The 9th, no, I'm sorry, the April 9th, 2025 meeting of the Local Planning Agency of the City of Dunedin will now come to order. The Local Planning Agency is an advisory board of citizens appointed by the City Commission. This board is composed of volunteers who represent the thoughts and concerns of the community. And I appreciate that you all showed up this evening. Thank you. The purpose of tonight's meeting is to make recommendations to the City Commission regarding each item on the agenda. Everyone in the audience who wishes to give testimony to any items on the agenda will need to be sworn in by the Deputy City Clerk. Citizens speaking on an agenda item or during citizen comment will not engage in loud, boisterous, or disruptive speech or conduct. Any speaker that has continued inappropriate or irrelevant comments will be requested to relinquish the podium by the chair. Please be aware that the Local Planning Agency is not a quasi-judicial board and therefore has no final decision-making power. Our procedures, however, are structured in a quasi-judicial manner for the benefit of those who come before it. Tonight's format will be as follows. I will introduce each item on the agenda, after which the City Representative will present information about it. Thereafter, the members of the Local Planning Agency will ask any questions of the City Representative. Finally, anyone from the public may come forward. Those from the public wishing to give testimony will need to approach the dais, state their name and address, and then utilize the speaker's lectern in order for their comments to be recorded. Individual speakers will be limited to three minutes of speaking time, and we kindly request that speakers are respectful of the clock countdown. Upon conclusion of each public hearing, the Local Planning Agency will consider the evidence before it and vote on the agenda item. The voice vote is the rendition of the order of the board, and there will be no written decision issued by the board. The first item on the agenda tonight is to approve the March 12, 2025 LPA minutes. Are there any corrections, additions, or deletions to the minutes? Hearing none, do I hear a motion to accept the minutes as submitted? So moved. Second. Thank you. The minutes stand. Okay. All those in favor signify by aye. Aye. Thank you. The minutes stand approved as submitted. The deputy clerk will now swear in persons wishing to speak to or give testimony to any of tonight's agenda items.
Please raise your right hand. Do you swear the testimony you are about to give in this proceeding is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you.
Thank you very much. The second item on the agenda is Ordinance 25-01, approving and authorizing the execution of the development agreement for the City of Dunedin and the Flats on Main Street LLC for the Flats on Main Street project at 1422 Carnation Drive. Has anyone had export day communications regarding this ordinance? Thank you. Staff?
Thank you, Chair. Broom, members of the board, George Kinney, on behalf of the Community Development Department, and to my left, I'm blessed here this evening to have our Economic Development Director, Bob Ironsmith, with me as well. So I'm going to just walk you through this quickly. I'll be fairly brief. This is a development agreement request. As you probably know, the development agreement is one of two parts to the process. There is the development agreement piece to a larger development such as this, and then there is the design review, which will follow. So the board will have not only a look tonight at the development agreement, but a look at the design review when it comes forward in the future. The City Commission authorized the City Manager to enter into negotiations for this development agreement back in February. Those negotiations have been concluded. And I'll just kind of walk through what the development agreement contains, and then certainly if you have any questions, we're happy to answer them. Very quickly, just to kind of give you an idea of the location of the site, it is located north of Main Street, kind of between, if you know where Lucan's Liquor is, and the Abandoned Family Dollar Store. The access is a carnation drive that kind of traverses between those two buildings, and the property kind of sits to the rear of those properties. Archway Partners, who is the applicant and is also here tonight, can provide testimony once we're through and if you have additional questions. They intend to construct a 78-unit affordable housing project back on the site. The City Land Development Code requires that a development agreement be entered into for any projects requesting affordable residential density, and also for the waiver of certain impact fees. So that's what you'll see in the agreement. There's really three pieces to it. There's two impact fee waiver requests, and that would be the Parkland Impact Fee and the Public Art Impact Fee, and that's the Public Art Impact Fee is only waived by half.
Reduction, yeah.
The Parkland Impact Fee is waived in, is requested to be waived in full. And then the other piece of this development agreement is the density bonus, which is allowed pursuant to the Land Development Code of up to 50%, and that is the request. The proposed agreement provides for a 20-year timeline and, again, addresses each of those provisions. Additional density, as you'll probably note within the agreement, is also afforded pursuant to a state statute regarding gray water. So there is an additional 35% density bonus granted as part of that statutory allowance. So all in all, that permits the site to have up to 78 units, which is indeed the request before you, and part and parcel to this development agreement. And, again, as I mentioned, design review will follow. The agreement is pretty straightforward, as mentioned. Certainly, if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. But we find that Ordinance 2501 is made and entered into consistent with the Land Development Code and Florida statute, and we are actually recommending from a staff perspective commission the LPA recommendation of approval to the commission. The next step would be the city commission first read on May 8, 2025, and that's kind of the technical piece of it. I'm going to want to turn it over to Bob a little bit, and he's going to talk a little bit more about the project itself.
Yeah, I'm just going to give you a brief history. This, what George is going to put up there, is kind of the rendering. Can you get the colored one? Sure. I'll put that up as just a little bit more. There we go. This has kind of been a long time in the making. You know, we hear about affordable housing all the time. We want to get something going in the city. We've tried four or five attempts over the last four or five years to get something going. This is a pretty interesting project. We've got some partnership on this one. Archways is a proven developer. The Pinellas County Housing Authority brought in $10 million to the deal through vouchers over a year. A 20-year time period. In addition to that, we were able to compete at the state level and get what's called 9% tax credits, 9%. That made the deal. So we're pretty proud of this one. We hear in all our different public meetings, affordable housing is number one. And this one, we feel, is a really good project for the city. So as George said, it's 78 units. It's got a nice rendering. Dave Hayslip and Caroline are here from Archways. They can answer any additional questions for the developer that might have. But certainly happy to answer the other questions that you might have. But this is a really strong partnership. And as I said, we've tried for the last four or five years. And we finally were able to get this one together. So we're pretty excited about it. Thank you.
