its identity and can really make that day-to-day difference for, for the folks who live there. But also, there's also that broader element of, um, um, they're kind of like the power of food and what that, what that can lead to. You know, really like what we're putting into our bodies from physical, mental, emotional health, the social connections of getting to know your neighbors and coming out to events. Uh, you know, the farms can be very, uh, you know, beyond just the, the food concept. And I think from what we've seen in our work, uh, in various projects, uh, there's just special things that just spin off that happen because you have these unique places that people haven't been exposed to. And there's kind of like an invitation to engage, whether from the food and nature side or with one another and community. He's going to come over. Thank you, Justin. That, that vision Justin described is also written in your policies before you, right? We brought that commitment into our comprehensive plan. So no less than the acreage that you see, and it's open at the start, there's that tie back. We discussed this with the community at our February workshop, and this board storyboard kind of helps us characterize all of the public input that we've taken in from meeting in January, February, April, and then in May. And what did they say and share with us as a concern and then how we brought that over to the plan. So we have more check marks and one half circle where we kind of address that on a pedestrian circulation component, but really listening in to see how our vision meets what our surrounding neighbors and everybody that's put in an effort to attend the series of meetings that we hosted over at the elementary school. This is the plan that kind of pulls it all together. It is a PD rezoning preview. It brings together the character areas that Chris walked you through, that's written into your policy, the four that you see, and really highlights that plan from where Victor walked us through those iterations and the illustrative plan to what you'll see here coming up in September, hopefully, for your PD. And you see the amount of set aside that we have for the farmstead character area, the core being the homestead of the Lee family, and how we'll move around the different character areas and being specific and sensitive to our adjacent neighbors. Again, commissioners, we're here before you requesting transmittal following your staff's recommendation that we send our map amendment and our policies out for review to the state agencies and get back that feedback and then come back before the commission for that final adoption. Kind of in the timeline and next steps that we would see transmittal in the late August in front of your commission and then the PD rezoning hearings coming in September again to keep us all together about what these policies would provide us as that recipe to get us into our zoning document. With that, I'll conclude our presentation. Perhaps we can hear from public comment or field any questions that you all may have for anybody on our team. Mr. Mutch, can you put your microphone up, please? I'm sorry. I missed a few things, I guess, when you were going through this. Mr. Roberts had a lot of platitudes to talk about, but what did he do for the project? Mr. Roberts, he's the landowner. Yes, he gave us our vision. He is the landowner. Yes, sir. Where does it, I'm sorry, and that's what I wanted to ask. Is he BFF Properties? He's a partnership with BFF Properties. Come on, here he comes to give us our ownership. Yes, sir. What about FCV Timber? Yeah, we have partnered with the Lee family on the ownership of the property there as well as the property to the south, which is the BFF landholding property is what you're referring to. And the Parker Road landholders? Yes, sir. I'm sorry. When you made your... Yeah, sure. And I don't know what you want. I mean, you said you wanted to do a good project. Sure. And I think that's great, but it didn't really discuss anything that's in the plan. Yeah, we are the applicant. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I have a question for you, Ms. Haga. Mr. Dover. What did he walk us through? You said Victor walked us through some items in the plan. I didn't hear him walk us through anything. Come on up. He's our town planner expert and walked us through the pillars that we use as our foundation, which became the policies that you see, right? Density character areas, what we see for multimodal, what are we going to have for our street networks? So would you like to recap? Well, I heard what he was saying. Yeah. I don't think it needs to be recapped. I definitely didn't get the opportunity to do my normal filibuster and show all and go through all the geometry and everything. But when we come to the PD, I think there will be an opportunity to go into the design in great detail. But of course, here you're asking for us to make an approval in the plan or put it into the plan. And then you expect to be able to enunciate things as you go through with the plan and the PD before this commission. Is that correct? Lindsay, do you want to explain the transmetal versus the PD step? Oh, I know what we're doing. I'm a planner myself, and I'm an AICP also. Okay? Yes. So Victor, so just to use the PD preview as a sample on what he helped change and give us guidance on. One, on how each of the character areas should be designed, right? Chris mentioned for us one of our policies talk about, we're going to follow your standards for traditional neighborhood design, our transit supported design. Those are the tenements ported over to make sure that we draft a policy in front of you that has those principles, right? That's one part. Two, on really, you can see a little bit of the road network, again, that'll come forward to you on the PD document. On moving away from solely focusing on cars to have a multiple, a street network that's built on the ladder system and that character that you'll see, right, on those cross sections, again, as policies presented to you. And lastly, I would say about our density ranges that are presented to you. You all are only seeing character areas to have the minimum densities, where they are, are the acreages and their placements. That's how Victor uses his design standards to put the imprint on our policies. So I hope that gives you a little bit more color on how we used them. And at this stage, you're not seeing the full implement, but you're seeing his, his imprint on our policies. Okay, thank you. One of the things that I also had for Mr. Dover is that the project down in St. Martin County, or Martin County, I'm sorry, Martin County, that looked like it was either west of I-95 or west of the Turnpike. It's just immediately west of the Florida's Turnpike. Okay. And consists of about 4,000 acres, of which 70% is reserved in open space of various kinds, including agriculture and agriculture, and the conservation areas, and the balance in the development of new neighborhoods. Okay. So it's, it's, uh, as a land development enterprise, uh, it was, there was a single plan that included all the conservation areas and lands that became part of a conservancy. Similarly, the way here we started with 4,000 acres, as Chris described. Um, and the, uh, the part we have now is the part after this, the, uh, agreements were made with the university and, um, for the, uh, the areas outside the development area. So we're, now we're talking in this process about the last 1,000 acres or just under it of what began as a much larger mass in your study and in the, uh, family home. So in this way, it's comparable, I think, in some ways to new field. The biggest way it's similar is that we're building new neighborhoods that are at the edge of town, but trying to build them in a way that will give people