Planning & Zoning Board — Jul 16, 2024

Welcome, everybody. I still have 559. And you check your watch. It's exactly 6 o'clock. I am calling the planning and zoning meeting of the City of Plantation for July 16, 2024, to order. City Clerk, please call the roll. Mr. Spear. Present. Ms. Kremsky. Mr. Corman. Present. I'm here. Mr. Freeman. Here. Mr. Plass. Here. Mr. Goldstein. Here. All right. Well, we got ourselves a quorum. So, first order of business is approval of the meeting minutes dated June 4, 2024. Does anybody have any amendments or comments? Do I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. I have a motion and a second. Please call the roll. Mr. Spear. I'm going to abstain since I wasn't here. You can still vote. Even if I wasn't here? Yes. You have to vote. Yes. Ms. Kremsky. Yes. Mr. Corman. Yes. Mr. Freeman. Yes. Mr. Plass. Yes. Mr. Goldstein. Yes. Thank you. All right. First order of business, PP24-0012, an ordinance of the City of Plantation, Florida, pertaining to the subject of zoning and land development, amending Chapter 27 of the City Code of Ordinances, specifically amending Section 27-100 to add self-storage as a conditional use within the OPP zoning district. Staff. Good evening, Board members, City Clerk, City Attorney, my collaborate, Assistant Director. This item is a proposed ordinance to amend Chapter 27, Section 27-100 and 27-105-AA, Part 1, the master business list and self-storage facility in order to allow self-storage as a conditional use in the Office Park Plantation OPP zoning district. This is a map showing the locations of all the self-storage facilities in the city. The ones that are marked in red were approved before the adoption of the ordinance that last was adopted to regulate this use in 2015. Most of them are located near State Road 7, Peters Road, Sunrise Boulevard, and then there were subsequent another four that are shown in blue, again, most of them around Sunrise Boulevard. And so this map also shows the OPP zoning district in green, as well as a 2,500, which is roughly half a mile separation distance radius, and then one mile separation distance radius. We analyzed this and thought we agreed with the applicant for this code amendment that 2,500, separation distance would allow a maximum of two. The subject property is shown here for the applicant, but outside the radius, the southern part of Midtown, that's also OPP, would permit essentially another one. And then that would be it. That would be allowed in the OPP per this amendment. So this shows the change to the table, which is currently prohibited to allow, as conditional use, this use in OPP. This map shows the zoning districts where it is currently and proposed to be allowed. So the zoning districts in brown are allowed by right, not by conditional use. And that's the ILP and the B5P districts, which is located where Sunrise turns north, some of these properties. And then the ones that are shown in red are hybrid commercial near State Road 7 in the Gateway, as well as up here on Sunrise and out west, just Plath Flamingo Road, which is B3P. Those are allowed by conditional use right now. And then shown in blue, again, is the OPP zoning district. So the major elements of this amendment would be allowing the use in OPP subject to a minimum distance separation of 2,500 feet from another self-storage use, allowing four stories, excuse me, five stories, which currently is four stories and up to 55 feet of building height, requiring conformance with high-quality architectural standards, and maintaining and or requiring perimeter landscape buffers with a minimum buffer width of at least 40 feet in width. Here are some examples of high-quality architectural standards, and of course, we're asking for conformance with another section of our code regarding architectural standards and as well as midtown standards for these projects. The application was reviewed by the Development Review Committee on May 28th with a recommendation of approval with conditions that were embedded within the ordinance, and staff recommends that the board make a finding that this application is consistent with the comprehensive plan and therefore recommend approval. Any questions? Any questions from the dais? I do have questions. When I saw the language in the proposed amendment, it suggests 2,500 feet from another storage unit, but it wasn't limited to this OPP area. Did you intend that to be limited? Look at page 21 of the packet. And then I saw on the memo at page 13 that it was 2,500 feet within the OPP zoning district. So it's interesting because you covered it because you said there could only be two in that area, but I'm curious if there could be another self-storage facility not in that area within 2,500 feet. Only in the zoning districts that were mentioned before. So on page 21 is actually the applicant's original ordinance. Okay. And then following that, the same language was put in, which is on page 251A. So also permitted within a conditional use in OPP subject to a minimum distance of 2,500. So that was specifically for the OPP. Well, it says subject to the minimum distance of 2,500 feet from another storage. So it's only in that area. Yes. Okay. I have another question. I'm sorry. Can I proceed? Yeah, go ahead. What is the height of the other self-storage facilities in the City of Plantation that you're going from four stories to five? All of them? I believe they're predominantly four stories. And how does that compare to the height of the other buildings in this particular office park area? On the site that they're looking at, there's four-story buildings and