Thanks, both of you. Questions?
I just have a quick question. George, the first slide you had up showed the building as two parallel buildings. Our documents show it as more of an L. Which is the most current layout?
Let's see. It would be, which one is the rendering?
That's the L here.
Yeah, that looks more like an L. These are the drawings that were submitted. So, you know, the applicants here, maybe I would defer to him. I can tell you that the description for the property is two three-story garden-style apartment buildings containing 36 two-bedroom units and 42 one-bedroom units in a garden-style apartment design.
Probably the developer, Dave Hayslip, can answer that. There were some additional modifications. There was trees out there and the drains were tension areas, so I know they had to move things. So, I don't know, Dave, can you answer a question? Thank you. Hi.
Great, guys, evens.
I'm sorry, have you, before you, you need to be sworn in.
Yeah.
I think you need to turn on the microphone.
There you go. Hi, Dave Hayslip with Archway Partners. Nice to meet you all. Thank you. That is, the site plan that you see there with the renderings, it's an L shape. That's our current plan.
Okay.
The one on slide number one was one of the original site plans we put together.
Okay. That's the only question I have.
Are there other questions? So, and George, maybe you can explain this to me. So, are we just looking at the public art, the parkland, and the density part of that today? Or are we actually looking at kind of what is the, what they're talking about, what's actually going to physically be there?
Just the development agreement today. So, yes, just those three pieces today. But the design review will follow. So, you will have a look at a full-blown design review application, which will come, which will follow the development agreement.
And then at this point, I don't have any other questions.
Can you describe what the public involvement process will be for design review?
For this particular case, there is no requirement for public outreach from the applicant. However, we do our traditional notice. So, there was a letter of notice that was mailed to everybody within a certain proximity of the project. And that will happen for both this development agreement and the design review. And, of course, there's legal advertising, which is part of your backup. You'll see some of the legal pieces that we put through the Tampa Bay Times.
George, real quick, one more question on that. So, what is the actual trigger for the development agreement and, I guess, to the design review? So, size, number, what gets us here today?
Yeah, good question. So, anything more than five units. So, in this case, 78, and so that triggers design review or 6,000 square feet if it's a commercial project.
Yeah, I think the other thing, too, is that looking at the waiver of parkland impact fees, intercode requires a development agreement. So, that's the other trigger.
Yeah, all three of the pieces of the development agreement pursuant to code require that are in the development agreement, the two impact fee exemptions and the density bonus, all three of those pieces within the land development code require a development agreement to accompany the design review.
Yeah, and this was actually part of our, you know, of course, Deborah was here, the affordable housing toolkit that we have. And so, we use the affordable housing toolkit to get to where we are today, and that required the development agreement.
Thank you. Any other questions for the staff? Then we are open for public input. Does anyone from the public want to speak? Please.
Good evening. Ma'am. Glad to be here. Nancy Schmidt. I live, you need my address? Thank you. 1380 Daffodil Place, unit number five, in the St. Christopher complex. Okay? All right. Thank you. I had the pleasure of addressing a similar issue.
Have you been sworn in?
I'm sorry? I did. Yes, you were. Yeah, I did. Perfect. Thank you. It wasn't too fancy, but I did. Okay. I previously have addressed construction issues around where the St. Christopher units are, and I briefly want to mention that because there were some buildings that were put up just to the north of us, and I had expressed concern at that time because we were taking an acre of green land with trees and then putting up buildings in cement, and I was concerned about the water runoff. And we have, since that time, had issues. It's been costing us money with plumbing, with fixing runoff that's been running into our units, and I was very concerned about. I was told everything was fine. It was to code. Everything was appropriate. We're still dealing with it, which is hitting us in the pocketbook. And now we have this complex, which is going to go up on one side of us, and all the green is gone, and we now have buildings and cement. And my concern is very similar. This is a hilly area. It's not much, but there's a slope. My concern is how it's going to impact our property right behind it. And I don't know if anybody can give me 100% guarantee, but I was told that the last time everything was to code. You'd have no problems. The engineer at that time had even come out with me. I had pictures, diagrams. It was to code. We are suffering with it, and we're just stuck with it. The other thing that I'm very concerned about is the height of these buildings. We have single-story buildings right behind it. We've been there since the middle 80s, and now we're going to be facing the back of this. And I know there is some consideration when it comes to putting up buildings like this is, I don't know the proper term, shadow effect, when you have a tall building next to a one-story building. And so we have a whole row of our homes that are going to be looking at the back of this, and I'm concerned about those two aspects. I don't like the idea it's three-story, and I'm concerned it's totally cement, and how are they really, really going to deal with all the rain that we get and the runoff? I don't want our complex to have to bear the financial burden of dealing with the runoff, and that's where it'll go. Thank you.
Thank you. Nancy? Nancy, which side of the development is your property located on?
I can tell from this. Based on the other diagram, we would have, you know, where it was like this. Obviously, we would have been on one side. It's on the north side. I can tell.
North side.
North side. North side? Yeah, I think it's the north side.
All right. Thank you.
Is there anyone else that would like to speak? Please.
I did not swear in that. Okay. Do you swear the testimony you are not given this proceeding is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing that's true? I do. Okay.