the strong sense that as a result of development, building on parts that could save the rest, things got better rather than worse. That's the common thread and agriculture is part of that. Okay. I appreciate that, but my concern is, and I, I'm not familiar with that project. I mean, I pass it, but I, I've not noticed. I give good tours. Anytime you'd like to let me show you a new field, uh, Duff and I would love to, I'd love to walk you around. One of the things that concerns me is, um, and it's in conjunction with what Mr. Myers was saying about the farms. Um, it concerns me that we are so far out from the core of this community that, and the way in which we would have to go to take advantage of the local farms in this project is that we would have to jump in our cars and go. We're not going to, we don't have at this time public transit that gets us out there. And that's one of the problems that I see. I also see your, uh, bicycle on your, uh, jacket, which I think is wonderful gift from Congressman Earl Blumenauer. Well, that's great. Um, the, I would kill myself if I were go, if I had to ride my bike out from where I live in Gainesville and go to the Everly project and then, uh, buy my, uh, blackberries and come back. The blackberries would probably be, uh, pretty warm when I got back because it probably would take me an hour and a half to two hours to get out there. I'm not sure. I mean, that must be, and I know Parker Road. It used to take me 20 minutes to get out to Parker Road from my office in Gainesville because I would go down Parker Road to get on, uh, get on Archer Road to go out to Williston. The now trying to go through and across the interstate and then go, uh, to go to Parker Road is terrible. Also, the, uh, traffic on Archer Road from, uh, 13th Street to Archer, it's pretty tough. And we don't really have very good bicycle lanes in that area. But I, and I would love to be able to do that, but that's still a long way away. And like for today, I wouldn't go out on my bicycle at 95 degrees showing 105 and what we're doing because of the way in which our climate is changing and it has changed. But I, I'm just concerned that you give us some ideas, but I'm worried if we can use those ideas in the future, or are we going to be approving something that really doesn't, may not meet the criterias in 10 years or 15 years? Well, I really, I'm glad you brought this up because I think it gives a chance to address something that's important to your region and to many of our regions in the state. First, the last thing we would suggest is that someone who lives in the Duck Pond neighborhood or in University Heights or College Park or some, or the Depot area should abandon their neighborhood farmers market and travel long distances to get their blackberries in, uh, in this location. No, no, no. The whole point is to shorten trips. That's why the mixed use development, bringing things close to the neighbors. So if we, if we make decisions that favor short trips, and including walking, biking, and transit trips as well, and even short trips made by car, they're probably doing the right thing. And in order to do that, we have to think of the region as having multiple centers. Not every trip should have to be all the way back to the center of historic Gainesville to accomplish part of life's basic daily needs or vice versa. We wouldn't want to say to someone who lives in the center of the city that they have to go all the way to Everleigh to accomplish their basic daily goals. No, no, no. The focus should be on a multi-centered region where there, now you might have the brightest bright center right here, right downtown, uh, right around the streetery. But there should be other bright centers around the region as well so that we can capture trips and shorten trips that we can't capture. In our country, about 75% of household daily trips are made within two miles of home. And many of those trips could be converted to walking and biking trips if we had tree-lined streets and direct routes and interconnected street networks and trails and greenways that have shade and exactly the sorts of things we're prescribing for this situation. As for transit, we'll never get to a situation where we can operate transit in American cities as if we actually wanted it to succeed unless we build transit-worthy neighborhoods that have people deliberately brought closer together and have the mix of uses and those short trips that allow for the last, you know, half mile to be doable. And so don't think of it as asking the entire region to come converge on this site. That's not what we're asking. What we are asking is for a chance to have the new neighbors here accomplish a lot of things right in their own neighborhood without having to go out on your regional road network to do it. Okay. Thank you very much. That's all my comments, questions? Yes. One, maybe it's for applicant or for staff, just on connections east, and I don't know if that's at the state or not, but it will, will it be connecting to Hale on Southwest 46th Boulevard, that's on the very northern edge. Is there, is that expected to come through or? Uh, so Mr. Chair, um, we, we don't have a PD in front of you right now that would show those specific kinds of things. What our comp plan otherwise requires is where there's a, an existing stub or a, you know, where we know there's going to be a planned connection. Um, we would require any adjacent development to connect. So where exactly that is on that eastern edge, we'll, we'll probably see at the next stage, but yes, there will be a connection. They're expected to be a couple connections east. Yep. Okay. Mr. Chair, to add on a little bit there, the special areas, you specifically mentioned Southwest 46th and Hale. The special area study was very specific and explicit by the board of county commissioners that there would not be a vehicular connection there, uh, either by, uh, by UF golf, which is actually bordering that connection. Additionally, as it stands today, the right of way for Southwest 46th actually does not extend to the property line of, of what was formerly the Lee properties. So, um, that's not something that would happen really as part of this development as, as far as we know today. And so, but Chris was correct that there are stubs planned for Lugano and some of the other projects in the Southwest, um, and those development approvals that would be connecting to this development. But nothing like Southwest 61st Ave. I see it's one that goes west as well. I don't know if that's one that would connect or not. 65th or 61st. Mr. Chair, we could look at that. There are not really any other. It's the one that has a bunch of large houses in that area. Yeah. And as Chris said, one of the things we would do at the development stage is actually look wherever there is sufficient right of way and a, and a county road that's, that's constructed to a standard that could handle the traffic, then yes, the standard is that they're connected. I don't know if there's many standards other than 46th. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Chair, I have a couple questions about the working farm. Sure. I'm not sure who can, oh, thank you. Um, so the working farm, I think you mentioned, is one of the defining features of this community. Um, so is it, um, primarily agricultural business, or a lifestyle amenity or both? And I'm looking to figure out how is it funded? Uh, so it is set up as an amenity. Uh, and so like right now the, the funding isn't like fully defined, but typically when, when the farm is an amenity, it'll be part of the HOA or part of the CDD. Uh-huh. And so it does generate revenue and that revenue goes back to the HOA to like offset some of the costs. But because it's an amenity, there is some like, like subsidized funds that go in to help support the farm. Uh, and then is there somewhere that, that's been outlined in terms of the operational commitment of this working farm? Uh, not yet. Yeah. Um, and so that would be a question for our office. Yeah. We addressed it through policy. And so you'll see finer detail in the PD when we come back in front of, of you all for, for that as well. But in policy, we have a requirement. Uh-huh. And so through the funding mechanism, as Justin just explained, you start to start to be able to kind of see some of the parameters. Okay. Any other comments? I have a quick question on the other, both of the, is the farm is 20 acres? So the work, professionally managed working farm is a minimum of 20 acres. So we have, we have over 200 acres of agriculture and open space. There's a mix of uses, but committed to a minimum of 20 acres that is professionally managed. And that is what AgMenity does. Okay. Is they are the managers for a lifestyle coordinated amenity center that is, is based around farming. Okay. Right. And so that's, that's the minimum just for the working farm, which is, um, garden style farming, very high turnover, high touch. Okay. So then that, if it becomes very popular and there's tons of people out there, could that be even expanded above the 20 acres? Absolutely. Yeah, we just have minimum. We just have a minimum in the code. I mean, I live adjacent to the property in Hale Plantation and I would love to be able to come out to the farm and buy the areas and stuff like that. That's, that was the vision, right? I mean, there's the pedestrian connection, walkability, the trails and the, and the bike paths to be open to the public should allow for those sort of interconnections, vice versa. Um, this development want to go participate in the Saturday, uh, market at Hale. I think that having that sort of inner interconnectivity is going to be great for a pedestrian level. Right. Thank you. Questions? Go ahead. I have some beautiful images and, um, presentation. I saw two cars in the background of two images. There's, uh, 24,000 trips being generated by this. And we heard earlier, Commissioner Hay-Santis brought up that the density needed to, um, support transit is not quite there. So do you have any responses? And, and two, I believe, um, um, um, that the first phase of 50% after the Archer Road will need to be expanded for the second half to be built. Do you have any comments on the intensity of transport, um, transportation needed for this project? Because we really focused on the farm and the trails and, and specifically the cost, um, of expanding, um, Archer Road. Well, it's fairly, fairly vague. There's, there's a couple things probably for me to hit to answer that question. Um, and I'll let you guys catch up like, like, like bad, uh, clean up here. Um, few things. One is mobility fees are being paid in. This project is estimated to generate somewhere around $20 million worth of mobility fees. Um, the Archer Road, just to, you may have to remind me if I miss one, a couple of these points, but the Archer Road widening, uh, and being a state road, um, is primarily, um, an opportunity for the state to be able to help fund FDOT to be able to help fund that road as well. Um, we're obviously early in the stage to know all the funding mechanisms that may go into place to fund that fully, but it is a state road. Um, from a traffic perspective, we've provided and worked closely with staff and their transportation department to look at capacities and set, um, restrictions and, and, um, limits to development phasing prior to the Archer Road widening, uh, prior to it, it's, uh, being put in the work plan. Um, maybe that answered those questions. Yes. Um, I just wanted to hear, um, from the applicant, the view on the funding of this. So, um, thank you. It confirmed what I was thinking. More comments. Okay. Thank you. All right. So I'm going to look at staff for a moment. So, Mr. Chair, we're at the point of the evening where, uh, if there are no more comments or questions from the board, the two paths forward or the best, the usual path forward is to entertain a motion that you could speak to. I have a slightly different question. Okay. Okay. But keep going. But that's, that's, so go ahead with your question. My question had to be with, um, we have a number of items that funding and such and we're, the idea is to form a, um, a basis for a vote or, you know, support, um, as we have it now and not any further. And is this within the boundaries of what we are supposed to be doing? Um, we are, this is just basically the, the land use is what I'm saying. Right. So, Mr. Chair, what you have before you is that there is a land use, a map amendment, the future land use map amendment. So, it's changed those colors on, on the change the color of the property on the map to a different color. And that would be governed by these policies. And the goal is that these policies are broad enough not to be overly restrictive, but restricted enough so that the community knows what the product is at the end of the day. And so, what this board is being asked to do this evening is to go ahead and send those forward to the county commission. You will see in the future, a plan development zoning, which will take these policies and drill down even further. And the applicant has shared, you know, some of the early schematics of that. So, you will see a zoning master plan. You will see these policies worked into specific conditions with more specific phasing. And so that's, and you know, I think it's the applicant's intention that you'll see that in the next couple of few months. Um, so, um, Does someone want to say so moved? You know, we're getting to that point. Yes, right. Okay. So would anybody like to add the funding to the project? And the applicant has shared, you know, a zoning master plan. I think the applicant has shared, you know, the early schematics of that. So you will see a zoning master plan. You will see these policies worked into specific conditions with more specific phasing. Um, and so that's, and, you know, I think it's the applicant's intention that you'll see that in the next couple of few months. Um, so, um. Does someone want to say, so move, you know, we're getting to that point? Yes. Right. Okay. And so would anybody like to move that would move what was just said? Yeah. And so we're going to combine it. Okay. What we're doing is we are moving to approve. I did not want to be trapped into this one, but this is, pardon? Okay. We're getting ready to approve the report and to move it forward to the county commission. And so the specific motion is to recommend that the county commission transmit the amendments to Florida Commerce. That was the one. And Mr. Chair, that's staff's recommendation to this board. However, there could be another motion if another committee member feels. Of course. Okay. Yes. I'd like to make a motion. I think we should go beyond what staff has recommended, because I don't believe that the current recommendation gets it to a transit service level that will work for this area and work for it to work. This is a large area. It's going outside their cluster, and then we should make sure that there's enough, the density helps. I would support a motion, or I'll move motion to see if I get a second, that we create the maximum of units. It's kind of a few different things. I don't know if we want to put the slide that has different village core and village edge and that one on there. But it would make it so I think it would get closer for transit to work. So, a maximum of 5,000 units. The village core area would be, currently is it 16 units? I think 32 units. Transit kind of starts working when you have 20 units an acre. This is kind of the core, so it needs to bring that above. So, the village core unit, or the village core would