three, and then there's actually a one-story office building to the east of the subject property. So a self-storage facility would be the highest building there? Yes. Thank you. Any other questions from the days? All right. Strap in. Go back one slide, please. Staff recommends that planning and zoning board make a finding that this application is consistent with the comprehensive plan. We don't have the comprehensive plan yet. We do. There's an existing one. So is it the existing one or the one that you said you're going to get to us in September? It's the existing one because we haven't adopted anything different. So this is in conformance with a plan that is going to be expiring in two months. Is that correct? Okay. It's not expiring. It's going to be updated. Okay. So. Right. Just like a code amendment, so essentially amending the comprehensive plan. So in this comprehensive plan that is going to be updated, which means by the time this gets through everything and starts actually being constructed, what are the elements of the comprehensive plan as relates to the OPP? Has that, the status of that and the future of that particular zoning district been considered in the comprehensive plan that's coming up? Okay. We're not discussing that item right now. I'm aware. But the reason why I say that is because this is contingent upon approval with a comprehensive plan that is going to be changing. In other words, what we decide we want for our city. It may be changing. It may be changing. Thank you. Correct. So what we have decided may be the course of action that our city takes over the next 15 years or so, that information is going to be coming out in a couple of months. I get that this is within the existing comprehensive plan. So in item, in the analysis portion of your memo, number one, actually. What page is that? Pages 12 and 13. Okay. We've highlighted a few. Actually, the applicant highlighted a couple goals and objectives from the comp plan. So that we think relate to this issue. So it wasn't specifically the OPP use. True. But on page 14, it acknowledges that existing units may not provide sufficient in-house storage. Speaking about the current state of apartments and availability of residences within this area. It means, in my opinion, that means a developer should be doing better, not that we should be advocating for a particular storage unit within this area. Because what I have seen when we look at this property is that we have Class A office space that's going to be converted into fundamentally an empty building that has somebody sitting at the front that allows people to come in and out, ostensibly because people need to access furniture or whatever it is that they decide to store there. I don't know that that's a good enough reason to change the code without knowing what the future holds for the comp plan. So I get why we're not talking about the future comp plan, I don't see how we can overlook that particular one in considering whether or not such a conditional use should be put into the zone without knowing what's going on there. So that's the first part there. David, did you have a comment on that? I just want to add, when we, I guess when you look at, I'm sorry, for the record, Dan Holmes, Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development Director. When you look at Midtown and the direction that we're going in Midtown, as we're looking at the comp plan, I can tell you that there's no changes in terms of the direction we're going. We will continue to see more density, probably more development within Midtown. So, you know, as we look at the current plan, which there are policies that are consistent, there's no proposed changes, at least that will be coming from staff. I can tell you that would change the direction, you know, for Midtown in general. So what we see is that as more development, more intensity, you know, continues to happen in Midtown, that there's going to be a need for some storage. Now, I do understand your point. I do recognize that a lot of these new residential multifamily developments, you know, if you go back circa the 80s or 90s, they had a lot more storage in them, and there's a lot less storage, you know, within, you know, these multifamily developments. True. And I mean, I would argue then at that point that as things change with regards to possibly lowering parking minimums or decreasing the amount of spaces that an apartment has to have, if hypothetically they were going to have five stories of parking garage underneath an apartment building, we could say do with three and put two stories of storage space in there so that everybody gets a storage unit within the actual residence that they're living in. That truly eliminates the sustainability argument that this particular person put in place saying, oh, by having a storage unit here, it's going to limit the distance driven. When we're talking about ultimate driving distance of less than two miles back and forth from whatever place that they're talking about. So, again, the issue of a conditional use for a storage facility doesn't quite strike me as being necessary yet. But I still have other questions because page 15, the applicant under the question six proposed amendment improves the administration or execution of the development process. With only a few zoning districts permitting this use, property owners will look to other city processes that they can use to meet market demand. This could include options such as proposing a rezoning to the parcel to a zoning district that permits the use. Maybe it's just the tone of that, but that seems like a