So my name is Megan Beach, 1445 Heather Drive. So we would be on the west side of the development. And my concern comes from my background in insurance and seeing what happens in the areas when we're having a lot of development and not enough runoff. So as we know, 2024 was a big year for us with flooding, specifically after the storms that came. And we know that there are more storms coming. It's part of living in this beautiful state. And my concern is, you know, we live in a home that has not had water in our yard ever. My husband's family has owned the home since the early, very early 2000s. And with this storm, having all of that marshland back there, we still saw the water rise into our property. So my concern at this point would be all of this concrete. When we have all of this concrete, where does the water go? It doesn't have anywhere to go because it's going to be, as we've seen in the images, there will be a retention pond, but there's also going to be a lot of concrete around it. So there's nowhere for this water to sink in. And that's a big concern for me, especially seeing flood damages in the market. Another concern that I have is, can our infrastructure handle this? There's going to be a lot of, you know, a lot more cars parked in the parking lots. There's going to be a lot more plumbing that comes from each of these buildings. Is our city prepared to handle that at this time would be a big concern for me because we're seeing a lot. I mean, there's been a lot of plumbing updates that have been required lately just in our neighborhood. So what other issues could there be that we just don't know about? And we're not going to find out until we have all of our systems inundated with even more flooding, or excuse me, even more plumbing. Another concern that was mentioned too is taking away that wildlife of habitats. So when we clear out this land, there's lots of animals that live back there that now have nowhere to go, we're impacting our greenery, we're getting rid of a lot of natural space that we just don't have enough of anymore. So those are my biggest concerns. And I do thank you for your time and for listening to me today. Thank you.
Thank you. I think there was at least one more person.
My name is Laura Brummett, and I'm at 1437 Heather Drive. Um, I back up to this. I would be basically looking at this, and granted, there is a retention type of runoff pond that comes around the back of this property. Um, and I can look right across my yard and see this plat or number of plats that they're using. So yes, you know, that's my neighbor that was just up here. You know, we are concerned about the water, the runoff, um, the greenery, and also just that the residential part of it being residential. So, you know, I was very happy when I bought the home at the time that we were in a residential area. We were around other homes and neighbors and the like. And I also agree with the other, uh, gal that was up here sharing that a three-story building, you know, I don't know where the windows are going. You know, you're going to be in your yard. People are looking down upon that. I, you know, that's not the reason, you know, when I purchased the home to be in a residential area. So there's just a number of, of things that are concerning, um, that folks have shared. And I just wanted you all to know about my concern. And I like being where I'm at and like being in the need. And so I appreciate your time and thank you.
Thank you.
You are about to give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I do.
Okay.
My name is Margaret Fast. I live at 1310 Powder Puff, which would be the east side of the buildings, I believe. They're running along that street. I'm not quite sure. Couldn't quite tell by the map that was sent to us. Um, I'm going to reiterate both the drainage problem. I know that I have spoken to a little bit about it, but a few years back, Twin Villa Ways were built, um, after, uh, our complex has been there since the mid-1980s. And after the Twin Villas Ways complex went in, there's six units, um, of two units per unit and two stories. And since that time, we've had flooding in our complex. And water has intrusion on the east side of the complex into some of the homes along there as well. And we ended up having to cover the cost of repairing all that. We were told that it's not been, you know, it was all done to code. So my question now is, what natural barriers are you going to put in to slow and filter the water? What are being proposed? Are you using pervious pavement? Are you using, um, rain gardens? Tree wells, bios wells. Um, there's something that's called, excuse me, a GSI, which is green stormwater infrastructure. And I know that the city of Dunedin has been involved in part of that as well. So that brings up the question. We don't want our homes flooded. So what is going to be done so that our homes are not flooded in the future with the drainage? Thank you.
Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak?
I do. My name is Rob or Robert Refo. I live at 1341 Azalea Drive, Unit 2. Um, and some of this I have almost questions to pose, but I'll just make some statements for the concerns here. One, I received a letter of notice, so I'm one of the impacted property owners that live within 500 feet of this planned development. As a note, I don't know if there's a requirement of how much notice they're supposed to be given. I think I got this on April 1st. I was out of town. I know some residents that I've talked to have not gotten it. There's no date on the, on the notice, which is a little concerning. So I don't know if there's supposed to be a required time or not to get this. That's one point. There was very little notice on this. Upon looking online, I couldn't find a lot of information on this project at all. I did find, which I will also voice as a concern here, this, the only site development plan I could find online is this one here, which is similar to, similar to the first slide that was shown, which I want to point out, it looks like the first one, if they could show that again, which is a little concerning that they brought two different site development maps. I want that noted. The first one they showed is a little, it's clearer. This one, it's still not a development plan. It just shows you some, a schematic, a sketching of what it should look like. Even when I look on this, this, the only thing I could find, it's not sensical. It's supposed to be 78 units. I can't count how that is in here on the rendering that it shows here on the site development map. It shows maybe 100 parking spaces. So I'm, I'm kind of curious how this is planned out to be. There's probably one. I have a question of how, what's the maximum amount of residents that are going to be in this? I understand this is a very small lot of land. And again, as has been pointed out, this is going to be a three story structure. There's none like that around. And it is absolutely from the look on this, from, from this in the first map, they showed the people that are on one of these streets that have already spoken, they're going to be, it looks like maybe 60 feet away that I can tell again, we can't see what this looks like, but they're probably 60 feet away from a 43 foot high structure. And they live in a one story door. They're going to walk right out and be just, there's going to be a wall of these units in front of them. But that's, let me point out again, anything I show, it doesn't make sense. There's not enough parking spaces for even for what they're talking about, unless, and I'm curious, this is a question that I would pose. What is the required amount of parking? Is there going to be overflow parking for this facility? Because you're talking about, my math says there's at least going to be, unless there's some capacity that's allowed, 150 people, if not more, that will move into this small area, maybe 100 cars, 120 cars, I don't know. Like, that doesn't even count guest vehicles and whatnot. I think I'm out of my time.