be at 32 units maximum, with a minimum of 1,200 units. Village edge would be 20 units an acre maximum, with a minimum of 600 units. And then the hamlet would be 10 units an acre maximum, and the farmstead would be 6 units an acre. Are you suggesting, are you moving that it should be a maximum or a minimum? So, the maximum would be 5,000 units? Yes. And then for the village core in the bottom, it would be a mixed use up to 32 units an acre, with a minimum of 1,200 units. Village edge with a minimum of 600 units, and then 20 units an acre, and the hamlet would be a maximum of 10 units an acre, and farmstead would be a maximum of 6 units. I understand the economics. I'm concerned about doing this the way we're doing it. Actually, he needs a second in order to discuss it. Mr. Chair. Well, is there a second to it? I'll second for discussion. Okay. Okay. So, moving forward, I have some concern about, I understand what you're saying on the part of what I did in my grad school, but I understand. I am concerned with doing that just on the, you know, on, I think we need to put a strong suggestion on something that says, take a look at the viability of the, you know, how are we going to fund, you know, transit, which is the real key. And if we're doing well enough with this, we'll pick it up. Go ahead. On the funding, the long-term funding, even if there is money for this period of time, the county's going to have to fund it at some point in the future, and there needs to be enough density for it to actually make sense. When you have low density in these areas, it may be funded for a period of time, but it won't be funded for the long term, and it won't really be used that much as well unless there's a density to support it. And then a number of people there as well clustered to be able to use it. What you're doing is you're suggesting an increase in the maximum but not necessarily a requirement to get there? On the village core, it would be a minimum of 1,200 units, and the village edge a minimum of 600 units. So there creates enough people to live there that transit would work in those areas. Interesting. Okay. Other comments? We're going to spread it out a little bit. A question, I guess. Yes. So is the intent so you can get busing and additional transportation out there that would be that we're going to get these people in from this development? Because I don't know necessarily if you start increasing these minimums that people all of a sudden jump on buses, to be honest with you. Sure. Go ahead. So I think you get minimums. You can have enough frequency routes to get there. If we don't, we're just going to create a bunch of cars that are driving there. This is, people complain about all of the traffic that's happening out west and more, and this, no matter what, if this is developed or not, we'll increase it. We have to start having the density to be able to address that. That's the only way that transit will work, is you have enough density for it to have transit come often enough, and which, and be able to have to work. So that's why. I mean, yeah. I think the intent is good. I mean, without a doubt, it's good and everything. I just don't know if the residents of Gainesville and everything will give up their cars, I hate to say, but, you know, they're too used to jumping in their car with their own stuff. And even if you're closer into town, I just don't see, you know, people really jumping on the buses or people that I know that are jumping on the buses. And I'm not saying that, you know, nobody doesn't jump on buses, but, you know. Great. Sam. Mr. Chairman, I like what is being proposed here, and I agree with Mr. Riley on what we have to look at and the reality. I wouldn't mind coming up with the 600 units and the 1,200 units, but not as a minimum. I would think that you have to allow the minimum to be done by the developer based upon the economics of the situation rather than looking at this and maybe coming up with something that negates what looks like a good project. And that's just my concern. Okay. Other comments on the side? Yes. The reason why people don't use transit is we don't have short headways and we don't have rapid routes. Because we can't get to that because we don't have the density. This, either way that's being proposed, it will create a lot of car trips. We talked a lot about the farm. I'm bringing it back to the car trips because that's something that the applicant really didn't delve into. This is an intense development outside the urban cluster. This is urban scale development outside the urban cluster. It's going to create a lot of traffic. It's going to require taxpayers to expand Archer Road to four lanes. I get what Commissioner Santos is going for because that is what supports transit. I'm not going to vote for any motion that recommends to the county commission to transmit to the state because this scale development does not belong outside the urban cluster. It does not belong at the edge of our urban cluster when there's so much bilberal space inside and there's such low density inside. There's low density between this and proposed development and further into Gainesville. It's all single family or a lot of single family. It's an intense development that puts a lot of pressure on our transportation system. I think people should be connected to nature. I'm on the Land Conservation Board to preserve wild spaces because we are losing them and we need that connection. But the reality is when you create a neighborhood like this, you're destroying nature, a strategic ecosystem, to connect, put people to live there, to connect to nature. So I do want to make sure that is explicit. So I'm not going to vote for the motion I just seconded and I'm not going to vote for any motion that recommends transmittal. Mr. Chair? Yes. I'd like to say something. I support everything that Commissioner Young just said. I too agree with what she said. I can't support something that would cost more even to taxpayers. And for that reason, I'm not going to support it. I call it. I was trying to get some agreement if you don't mind for just a moment. No, that's fine. Okay. Mr. Chair, I would say as long as this motion is on the floor, you should go to public comment before you have a vote. That's fine. Excellent comment. And we will do so. Whenever the Board has finished this discussion. I'm trying to get something to work with. Yes. So I'm getting this nudge that we should talk about citizens' comments and we're not ready to vote yet. Thank you very much. I appreciate the help. It takes a village. Yes. To the member about the minimums, and I hear you on the financial, I think that's a very fair thing. And I think this is a recommendation to the county commission. So my thought is that from now until they come before the county commission, they could look at the pro forma, see what works and doesn't, and then they could have that conversation at the county commission level. But this is just a recommendation and there's time for them to figure that out and work with the county commission to see if this would work or not. Okay. Thank you, Chair. I think we're getting somewhere. Okay. And can we go to citizens' input? Anybody want to make comments? Please come forward. Any other. And the drill. And Mr. Chair, just to your preference, but the typical situations, we allow three minutes of comment. Yes, sir. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the commission. My name is Tom Myrty. I reside near this location. I apologize. My pen died, so I'm going to have to read off my phone. That's where I took my notes. I wanted to point out that I'm concerned. I'm also who submitted a written comment ahead of time a week ago. I think I related transportation concerns and concerns about water quality. I'd also like to point out that there's, I'd also be concerned about water use. One of the things in the presentation talked about 200 gallons per day per dwelling unit. That's a half a million gallons a day. Typically, that is, about half of that ends up going towards lawns if lawns are part of this, part of what people are using. And that's, in my opinion, not a very good use of the limited water that we have in this region. I'm familiar with Oakmont, which uses treated effluent. But you see, I walk there every night, and you see a lot of water getting wasted. Treated effluent is just as valuable as the other water we're using because it's substituting for it. And there's a lot of water that gets wasted because they are using that irrigation just after it's rained, for example. So, my observations of what's happening there aren't all that reassuring about how things would get managed moving forward. I think banning individual irrigation wells within this development would be a good, though minor step. For nitrates, I submitted sampling data that showed it increased levels of nitrate already in the area. Presumably, this is related to the ongoing Oakmont development and the use of treated effluent, which can be up to three milligrams per liter of nitrate. But I'll also note that this area is within the Poe Springs Shed. We're in the upper end of the water that feeds to Poe Springs. And I also note that nitrates can be thought of as a proxy for any pesticides and herbicides that are applied on this property, frankly, or on the golf course property next to it, and on Oakmont as well. So, I would propose support for a comprehensive county water quality sampling in the area down gradient of where this development is. I'm concerned about nitrates, but I'm not concerned about it relative to the farm, by the way. It's the residential development that is of concern to me. And the golf course. Sorry? And the golf course. That's not part of what we're discussing tonight. As far as public transportation, there's a lot of jargon in what I was reading. I'd be interested to know specifically what that meant in terms of funding and duration. My family uses the buses in this area. I note that when there was a transition in the Route 52 recently, what it meant was that the 150 route out of Hale got taken away. So, I'm not sure that the transitions that we look at in terms of funding are useful sometimes. So, we should look back at that. I'm out of time. Unless, Mr. Chair, you'd allow me to speak a bit more. I thought your content was good. I've got one more thing I'd like to say. If I might. I want to say also that I've had the great privilege of working with Austin's father in my working career. He's a very honorable man, and I think he's raised an honorable son. Just that's independent of anything going on here. It's just that's been my interaction with this family. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have somebody else speaking. Yes. Your name, please. Senator. Matt Adler. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for the time. My questions relate to also potential connections to the east. If there is anything that allows Southwest 61st to be used and where those connections might go, how that might divert traffic through those other areas. And I understand the comments about the density attempting to make transit more usable. People are tied to their cars. And so simply putting extreme increases onto the minimums is going to just increase the number of vehicles that are doing those trips. They're not going to just suddenly make people think the bus is convenient. I'm going to use it. In their presentation, they mentioned an increase in the buffer or the decrease in density to the south and southwest to sort of accommodate the neighboring folks. Why is that not part of the other surrounding areas that this community will be built in? Specifically, I live to the east, so I'm, you know, more interested in the east as well. And perhaps if density was the key driver, shrinking the overall area that would be developed and concentrating in an area that might be more beneficial rather than spreading it out further. So not necessarily increasing units, maybe decreasing, but concentrating them further away. And that's about it. Thank you. Appreciate the comments. Okay. We're going to move forward. We have two more. Okay. Go for it. Hello. Mr. Furman. I live right in the middle of where this is going to be, and I've been there for 20 years. I have seen Gainesville grow out of proportion over these 20 years. The traffic situation has deteriorated to the point the roads do not support this development. The plans for Archer development, I don't know how long that's going to be, but whatever is stated, you can probably times that by two, right? I think this development, being urbanizing an area that's not connected to other urban areas is not the right thing to do. These people are going to have to move, are going to have to travel from where they're going to be into the town to do things, to work, to shop, to go to the hospital. The congestion on Archer Road, when I first moved out there, I could get to the hospital, because I had to get in the hospital by 30 minutes across my job. I could get to the hospital in 30 minutes, any time of the day. Today, during school, 7 o'clock, if you get on Archer Road, it's a 50-minute commute to Shands Hospital. That's not going to improve. You can widen the road, but you're going to add another 2,000 cars to it, and that's not going to help. So we need to reconsider this. The infrastructure is not in place to support this development, and it makes no sense to put an urban area outside of where the urban area is. There's no connection to it, so I oppose this development with every fiber of my being. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for giving me an opportunity. My name is Kamal Muhammad. I intend to live in one of the places where the development is. I want a small piece of land over there. The first question I heard in the discussions where the Lugano access is preserved, so that is Southwest 73rd Avenue that is going to be connected. It is connected to Parker Road. And the other one, other street connection is right through it, traverses through the proposed plans. It's Southwest 107th Street. So my question is, are these going to be open? Are they going to be locked with this development? So I wish they will be open to the public because this development shall not be closing those access streets and avenues. The second thing, I am pro-development. I support the proposal. However, I also support the ecological conservation. So is there any way the developer creates the buffer zones in the development where the number of trees being eliminated will be replaced? Maybe 1 to 1 or 1 to 1.5 so that the ecosystem will be still preserved. That can be achievable with the county recommendations and the will of the developer. The last thing which is not related because when we come from the west side, taking Archer Road, that's a bottleneck. On a weekend, I can drive 9 to 13 minutes to the VA. I work in a VA. But if I delay 40 minutes, it takes 54 minutes, same drive. So this question is for the county commissioners. So if you see the White River Parkway in Indianapolis, so the beautiful scenery parkway, which has eight lanes, what they do in the morning when the public traverses to the downtown, the eight lanes will be six lanes toward the downtown, two lanes outside. So the Archer Road, I know there are some trees in between where the county commissioners have any intent to make that happen so that you can avoid this bottleneck. I appreciate it. I do not have an answer for you on these subjects, but I think your input has been noted. Thank you. I do not have the information to help you. But this is something to be keeping in mind with the future. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions, comments to be added? Yes, sir. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Roger Christian. I've grown up in Gainesville. I've seen a lot. Built a house 27 years ago on that side of town, and I've loved it. It's been great. 27 years ago, it was a lot quieter than it is today, for sure. I've watched a lot being built around me. I have to be honest. I never thought I'd be at a commissioner's meeting, city commissioner. I just happened to hear from a friend a few months back about this really cool neighborhood that they're looking to put in. So I went to one of those meetings. I think it was at Williger Elementary. I asked a lot of questions. I got really excited. I just became a granddad two months ago tomorrow. I'd already pretty much in my head told my wife, we're going to buy lots in this place. We're going to get all the family members in here because I struggle with the way of the world today. And I really had no idea I was going to come here and hear such negativity about what I consider an amazing project. I've got no dog in this fight. I'll stay where I've been living. It's a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood, but it's not this. I thought this would be a cool place. I've seen a lot go up in Gainesville that I didn't understand. 2,500-unit, 5,000-unit apartment complexes right smack dab in the middle of Gainesville, right off 20th Avenue. I'm retired now, but I had an office over by Scrubs, and I used to travel 20th and then to 24th to my home. Traffic would drive me crazy. But I've got to tell you, folks, and I understand, I'm a pretty smart guy. Ran a multi-million dollar business for many years. Did a lot of building. You know, there's that old adage, if you build it, they will come. I think I'm a little surprised by the attitude is more not, are we going to let this happen, but how can we make this happen? How can we make this happen? Gainesville, which is supposed to be such a really cool green community, I understand you're going to tear up woods to build it, but every time we build, we tear up woods. To me, this was a pretty cool opportunity to tear up some woods, yes, but then turn it back around into something that's positive for animals and positive for plants and positive for things. You know, I talked to this guy, I don't know him, I think at Twill or one of your representatives. I was about ready to go down to Martin County to see this project. Have any of you all gone down there to see it? I know my time's up, but I just, I had no intention of talking tonight. I've never spoken at one of these things. But I'm sitting there, my head's spinning, and I'm thinking, why, I just have felt such negativity in this room at times. And I, it's not who I am. I believe in tackling things kindly and really trying to work through things. And that's why I spoke tonight. I was pretty excited about this project. I'm sorry if somebody's lived 20 years, and we got water issues all over the planet. We got all of these things we're talking about. I'm sorry? Mr. Chair, I blame you. He's way past his time. Oh, I apologize. I know you and I see this thing differently, but thank you for letting me speak. Nothing to do with that. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. It was my first time doing it, and I- We did a good job. Thank you. Okay, we almost have a motion on the floor. We saw some more people. Oh, we got more people. Okay. How many more people are going to speak? Good evening, Board and Mr. Chair. Thank you for hearing me. I'm Brian Crawford. I live in the area, just off 24th. I've lived there for 10 years since my daughter was born. We love the area, and I think this project is really a great addition to the area. I can easily, I was just looking at the map, I can easily ride my bike to the area. We drive all over town, so I welcome seeing more density in the area where we have an opportunity to bring more restaurants to that area where there are a ton of homes already. Most of the people that live there like me drive across town, and the more density we get, the more opportunity we're going to have to have those amenities that keep us from driving across town and clogging the roadways. Even more so, it would be a bit of a counter-commute, as an example for me, where I'm going opposite or where most of the traffic would be to get here and enjoy the amenities if I'm doing it by vehicle, but I could easily do it by bike. As could anyone in the Hill Plantation area or any of those many subdivisions that are there. So I really support it. I think it's great. Any opportunity that we can give our kids to see agriculture, see where their food comes, and do it in a way that's attainable, do it in a project that normal people in the world can actually afford to enjoy that. That opportunity is rare, and I think it's something that's worth supporting. To that end, as the density goes, look, I'm in the business. I would say that any developer would welcome more density. I would caution to say, to put constraints on them that you have to do a minimum because at the end of the day we could lose a really great project because it wouldn't be possible for the developer to do. But I would encourage you to lift it. Let them do it dense if the market will allow it. And I assure you, if the market supports it, developers are always going to go for that opportunity. So I do think it's great that you guys recognize that and you allow them or have suggested the ability to increase density. So thank you all. Thank you. Anybody else? Hi there, folks. My name is Billy Hackett. And with this comment, I don't intend to pass judgment on whether that motion should pass or fail. But only had a comment or question on the plan itself for the development. I see in the photos a lot of grass in the lawns or along the walkways. And I haven't heard discussion of native species and was just curious if the plan will, in some ways, include encouragement for native species with deeper roots as opposed to grass with its shallow roots, very nutrient, water intensive. I recognize this Florida-friendly landscaping grass is a turf that cannot be banned by HOAs or regulated by the county, but do wonder. For example, can the walkways through the neighborhood, not only the trails include and be heavily planted with those native species, can there be education about the value of planting native species in the home, on the farm, on that working farm? Relatedly, might that working farm include a compost pile and other education for residents of the neighborhood in that way? Those are questions that I have that I hope can be added to the eventual plan. Thank you. Ready to try and move forward? And more people. Can we get a hand raised where you are left? Thank you. The applicant would request an opportunity to respond. First of all, I'd like to start, Robin. Who are you, sir? I'm Drew Holley with the project team, England, Timms, and Miller. Thank you, commissioners. Roger, Brian, thank you for attending the meetings. Thank you for your support. And thank you for being a part of this ongoing process to make this a better project overall. I would like to respond to Billy first, because that one's kind of top of mind here. And yes, so there are provisions and policy for native species, 100% native species, and Florida-friendly landscaping. Also policies that promote NOMO landscaping. As Chris and the team has discussed earlier, we have irrigation policies with annual irrigation allowances. So I believe all of those tenants are well covered in the policy text that you have before you this evening. Going backwards, Tom, I appreciate the comments on irrigation and our water being precious. I know this team believes that as well. We have conferred with GRU over the course of really the last six