little bit of a threat here. Like, hey, if you don't give us this conditional use, we're going to try to do it another way. And, again, I would argue, well, why don't they just do it another way? Because as it is right now, there's no reason to put this conditional use in there other than saying you have to go jump through a couple more hoops to try to get us to do this. Right. Because I don't know. We had just at the last meeting an issue about renaming that street. And the owners on that street were a little bit upset that Jazzware, whatever the name of that place was. They wanted to rename it. And now, all of a sudden, the Balfour Beatty Building is going to go away and be replaced with a five-story storage unit that, granted, is set back far enough so that you can't actually see what's going on there. But it's a storage unit. So I'm assuming there will have to be notification and everything else that goes with that. Was notification sent out on this proposal? Yes, it will go through that normal process, which does require notification both for the conditional use for that site. I guess when I look at Midtown, I see a mix of uses. And so what we're trying to do is we realize that as we bring more residential and even the office that's still there, there is still a need for, because, I mean, we think, you know, most of the time we think residential. But there are a lot of office uses that need, you know, we've talked to several, you know, office uses as well that need storage as well. And so it was looking to try to get a mix of uses here. Now, I do recognize, as you say, I don't think we want an over-proliferation of this use within the district. But we did want to try to accommodate, I guess, the needs of storage use. And in looking at some of the residential, one of the things that I've been kind of focused in on, and as we look at these residential developments coming in, trying to get at least to kind of move the affordability needle a little bit, not adding or doing things that could possibly or potentially add cost to the overall development and thus kind of put upward pressure on the rent. So there could be, you know, I'd have to sit and kind of talk with some developers if we add, you know, a couple more floors. There's, of course, development costs associated with that. Not quite sure how that's going to affect the overall, you know, prices of the, you know, the rents in a building or what have you, if we did do a mix of uses. And I think, you know, one of the things that we continue to talk to a lot of developers that are coming into the office now is they're trying to, some of them trying to kind of meet the affordability. And I will tell you, our code is a little outdated. I think some of the minimum requirements for three, two, one bedrooms are probably circa 1970, 1980. You just aren't finding, you know, the size that you're getting out there. So there's a movement to sort of reduce the number or the square footage of these units to try to affect affordability as well. As you kind of do that, you're going to be limited in the amount of storage that you're going to get within the individual units. Absolutely. I totally agree with you on that one. But I think that that's an issue that we can address independent of a conditional use. Right. And as I look at page 25, which we were just referring to there, in a similar question to Ms. Krimsky, if you look at it, AA-1 storage facility. That is not a, as of one, it's not limited to the OPP. Can you agree on that? Yes. So if you go down to D-1, self-storage facilities shall be subject to the following requirements. Maximum building height shall be 55 feet. As I read that, that doesn't limit it to OPP. The first paragraph does. I'll agree with you on the red that's in the paragraph A. But when I look at D-1, that opens up 55 feet for any storage facility. So any storage facility moving forward that might want to go into any of those spaces, the way I read that means that they can be 55 feet. Yes. So we are effectively saying, guess what, you could put up five-story storage facilities now. Yeah, it would be modifying it from four to five. It would be adding one additional. So we would basically get the size of the facility that's over there on 595 for any storage facility that goes in from now on. 595 one, I think, is six. It would be slightly higher, if I remember correctly. So, yeah, we're going to get a taller building. So if we do this, as was mentioned, right there on that plot of land, in between a four-story and a one-story, we're going to have a five-story storage facility. And I'm all for improved architectural elements that, in essence, hide what it actually is. But you're not going to change the facts of what it is. Right. And I think that poses some problems there. Yeah. So we can look at if it's the preference of the board to leave the height within the districts outside of OPP at its existing height, then we can change that language. You know, certainly understand where you may have some concern with that. Well, why does the applicant want five stories here instead of four? Why the change? Well, the applicant did submit some criteria to us. We also did look at it now with regard to what they're proposing. I'd let you speak to the applicant. Now, but as far as staff looking at five stories, we think that basically within Midtown, with the heights that we're seeing in Midtown, that that five stories is not going to really be out of character. And we're thinking down the road, future development within Midtown. You mean the future comp plan that we haven't seen? Yeah, yeah. I mean, just