Thank you. Is there anyone else? Please.
I do.
My name is Edgar Reed, and I live in the San Christopher Villas off Azalea Drive. It's 1341, Unit 1. I have some thoughts on the possibility of a fire and getting fire equipment in on the backside. If that comes through the San Christopher Villas, are the roads built to withstand the weight of the much heavier equipment that is required to fight a fire on a structure that's 40-odd feet high? Right now, we have just single-unit villas where the peak of the roof is probably at 20 feet at the most. So if you look at a ladder, firefighting piece of equipment, that has a huge footprint of weight. And our roads, capable of withstanding that footprint from electricity, plumbing, all of our power is underground, plumbing obviously is. What is that going to do? You know, we don't want to see a building. No one wants to see a building go down. But we want to know up front if it can withstand the added weight of a large piece of firefighting equipment. Anyway, thank you for your time. Thank you.
My name is Sherry Morrison. I reside at 3005 Country Woods Lane. I am the property manager for San Christopher Villas and have been with them for a little over 12 years. I would like to confirm and reiterate all the issues that have been brought up by the owners and the drainage has cost this community a lot of money that they don't have. And I think that needs to be addressed very seriously. I met with the engineer who did the plan for the villas of San Christopher and he assured me everything was fine as water poured into several of our units and continues to do so. The other question I have is what kind of boundary, perimeter boundary, is proposed in this community? So is there going to be a six-foot wall? Is it concrete? Is it fencing? There has to be some type of perimeter division other than our fence.
Thank you. Is there anyone else?
I've been sworn in.
I do.
I'm here on behalf of my mother, who's in the back row. I don't know if she needs to be up here or not. I don't actually live. My name is Mario Cruz. She lives at 1159 Friendly Lane. So I just want to speak. I'm happy to speak on her behalf if she doesn't need to be up here. But I wanted to share. I don't know if you guys can bring up the diagram. But she is the only one in here that lives on Friendly Lane. And it is right there on the, I believe, the east side. She's concerned. We are concerned for her. She's 85 years old. All the things that have been brought up by all the folks before me. And I also, I don't know, maybe it's not politically correct, but the affordable housing thing is concerning for me as well. I live up in St. Augustine. I can, you know, I'm four hours away. So my ability to help her and do anything for her is limited in some aspects. But we are concerned about, I don't know how that works as far as the question being brought up with the perimeter. I don't know if she's going to be looking at a fence, if she's going to be looking. There still seems to be some confusion as to how the buildings are laid out. So she's, I think, probably as closest to these buildings as anybody around. And so this idea of her looking at a three-foot or a three-story building is concerning. All these things are concerning for us. So just wanted to get that on the record. Thank you, guys.
Thank you. Is there anyone else to speak? Then we are closing public comment. Ed, would love to hear.
Yes, if I might, Mr. Chairman. All excellent points. And what we're looking at here, it's really a two-step process, as I mentioned before. So a lot of what has been asked tonight and discussed tonight will be included as part of that design review. So the only thing we're really talking, and the reason we don't run design review with the development agreement is because if the development agreement doesn't go through, that means that design is not going to be functional. So this is really, the focus tonight is really on those two impact fee issues and the density bonus. That design review will get into detail on stormwater, height, fire. There will be full-blown renderings with that that will show every angle from each property line. So you'll have that final site plan that gives you all that detail with the perimeter boundaries, the height. And I remind the board, as they know, part of this review includes compatibility analysis. So the developer will have to look at the surrounding properties and assure that this development is compatible and blends into that neighborhood. The architecture, as you know, has to be one of the five architectural styles. All of that is coming in the design review. So I don't want to say that it's not important to consider that tonight, but that piece of it will certainly be coming again. And another letter of notice will go out. In the meantime, you know, we have asked, even though it's not required, that the developer have a community meeting. And, you know, I would, again, suggest that that happens because I think that would be good for him to, for them to hold a meeting and start to address some of these concerns before it gets to design review. But, you know, and we will make sure that the appropriate illustration is in the development agreement, obviously, before it goes forward to the city commission. And I'll double check that, obviously, you know, after this meeting. But those concerns, all legitimate. And I can tell you, and the last thing I'll say is, as part of that design review, our entire city staff is reviewing that. That includes fire. That includes engineering. That includes solid waste. That includes our stormwater folks. So, and as you know, the city is very sensitive to stormwater management, particularly after the period we had last year. So that will be exhaustively looked at. And if there are concerns, we are even able to go to peer review for those. So I just wanted to mention that while these great comments, you know, I think we'll get these addressed as part of that next step. And really the focus tonight is, does it make sense to offer the density bonus and does it make sense to waive those impact fees?
So just to summarize, that every issue that was raised will be addressed in some fashion in the design review. Absolutely. And when will that be?
It will depend on the developer. You know, this will go to first read to the city commission. We typically say, you know, after first read, if you're feeling good about it and you don't think there's going to be changes, then you can come with design review. So it could be a month. It could be two months. It's really the developer's prerogative at that point. Okay.
And then we will be back here to look at the actual design review. Right. That is not the purpose of this evening.
That's exactly right. You'll have a full-blown engineered set of drawings. You will have full-blown architectural renderings. So there will be no speculation as to what it will look like and what that perimeter boundary will be and so forth.
Great. Thank you.
George, did you say there was a meeting of the residents or?
I don't think that they had that yet. We've asked them to do that. Okay. So I would encourage them, you know, again, to think about doing that at some point.
I think based on the location and based on the proximity of existing residents, that would be a fantastic idea.
You just turned it off.