to eight months to confirm that GRU has plant capacity. But furthermore, we have gone a step further by banning irrigation wells for private residential lots within the development. We are promoting lowest quality water usage for reuse and stormwater as the irrigation source across the development. Obviously, the one caveat to that would be on the farm itself where those sources of water cannot be utilized for health and human safety reasons. We are promoting best management practices for the use of water across the development. Additionally, there is no fertilizer application across private residential lots. I want to reiterate that. Again, that is a policy that is before you this evening. Matt, I heard your comments on buffers, and I'd like to address that as well. That is something that we have been working internally with the team and with staff that will be part of the planning and zoning master plan. We have given large buffers around the entire perimeter of the site, most of which vary on the order from 50 to 100 feet to accommodate our neighbors. We want to be good neighbors. We also want to invite you into the community and be a part of what we have going on. But obviously, realize that sometimes space makes good neighbors. Some of the other comments I heard, and I apologize if I don't hit them all. Chris, I heard the comments about drive times and limits on development. Obviously, as part of this, something that we haven't seen a whole lot in this part of the community is a commercial element. And that is something that we are committed to as a project, as Victor alluded to earlier tonight. If we can shorten those drive times and put your local neighborhood restaurant, your local market, your local doctor's office, the pharmacy in close proximity to where you live, you are more likely to utilize those resources within your own neighborhood. That is a commitment from this team to do up to 200,000 square feet of commercial at various points along Archer and Parker Roads. Additionally, we have talked about the limits being placed on development up until the point that Archer Road is within the work program for FDOT. We are committed to honoring those limits on the development until such point. And we will certainly be advocates for the widening of Archer Road and additional multimodal options. Lastly, I believe there was one comment or question about Southwest 73rd. Currently, that acts as an unplatted non-county right-of-way and an access for an existing cell tower. Our intention would be to leave that open for some of the current residents that utilize it, knowing that the preference would be for them to continue the routes as they know them today. So I hope that I addressed as many of the comments as I possibly could. My page was filling up quickly, and I appreciate all the comments. Okay. Mr. Chair, so the proposed motion we're voting on the increase in the minimum. What percentage overall on the whole project does that represent? From the minimums in those two categories or from? For the whole project, what's the percentage increase in? From the total, it was going from 2,500 units to 5,000 units. And then the Village Core was going from a minimum of 600 units to 1,200 units. And Village Edge was going from 300 units to 600 units. So the total is from, is it minimum or allowed? Allowed. To 5,000 from? From 2,500. Okay. And so for the minimum, so we're, again, sorry, from the minimum of 300 to 600 and minimum of 600 to? 1,200. So that would be like an 1,800 minimum in those areas. And just to kind of, I know it sounds like a big number, but across this whole project, it's five units an acre. It's not that much of a, even at that level of 5,000 units, it's only five units. Thank you, Chair. I have a question. Yes. If this is accepted, this seems like a change that's a fairly significant change. Would this need to go back through staff review? I mean, the thing that doesn't make a lot of sense to me is increasing more units. And it's if there's concerns about traffic, you're going to build more units where you potentially will not have people that will be choosing to get in vehicles, most likely, if human behavior dictates. Those are my questions. There's been a lot of expertise involved with this, and there's been staff review and expertise involved with this review. Would it have to go back through another review for? Do you have input? Mr. Chair, here's my perspective, and Jeff might have a different one, but I'm going to speak first. I think that a change that's that significant, yeah, we certainly have some obligations under the policies that exist on our comprehensive plan to evaluate potential impacts. One of those, for example, is impacts on the school system. So we have a requirement to coordinate with the school board about potential impacts from student generation, from especially new development, where there's a comprehensive plan amendment. So we did that with the current analysis, and the school board indicated that capacity is available either within the existing school concurrency service areas or adjacent ones, depending. I would think that if the Planning Commission were to approve a motion such as what's on the floor today, we would want to go back through those same levels of analysis as it relates to those concurrency related items. I think, in addition, we'd probably want to have some additional transportation analysis that sort of contemplated those higher intensity uses. And whether the thresholds that we've identified in the policies today that are sort of intended to deal with what's proposed now in the policies, that 2,500 units, are appropriate or if there might be additional policies that would be necessary. I don't know that that would necessarily come back to the Planning Commission at that point. But it certainly would warrant some additional analysis, Mr. Chair. The other is there a possibility that we would approve, we would move what we currently have and with the comments to the Commission that there was support for higher density. And or we hold this and we do not vote on it and then look at what could be next, you know, to take a month and to have some time to look at what the options are. So on the first part, Mr. Chair, certainly the Planning Commission could make a motion to recommend transmittal of what staff is today and include some comment or comments. or commentary about what the Planning Commission was thinking. Although I think if that's the motion of the Planning Commission, maybe it's appropriate for the Planning Commission to vote on the motion they have in front of them. On the second part, Mr. Chair, I'm not really certain. I haven't heard anyone express exactly what it is that someone would need to come back with to the Planning Commission in the future. So I think if the Commission wanted to take that approach, we'd need some very explicit direction about what additional analysis or information the Planning Commission was requesting. We've got both sides. Let's let this side go first. Just a statement, Mr. Chair. I'm not sure if we truly do have support for an increased density. So I think we should tease that out now before including it in any other types of comments. Okay, straw vote. No. Or real vote. Real vote. Real vote. Okay. We have a motion. Yes. Okay. And the motion that we have is for the density as staff as we have had the report today. No. No. No. We want to go up. It's the motion, yeah. On that motion. You want to repeat the motion? No, let's go to the motion. Mr. Chair, my understanding of the motion is that it's all of staff's recommendation with the exception that the total number of units provided for would be 5,000. That the minimum number of units within the village core would be 1,200 with a maximum density of 32 dwelling units per acre. In the village edge, a minimum number of units of 600 and up to 20 dwelling units per acre. That the hamlet would be up to 10 dwelling units per acre. And if the maker of the motion can clarify, what I heard was that in the farmstead it would be up to six dwelling units per acre. Correct. These are all up to but not with minimums. The last two are maximums with no minimums, Mr. Chair. Not one comment. Can we call the vote? If you want to change, I'll make it. The vote's been called. The vote's been called. Okay. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Aye. Aye. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve submission to the county commission as proposed with a recommendation to send it forward to the state of Florida for review. Aye. Second. Comments? Ready to vote? Aye. Again, this is urban scale development outside the urban cluster, so I'll be voting no. Mr. Sherrod. I'll make a statement. I'll be putting no on this as well. We are making more traffic with this vote without actually finding ways to solve it. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Chair, I'll also talk about concession, too. I think the traffic won't support Archer Road, and I can't see the taxpayers paying for more paving the road, especially when we have roads right now in the Lodger County that needs to be paid. I can't see it. Other comments? Yeah, Mr. Chair. Yes. I think it's similar to what we just discussed a minute ago in terms of putting some language around increasing the density. Could we also include some language around just, I believe, this commission's concerns around transportation and transit? Similar to maybe what Mr. Christian mentioned. I think this is a rather cool project, but I would be remiss if I didn't say there was just general concerns about transportation in general. So is there anything that we can do special? I would agree to language that says in the motion that the Planning Commission is concerned about the transportation issues. I was wondering if we needed to have a little bit more flexibility on the services, the commercial, and I haven't thought it through. But it seems that one of the things that you might need to have more availability of commercial areas and offices and other services to keep us from having to go under the I-75. And that is more of a thought question for people. Is there a second on the motion? I think we're running into the same thing as our last motion, right? Okay. Mr. Chair, can we just make sure that if we're going to add the language about traffic that the seconder agrees? What is the language that we're going to be adding? We would draft a general concern as staff just to relate that the Planning Commission was concerned about transportation issues is the way I took the comment. Yes. I think we need to. I agree. I think there's general agreement on that. Okay. So are we ready to vote? Yes. And would staff repeat what you think we are doing? Mr. Chair, my understanding is that the motion is staff's recommendation with the policies proposed in the staff report as well as a comment to the board that the Planning Commission has concerns about the aspects of this application. Okay. But we are recommending that this board is recommending that the Board of County Commissioners transmit the application to the state for review and comment. Yes. That's correct, Mr. Chair. Are we ready to vote? Yes. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Nay. Okay. Show of hands. All in favor? All in favor? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Okay. It passes with the notation. And I want to appreciate, save my appreciation for the people who really think this through. And some of the pieces that have not been approved today will show up somewhere else. Yes. It has moved the needle. I understand some people think it's not enough, but it's starting to move the needle. And there would be, I almost wanted to say there was some comments about the transportation, but I didn't want to get too far into the weeds. Yeah. And we'd leave it where we are. I want to thank everybody on the meeting. Have I, oh, attendance, I'm doing this again. Okay. We have a few things to do. Are you here yet? Approval of the minutes from the last meeting? Four sets of minutes that need to be approved. Okay. Approving them all at the same time? Each individually? Yes. We can do it. Individually, please. Individually, all four of them. Okay. We're going to do the February 18th. I think we can do them all together. You can do them all together. Can I do them all together? Oh, let's do it all together. Anybody have a problem with that? No. Let's do it. Okay. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. That's one of them. Attendance report. Do we need that? No. We're good, right? Okay. I did just want to make one comment if I could. I wanted to extend my appreciation to commissioners Young and Vincent for their service on the board. This will be their last meeting. So at your next meeting, you'll have two new commissioners, but I do appreciate your service to the commission and your service to Alachua County. Thank you. Thank you for another save. Okay. And in the attendance report, public comment for items that are not on the agenda. Okay. And then for now, if we have none, then we are ready for a motion for adjournment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So moved, Mr. Chairman. Wait a minute. You got what? Mr. Mohamed wants to. Yes. I don't know. It's a good news. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for saying that not on the agenda. This is something every Gainesville citizen facing. When is the city going to consider synchronizing the lights? Because we are all talking about the traffic and all, but that is the, you know, at least 30 percent of traffic will be free flowing if you synchronize the stop lights. That is the only comment I have. Mr. Mohamed, this is not the commission that handles that. I don't know that. No, I understand that. I was going to tell you that it goes to the Metropolitan Planning Commission, which is made up of the city and the county. And they meet usually once a month and it's, they're members of the, both the city and the county commission. And they are the people to discuss it. And it's probably been discussed every years for the last 50 years, but please bring it up again. And there is synchronization that is happening. Mr. Chair, just in the nature of public service and education, we do have an intelligent transportation system. It's managed by the city of Gainesville under contract, obviously for the city streets, but also for FDOT and all of the county roads. So the entire county system is included in that. There's a very impressive array office in the city of Gainesville public works offices. It's got television screens, cameras. So when you go by and you see cameras, that is used to synchronize lights. They can do it for special events. So if traffic is bad, it's because we have too many vehicles, not because the city lights aren't synchronized to the best of the traffic engineer's ability. Okay. So you're finding out the lights are synchronized? They are synchronized based on the analysis of the transportation engineers. Generally there's, depending upon which way you're going, you know, if you're going with the heaviest flow, you're more likely to be synchronized as opposed to going the other way. They do change them during the day. And, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go and complain and go and see if you can't make it better. Go for it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Just want to send you with the right info. Okay. I think we're all ready for adjournment. All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. We're going to miss you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're going to miss you. Ready?