very close to this is the Midtown 24 development, which is, you know, just a little east of the property, which definitely exceeds. Oh, absolutely. But that also sits in its own little section right there. Like, we can agree that each one of these street areas are our own little neighborhoods within the OPP. They all look a little bit differently. They all have different characters. Yes. And dropping a five story there might be a problem. How much consideration was the study that was included in this packet given? Oh, you mean the need for? Yeah, the needs evaluation. We did take a look at that. I will tell you from staff's perspective when we looked at the OPP district and the fact that it's kind of within Midtown overall, that was one of the things that we really considered given the fact that we're saying that we want a mixed-use district more walkable so people don't have to get in the cars and drive everywhere. And we know that we're going to have additional residential uses coming into that district as well as probably in the future office uses as well. We thought it would be appropriate to maybe allow this use on a very limited basis within the Midtown district. And so that's why the distance separation requirements. So we did take that into consideration. Can we also take into consideration that the majority of objects, I think it was 70% that I saw in one study, the majority of stuff that's stored in units like this are furniture. So I don't think anybody's going to be walking a bed or a sofa across Midtown to get there. They are going to be making automobile trips. Yeah. They may not be, but at least the trips are going to be contained in a short drive or distance within Midtown as well. So, yeah, and to that point, if you go to page, well, I don't know if you have it or not, page 65 of the analysis. 65 of the market study. Oh. Of the market study. For those who have capacity to it or to access it, 65 as I get to it. Sorry. I'm rolling through a bunch of pictures of other ones. Nope. Sorry. That would be page 67. If you go to page 67 of this, it has the radius as well as the surplus and lack of quantities that are there. Because there was a two-mile ring that was drawn on all of these maps. And that two-mile ring presumably was used to get to an area where there obviously is nothing within two miles or nothing within that particular distance. As you mentioned, a lot of stuff is south of State Road 84, which happens to be in Davie. Signature Grand is, that property is going to be up for grabs. And my assumption is that it's probably going to go to something equivalent to storage if I had to take a guess. It's, I did see the, it's more of a, I think, an industrial type use that's going there. All right. So industrial storage. Yeah. But when you look at the ratios on there, and correct me if I'm reading this particular thing wrong, but if you look within. You said page 67. 67. Because what I'm seeing for 67 is the last page of the 39 of their study. Oh, 67 of our packet, the 39 of their study. Sorry. Gotcha. Actually, what's funny is I don't think, oh, yeah, that is there, 39 to 70. Sorry. My bad. That's okay. But if you look at that, we've got the radius, we've got the unmet demand, and that's for 0.5 mile, 1.25 miles, and 2 miles. So as I read this from the spot that they want to put it in, within 1.25 miles, there is an unmet square footage demand. You go to 2 miles, and there's a surplus. Am I reading that wrong? Okay. Let me, give me a moment here. So the chart demand, one and a half, one and a quarter mile, rather. Green is an unmet square footage demand. Yes, okay. Red is an oversupply. Yes, within the 2 mile, yes. So as I read that, within a 2 mile radius, which was the arguable max driving distance that everybody wanted to have, there is an oversupply of storage. So, again, why would we want to, within our OPP, create a conditional use for something that there is, by their own numbers, already an oversupply for? Just because if you drop that 2 miles by 0.75 miles, all of a sudden, you don't have that. Now you have a need within 1.25, but not 2. Right. 2 miles out, well, I know our map only kind of looked at 1 mile, so I don't really have that depicted on the map. But as I said, we were looking at Midtown and the need within Midtown, which kind of falls within that 1.25, you know, distance. I mean, it's not going to only be for Midtown. And so, you know, radii work two ways. They work from the center out and from the out in. Yes, of course. So, it's, we have a surplus within a 2-mile circle of Midtown. That's how I see that. Right. So, I think the question here is whether we want a mix of uses within the Midtown district that would include this use, or whether we would prefer for residents to leave the Midtown area and to have to seek, you know, those uses outside the district. That is actually the exact question. Is this a use that we want in the OPP? Right. And I just don't see it as adding that value, especially when you consider what storage units technically do aesthetically for a city. I don't care how pretty we make them look. It's still going to be a self-storage space. And it's just not the same as an office park or an office building. And it goes towards that question of what does the future hold for the OPP? Right. And I just don't see that it's there because, again, when you go to page, sorry, it's page 80, but probably higher math time, another, like, 28 pages down somewhere when it's talking about signages. The recommendation is that because of the nature of where this is on a secondary road setback within this office park, that