I want to second that. I think to really get everybody together, they need to have their voices heard. I think it would be excellent to get with the, to have that community meeting and allow people to begin to really see how it's going to sit because there was some confusion about whether it was this way or whether it was that way. So I just want to reiterate what Mr. Stanek said. I think that is an excellent idea.
And, you know, I would certainly say, you know, the developers here, if they would agree to that, you can certainly recommend that as part of your recommendation to the city commission as well.
Is there anyone else that has? I just have a comment. I mean, I think we can all pretty much admit we do have a shortage of affordable units in the city. So this is exciting and the fact that we're getting financial support for it. I do think the concerns that were brought up need to be seriously considered, particularly with the stormwater issues. If they've already experienced some issues, you know, are there other steps that need to be taken to make sure that we don't have any problems there? We just can't afford that as a community. But other than that, I think it's a good project. It's a needed project. And if we can make it fit within the community, it would be great.
Anyone else? Thank you. Is there a motion?
I'll make a motion to approve the development agreement with the waivers requested on impact fees and density to proceed.
I'll second it.
Can we have a second?
I did.
I'll second it.
I'll second it. Thank you.
And then I'd like to amend it to request that they have the public meeting with the residents and neighbors to the property. If we can move that into that amendment.
Yes. Thank you.
Other thoughts, comments? All in favor? Aye. All opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you.
All right.
We're going to move on. So we are now looking at item 1C, ordinance 25-03. Would you continue your conversation outside, please? This is a recommendation to the City Commission to contract approximately 0.70 acres of real property located at 2201 Main Street, identified as Vanellis County Tax Parcel number 30-28-16, a bunch of zeros, 320-0200, and generally located at the southeast section of Belcher Road and State Road 580. Has anyone had any ex-parte communications regarding this ordinance? Thank you. Staff presentation, please.
Thank you, Chair Broom. George Keeney, again, on behalf of Community Development. So this one's going to be a little bit unusual because typically what you look at are annexations, and this is, in effect, a de-annexation request. Or under Florida statute, it's called a contraction. So, and you're going to, I'm going to walk through a PowerPoint slide. I think it'll start to make a little more sense to you as we kind of work through it. But this is, so the applicant in this particular, for this particular request is the Largo Medical Center. They're represented by Hill Ward Henderson. I've been dealing with Clayton Bricklemyer, but you don't look like Clayton Bricklemyer. So I'm going to say it's a different rep. This is a request for a freestanding emergency room. The site is approximately 0.7 acres, no flood zone. The underlying land use is retail and services. The current zoning is general business. And the existing use, if you've been by it, you know it's at the southeast corner there of Belcher and Main. It is currently vacant. It was occupied by a used car lot some time ago. And you can kind of see from the slide up there where it's located. It's literally right in that corner. It's that long cylindrical piece. And if you look at that piece to the right on Main Street, that's actually in the city of Clearwater, as is, you'll see in the forthcoming slides, most of the property on that side of the road. In fact, all of the property on that side of the road, except for a couple of pieces unincorporated Pinellas County. The request here is to construct a new emergency care medical facility on the southeast corner. You'll see the red line outlining the three parcels, the parcel in Dunedin, the parcel in Clearwater. The dashed line was, I think, under consideration for acquisition to be pulled from the adjacent parcel that's occupied. I think that's the archdiocese there. But I don't think that's gone through. So I think we're just, at this point, talking about our piece and the piece in Clearwater to the east and just south of Main Street. The applicant owns both parcels. And the parcel, as you indicated, Dr. Broom, is parcel 30-2816, a bunch of zeros, 320, 0200. So applicant is requesting to contract the parcel and basically remove it from the City of Dunedin, place it back in unincorporated Pinellas County, where then Clearwater would annex the piece to create a unified parcel for development purposes. The City of Clearwater, as my understanding, is able to service the site with all required facilities. And in speaking with our engineering folks, the infrastructure to accommodate this type of development would need to be significantly upgraded. And the only piece that we would be able to really kind of work on is the sewer aspect of it. Absent contraction, we're concerned, again, about kind of that discourse between the City of Clearwater and us, where you would have water kind of working through Clearwater and wastewater working through the city. And then, you know, as I mentioned, the site was previously redeveloped in 2014. Oh, actually, I didn't mention this. So there is a little piece to this from a financial standpoint in that the City financially assisted a redevelopment of the site back in 2014 and actually put some taxpayer dollars into the site for redevelopment. The proposed use of the site would, you know, again, demand significant upgrades. And we'll kind of talk about the planning piece of it and why we're ultimately recommending approval. So this is our project planning area. We have an interlocal agreement with Pinellas County to bring these pieces of property into the City of Dunedin over time. And the hatched areas that you see up there are these unincorporated pockets. And if you look at the piece that we're talking about, it is literally the only piece that lies east of Belcher Road and south of Main Street that is located in the city of Dunedin. Not sure why that happened or how it happened back in the day because it doesn't make any sense when you look at the planning line that runs basically along Belcher. And when you're south of Maine, we have everything west. When you go north of Maine, we go east to 19. But you can see that they are well thought out lines. And this is really the only piece in that whole planning area that kind of falls outside of that normal look, if you will. When you follow that up with the City of Clearwater map and then the City of Dunedin map, again, you can see the City of Clearwater is pretty much taking up that area east of Belcher and south of Maine, with the exception of that one piece that sits out there. And you can see how the City of Clearwater completely surrounds that piece. So just from a pure planning perspective, it just seems to make sense to allow this piece to walk back into Clearwater. Certainly there's going to be some taxing implications if that happens. What you see here is the 2024 trim notice. The City collects about—now this is while the structure was still up, the City was collecting a little bit more than $3,000 on the property. It has obviously since been demolished, so I don't know what a $25 trim notice would be. If it remained in the City, it would probably be less, I would assume, if it was reassessed or re-evaluated by the tax appraiser's office. So that's the loss in revenue. You would see that loss year over year. So there is that implication. So I know the applicant's hearing can speak a little bit more to the utility piece of it, but we are recommending that we do contract this property, and we're offering the findings there. And I can walk through those quickly. The contraction effectively streamlines the utility service area. The contraction allows for the unified development of the overall site. The City of Clearwater is able to service the site with all required facilities more efficiently. The cost of improvements would be significant if the property remained in the City of Dunedin. Without contraction, the Largo Center would be really our only customer in utility building for sewer and not water. Contraction provides for a unified code compliance, permitting, and development review approach in Clearwater. So one of the things we talked about was, well, if there's a code enforcement issue, how do we deal with that if we have two pieces? You know, where's the code infraction happening? What about emergency services if there's two pieces? So we just think this does a lot to clean it up from a planning perspective. Tax implications are minimal. And if you recall back to the site plan, the only piece of the overall new site development that would be on that Dunedin parcel is the parking area and the solid waste receptacles. So, again, I don't know, you know, from a taxing standpoint, you're not likely to see anything north of that $3,000 that we're already losing. Contraction streamlines the Dunedin planning area by removing that one piece, and it also streamlines the consistency with the municipal boundary. So for those reasons, we are recommending approval and, you know, certainly happy to answer any questions that you might have on it.