they're going to have to have excessive signage. That would be the recommendation to whoever puts this in place, that the signage, in order for them to generate the business, is going to have to be excessive, which, once again, to me, indicates that they're probably going to ask for some exemptions to our sign code. I don't agree that it has to be excessive. I don't agree with that statement in the study. I don't either, but there's a lot that I don't agree with. Yes. So that's kind of my whole point. When taken as a whole, what we're talking about is trying to do a comp, like, doing a change of our code to accommodate a single entity that wants to go onto a single plot of land without considering, in essence, everything else. And I'm not saying you all didn't consider it because I know you do. Right. You do a great job doing all these things. I just don't know that this is one of those uses that we want to have in Midtown, frankly. Right. Because if we did, the code probably would have indicated that earlier. Well, the code is fluid and will always be changing to meet needs as they change. I mean, I never thought we'd be where we are now with, you know, residential and reducing units and doing the things we're doing for affordable housing. But it's, you know, things will constantly change. So the code is going to change, you know, consistently. I do agree. All right. Those were all the questions I had. Were there comments or questions from anybody in the chamber? My name is Bill Laistrom, 1177 Southeast 3rd Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I'm here on behalf of the applicant for this particular proposal. So I want to address a couple of things. I'll kind of start with the first questions and then work my way. So I want to talk about this area. First off, we are not intending to replace the Belfort Beatty building whatsoever. This is the idea is to utilize an unused portion of the parking lot between that property and the one story building. It's the only one story building there. It's Neil Frank's law offices. So I'm very familiar with this site. It's right on the edge of the Midtown, Midtown does 11 stories under its code or 12. I did the Plantation 24, which is literally within a stone throw of this site. I did the, all the apartment projects that are on Peters Road are more than five stories. They're six, seven stories. Royal Palm is in excess of five stories as well. And I believe at least one of the cornerstone, if not more of the cornerstone office buildings, which are immediately to the south on Peters Road are also in excess of that height. This is a, this is a reflection of what I call a changing times. The original development for this area was office park for everything and a few shopping centers. And now what we found is the population is changing. The uses are changing. You'll actually find that the uses within self-storage include the small business owner, for instance, the restaurant that wants to make sure that they have decorations for all the holidays. Well, where do I put them? I can either spend the money to put them in my retail facility, and I got to pay retail prices to have storage in the back. My excess products, if I buy in large quantities to try to reduce the price. In addition to, yes, residents in these units, it's a much more economical way. I can assure you that if you take the two floors, turn them into storage, that you will drive the price of housing beyond imagination. If you figure a parking space is running $32,000 to $34,000 a piece now for a garage parking space, it's the exact same cost to create storage, if not more, and you still need the parking. Why self-storage? Well, self-storage actually offers two things that haven't been mentioned. The first one, most important to me, is it's high tax value with low impacts. So since you're adding it to the area around that particular site, and again, the site's not up today. This is just a decision whether or not to allow, as a conditional use, self-storage. It may be when I get here with my conditional use application, then you look at this specific site for the market study, and you may determine that it's appropriate. You may determine it's not. You may not like the look of it. You may say, wait, this fits in fine because it's just, as you described, Plantation Midtown, it's tucked in. And so that's the intent for this. Now, we created the $2,500, $2,500, the 2,500 foot distance requirement because I understood the idea that the city wouldn't want a multitude of these anywhere around us, whether we were in OPP or the Midtown District. The reason we were talking about the OPP is because we were adding it there. It can't go in the Midtown District, which is basically the district that surrounds this entire site all the way up to Cleary Boulevard and down to 595. So we're okay with whatever restriction that you wanted. That's the one we picked out. And then I want to talk about the demand a little bit. So the whole purpose of these self-storage projects is to have a compartmentalized area, which is where your customers are. I currently have one on 441 because there's one no closer. And I'm at, you know, now I did move, but I'm over off of Sea Turtle near Jacaranda Country Club. But I still have a self-storage, and I have a fairly large house. It's getting smaller with age, but I haven't been able to eliminate all of my son's collectibles as well as my own. And so when you open the range, what happens, the reason there's more supply is simply because those facilities that are way far away, whether it's 441, Sunrise, or, and I did the one at 595. In