Questions? George, do you know if it was ever considered that instead of the City contracting, if the piece in Clearwater would have annexed into Dunedin, so that whole corner then would be part of the City of Dunedin? Was that ever a discussion?
I'm not sure I quite followed that one, Paul.
So instead of contracting the piece that's in the city, adding the piece that's in the City of Clearwater, have Clearwater contract.
Well, I mean, that's certainly a possibility. I guess that's a possibility. But, again, from a planning perspective, I wouldn't like that because now I've got two parcels on that east side south of Main Street, and they're just kind of, for lack of a better term, kind of sitting out there like a sore thumb. And then I'm just not sure how effective our utility services would be for that type of project.
Yeah, just wanted to get a feel if there was ever that discussion.
And, you know, and obviously, depending on what happens here, we're going to have to modify our interlocal agreement, you know, at some point down the road. So, you know, that's the exercise we'll have to take with Pinellas County. You know, and whether that was contracted or added, that interlocal agreement would need to be amended to reflect that.
And then, too, with that, looking at the ad valerum taxes, what would that be if, indeed, Clearwater did contract and add that to the city? What would that look like for the City of Dunedin?
Yeah, that I probably can't answer for you, you know, without kind of knowing a little bit more about the development. But perhaps the applicant might have some thoughts on that. But all I can show you is what I got off that trip. No, I understand.
I understand. George, consistent with that, so if Clearwater were to cede that property to us, but we would be responsible then for running utilities to it, correct? So any tax gain we might get could be offset by the capital commitment to run the...
Well, but you might typically offset those improvements through the developer. You know, you'd put that cost on the developer typically. So the thing is you just have Clearwater utilities there. You know, we don't have water there. It's my understanding we don't have water there. So there would be a cost, I don't think necessarily to the city, I think we'd pass that through the developer and say you need to upgrade to, you know, you need to run what you need to run. You need to upgrade what you need to upgrade to get that property set up to accommodate that kind of development.
Okay.
But again, I go back to just the pure visual planning piece of it and that sliver that's sitting over there. So it just seems to make sense to be in Clearwater.
Yeah. Along those same thoughts too, recent, looking at the numbers in recent years, 10 years, I'd call it recent, we invested about $30,000 in that property too.
We did. So, and, you know, quite frankly, I don't think that would happen again today in this day and time. You know, that's taxpayer dollars that went into redeveloping a used car lot. I'd be surprised if, you know, if a city was willing to do that today, if that same request came in today. So, you know, there is that aspect of it. There is $30,000 that the city has put into that property and along with the loss of that tax revenue year over year. So that's a consideration, there's no doubt.
And Clearwater doesn't buy this land from us. We're literally just giving it to them, correct?
Yeah. No, that's, so what would happen is if it's approved, it would actually go back to unincorporated Pinellas County and then the city of Clearwater would annex the property. And then both Dunedin and Clearwater would then be amending their interlocal agreement with Pinellas County.
So going back to the utilities, for water, what do they have there now? Is it Pinellas County utilities or is it the city of Clearwater?
I am going to defer to the applicant on that. Okay. Actually, Nan's coming. Nan's here.
Nan should know the answer. Right, Nan. Nan Bennett, City of Dunedin Utilities and Engineering Director. So when it was a used car lot, Pinellas County provided water and the city of Dunedin provided the sewer. I believe what we've heard from the applicant is that they've worked out a way to get water from Clearwater. Clearwater also has water further to the east and they're bringing it down Main Street to serve this property.
Thank you. So I guess along those lines then, you know, the county could still provide water to them and the city of Clearwater could provide sewer and it still could remain in the city of Dunedin. And that happens now with multiple jurisdictions where the city either has the utility or provides the treatment or water for something outside of the city. So the whole area of Greenbrier is that way is set up with Pinellas County and City of Dunedin sewer.
So anybody else have a question?
I can add to that if you look at the 2022 plan Pinellas, Pinellas Comprehensive Plan, and as well as the Pinellas County 201 Facility Plan, this parcel is in the city of Clearwater water and wastewater service areas. But they had ceded the right to serve to Pinellas County because their water was closer to the parcel that was the corner parcel. And they'd ceded their rights to serving sewer to the city of Dunedin because of the annexation that happened previously. But it is within their service boundaries, their water and sewer service boundaries.
Clearwater's.
Clearwater's water and service boundaries.
So can—so we're just—we're giving away this property? Is that what I'm—
We are recommending that it be detached from the city of Dunedin.
And there's no way that we could sell it for like $30,000 or anything to recoup it?
No, we don't own the property. We don't own—okay. No, no.
Yeah, no.
The property is owned by the Largo Medical Center.
Okay.
So, yeah, no, we don't have any option on that. We're suggesting that it be de-annexed, if you will, because of the opportunity to do a unified development and not to fragment it between jurisdictions.
Just a silly question, but there's no way to do an offsetting transfer from Clearwater for another 0.7 or 0.7 acres somewhere else.
Quite frankly, Mr. Benjamin, I really don't want it, because it's just not clean from a planning perspective. I understand that. It's just not clean. I'm with you. It's a sliver, you know, less than three-tenths of an acre that's just sitting there.
Yeah.
And is really best suited to be in the adjacent municipality.
I understand that. I think we beat this horse today. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak, please?
Actually, I'm Katie Cole with Hillward Henderson, representing the applicant, if that's okay. Because, you know, we need to have new experiences in Pinellas County, we thought we'd bring you the first contraction and see what happens, you know? As George indicated, this is part of a unified site plan to build a freestanding medical clinic on this corner. It started, the effort began two years ago, where the applicant came to both the city of Clearwater and Dunedin and said, we crossed jurisdictions, what kind of agreement can you all come up with to facilitate development? Honestly, because of all the points that George articulated, it just, and Nan so articulately said, it's in Clearwater's utility service area. Dunedin's utilities were quite far away. And I think we heard loud and clear from Dunedin Utilities that they were not going to run the lines. And the ability for the applicant to run lines over 2,000 feet, I think, was the closest. 1,700 feet. Was really prohibitive of all things development. So, we worked with the city, both cities, to say, was there some way to have a memorandum of understanding where it could be developed? And the things like code enforcement or utility collection, customer service billing, solid waste collection, all of those things. What we heard back from Dunedin was, can you put all of the building in Clearwater? And if you just have the parking lot here in Dunedin, then we probably don't need to worry about it because you're already in the city of Clearwater's service areas and you can just hook up to the city of Clearwater. So, the applicant went on their way to do that. However, it's never that clean, right? So, if you look at the actual site plan, there still is a dumpster on the Dunedin side, not on the Clearwater side. The stormwater vault is going to end up on the Dunedin side. It can't be on the Clearwater side. So, staff and the city attorney came back and said, would you please just contract? And we said, we're happy to. That's probably, we don't need, so that's really why we're here. It's a complicated utility issue and billing issue from a practical standpoint. As you're aware, the taxes would also be complicated. And so, from the local planning agreement, the Pinellas County, Forward Pinellas, City of Clearwater have all reviewed their local planning agreements. The local planning agreements don't dictate what annexations occur. They simply say, if there is an annexation within the local planning area that's articulated in the agreement, that those land use categories automatically carry over. That's what those agreements say. They don't necessarily say you have to annex into one city or another. And so, in conferring with the city attorney, Pinellas County attorney's office, City of Clearwater attorney's office, we've been working on this for a couple years to try to get this out of the ground. It's not been the easiest, and that led us here today. So, I know it is complicated. It's a little bit, it's extremely unusual. But this is, I think, our very first phone call two years ago. The first words out of Mr. DePasca's mouth were, can't you just de-annex? And I said, I don't think it's that easy, Joey. Let's see what we can do. And we went through, we went through. We had a variety of different utility plans that we attempted to review. And it just wasn't practical to have a development on this parcel without using all of Clearwater utilities and facilitating permitting. So, that's where we are today. I'm happy to answer questions. I won't have all the technical answers. We'll be better at that because I know it was mostly with utilities was the biggest issue with both billing and collection and service areas. So, but happy to answer those questions and we would appreciate. Just to clarify, it would be de-annexed into Pinellas County. And then the City of Clearwater would then subsequently need to process its own annexation ordinances to bring it into the City of Clearwater.
Are there any other questions?
Well, I will ask this because is it true that Dunedin basically said what we're going to have to go for, what we're going to have to do with replacement or with our utilities to be able to serve this? And to me, it sounds like Dunedin sort of said, is that true or false?
You mean as far as the sewer infrastructure improvements that would be?
Well, I mean, it sort of sounds like you all were asked sort of what would you like to do here? What is best for the City? And it seems to me that the City sort of said for the things we're going to have to do, is it really feasible? And that is, am I coming to the right conclusion?
No, I think that's fair. You know, you're kind of dialed in on the utility piece of it. I'm looking at it a little bit more collective.
Well, you're looking at long-term planning.
Right, emergency services, code compliance, building permitting. Simple things that would just would be very confusing, I think, if we didn't move forward.
Because you couldn't reach, you never could reach a memorandum of understanding, right? That was one of the tactics you tried to use.
Yeah, I think that's where we started. And, you know, it was just complicated because of the utility issue and so forth. So we did work down that route. Katie's correct. We started, I think, it had to be at least a year and a half ago that we started talking about this. So it's been a lot, there's been a lot of discussion behind the scenes. You know, we opened with contraction, but then we backed off and said, well, let's see if we can make it work where we retain our respective pieces. And we just really couldn't get there. And then when we just started looking at the mapping and the corporate boundaries and all those things, we just said it just makes sense to provide for a unified approach.
So, Nan, am I correctly trying to, I'm just trying to distill this down so it's very complex to make it a little bit more understandable. That you have sort of three partners here and you're all trying to work together.
So there's an existing two-inch diameter, very small force main that the car lot was using because they had six employees. Obviously, that same force main was not sufficient to serve a freestanding ER to give them the reliability and the capacity and everything they needed. So we were looking at them having to upgrade that to a three or a four-inch diameter, which we've done some current pricing. And just upgrading that force main would be just under $500,000 for the applicant to have to, because it's 1,700 feet to serve them. That doesn't include the cost of a lift station on their site because the existing lift station was, again, very small for the car lot. And it would have to be a bigger size for them or any on-site improvements or the crossing of Belcher. Ideally, if money and timing and everything were ideal, we would love to run our gravity system all the way there, that 1,700 feet, and pick up that portion of Lofty Pines that's a septic area. We've been trying to do that literally since I worked here in the early 2000s. We did just finish phase one of Lofty Pines, which was further to the south. But the cost is cost prohibitive for us to do that. And we have a cost just to take it down, I believe it's Lakewood, is that the name of the street, the one that's just south of Main Street? And that would be over $800,000 just to run the gravity so that they could get into that across the way. I mean, in an ideal world with none of these complications, sure, we'd love to serve them. But this was cost prohibitive to bring all of these up to code. And then there were all of the, once it's built, how do you enforce this? How do you do your, you know, your industrial pretreatment? How do you do, if there's a stormwater problem down the way, some maintenance of the stormwater vaults, they have buried stormwater vaults. Half of those are in Clearwater, half of those are in Dunedin. How do you regulate that? How do you enforce that? How do you make sure that things get done over time? Even something as simple as police protection. Clearwater has their own police force. An argument starts in the emergency room, moves out to the parking lot, whose jurisdiction is it? It's very confusing to operate a site when you're straddling two jurisdictions. And it just seemed cleaner, more efficient, more cost effective for the applicant to have one jurisdiction to deal with. Thank you, Nan.
Are we done? Yeah, it seems to me that adding the sewer service, even if we annex those other two pieces, it's still, the payback is not there. Not for that little bit of property tax. I'll burn a motion. Motion to accept. I don't remember the number.
Lots of zeros. Lots of zeros.
Lots of zeros.
It was six zeros. I think it's...
Just ordinance 25. 25.
Ordinance 25. 23. 03. I'll second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I'm going to have to oppose this. I thought so, but that's okay. The ayes have it.
Thank you.
Thank you. Good luck. I have a question. The new public parking garage, that does not come through here, and I'm... Excuse me. I was just asking George a question. If the new public parking garage has not come through here, then there must be a good reason. I'm just curious as to what it is.
So, they're not far enough along on design yet to be ready for, like, a design review process. They're kind of still working on the design of the building itself. That said, even once it's approved, it's currently zoned downtown core. If it remains zoned downtown core, then you would see it in the form of a design review. I see. It's my understanding, however, that the city will, once they're a little farther along, rezone the property to what we call MPL, municipal public lands, which is what we typically rezone our, and Debra knows this very well, it's what we typically rezone all of our city-owned properties. That then obviates them from having to go through the design review process because it's city-owned. Oh, okay. Now, the city still typically will, you know, take it to design review, take it to architecture review committee for some comment and some feedback and that kind of thing. So that, I'm sure, will happen with this project, but it won't go through a full-blown design review if it's rezoned.
Super.
And you would see the rezoning.
This board would see the rezoning once it comes through. Did the property across the street from there, did that come through here before I joined? The property across the street? It's at the corner of, no, no, Railroad, West Railroad in Scotland.
Where the doctor's office is going up. Is that the doctor? Yeah. Yeah, where they had the fire. That was sub, so that was sub-threshold for design review. It wasn't large enough to trigger design review, so that was just a permit. Super. And just so you know, when we're looking at those permits, we still use compatibility. We still, if there's an issue, we'll refer it to ARC. So we do that administratively as well. It's not just when it comes to the public level. Okay.
Thank you. Mm-hmm.
Are there other questions?
Yeah, I've got one. When we met with Jennifer just for the update on, you know, how we do things and why we're here and those kind of things, we had a discussion about ex parte and how that affected this group here. And I thought there was going to be some changes or some updates, and I just kind of wanted to follow up with that. More training. It just, was this actually ex parte what we were talking about? Because personally, I didn't think it was, and by the description that we received, it didn't sound like it, but we still have that as part of the forward part when we're making the discussion.
In the past, we have asked for ex parte on ordinances that are brought forward to LPA. I do have on my notes, there was a question as to whether swearing in needed to be as extensive as it is for LPA. I'm not sure where that might be standing with Rebecca and the city attorney, but I do have a note here to follow up. I will add that to it. I was questioning the swearing in process. I will add the ex parte process to it as well. Great. Thank you.
We might be able to get Jennifer to come out for a couple of minutes on a light agenda day and just talk a little bit about it. I don't know if Jennifer Cowell would be willing to do that, but we could ask her.
Well, and that was kind of what led to that. She was here, and we had that one meeting that was pretty much run by her, and then that was some of the questions. So, I guess any, actually any of those questions that were brought up at that meeting, if there could be some follow-up.
This was our sunshine, our annual sunshine training and our update from city manager. Yes, I will follow up on that. Thank you. Yes, of course. And, Chair, whenever you're, I did have an item for the board. Please. Yes. Sadly, we have had a resignation. Member Allspot, unfortunately, had to resign, and he wanted to share his appreciation for the opportunities to serve on this critically important advisory board. We will be placing alternate member, longest-serving alternate member, who happens to be Sally, for commission approval to move into a regular spot, as is customary. So, therefore, we will be having an alternate vacancy on the agenda next month for your consideration.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you.
I think we're done.
I think so.
So, we are adjourned.
Thank you.
See you next month.