fact, I did probably a bunch of them, but I did that one at 595. It's at least six stories. I thought it was even taller, but at least six stories. So the area has height. The area was intended, quite frankly, at 11 stories. We put it in throughout the OPP district. Some of them are zone B7Q, the one office park is. But at the end of the day, we're trying to come up with a way to put everything within our district, while at the same time not have additional impacts everywhere. Yes, a second one could theoretically go within the district. That's a policy decision for you all. For today, you can, you know, change that to 5,000 feet, and it probably ends that discussion if you only wanted one within the OPP. As I said, we arbitrarily picked the 2,500, because when we start, we have what I call a clean slate, meaning, okay, well, we want to put the self-storage here. We think it will work. We actually have ownership interest in the Belfort BD, on the property that we're looking at. And so what are we going to do? Well, we can either rezone it, and there's five or six rezoning options to do. Or when I looked at OPP and the history of it, it has very limited uses back from the day, and I'm talking the 80s and 90s, when it was actually tailored off of the Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. And so that just simply is changing today, and that's why we think this will be an addition. You still get to review it for site plan approval. You still get to review it for conditional use approval. You'll still have an updated demand study as part of the conditional use, because that's market study is one of the requirements of the conditional use. We actually, you know, did the study as an additional item for this just because we knew those questions would be asked in that district. So we would ask for your support of this. It's a recommendation. If you do have a concern about the new code, just require – we're probably going to get to the City Council after the September hearing anyway on this ordinance. And I'm happy to answer any questions. If that were the case, I would prefer for it to be put off until after the new comp plan comes out so that we determine whether or not it fits in. The old plan is the same. The new plan is going to be the same for OPP. There hasn't been any suggestion of any change along the way. And to just freeze life, so to speak, for that particular hearing, as long as they're going to hear it afterwards, they can say, well, we changed our mind. Except – and I pushed back a little bit because you talk about the OPP as being separate from Midtown, yet all the pictures I've seen incorporates the OPP into the new Midtown Activity Center. So the only reason OPP is separate is because when the city came forward with the Midtown District and the Midtown Zoning, those of us who represented the OPP District, me, came and said, well, wait a second. The Midtown regulations make all of my buildings completely nonconforming. They're not up against the road. The parking's not in back. They don't meet all those design criteria. I'd be either a conforming use if they let me or a nonconforming use for every building in that district. So we took the districts out. We're still in the taxing district, by the way, even though we don't have the Midtown Zoning. Well, but you took it out, and so now we're dealing with whether or not to change that existing district. Right. And so – Times have changed. I just don't see it. I thought the Balfour-Beattie building was going away, so you're saying there now are going to be four buildings on that road on the north side. Yeah. So – If ultimately someone approves the site plan, that's correct. Right. Any other questions from the data? I do, Mr. Lestrom. Why include the language for five stories that would then be applicable the way I'm reading it to all self-storage facilities? Because I think it would probably be fine in OPP. We had no intent to create it anywhere, but we knew that in the OPP – and to me, it wasn't allowed anywhere else, so I did not even think of that interpretation of it. Happy to have any amendment that would limit it to this particular district. Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah, well, you're talking about limiting outside there, but you still want five stories in OPP. You wouldn't be happy with four stories in OPP. Yes. That's correct. You – okay. I would not be – I mean, I don't – I would be happy with – I just want to make sure I don't know what you were saying, but – Right. Because in just my opinion, we should – We just feel – We should be with four stories, that's it, for everywhere. It doesn't – Right. Change it to five, period. I mean, that's just my opinion. Understood. I just – to me, we're certainly advocating for the five stories just because of the area around us and the height around us. Anything else? Anybody else from the chamber want to speak on this? All right. Comments are closed. First, I'll make a motion to deny. You shouldn't let someone else make a motion. I should. The chair usually doesn't make the motion. I know, but I asked if anybody wanted to and nobody – You didn't give them enough time. Oh, come on. Fine. Can I withdraw my motion to deny until somebody has another motion? I'd make a motion to approve, but to limit – with an amendment to limit the five stories to the OPP area. I'll second that. Point of inquiry for the – for the council. What we're approving now, is it the applicant's version or the staff's version of this ordinance, this proposal? I'm looking at page 25, so maybe – yeah. Staff's version. Okay. We got a motion in a second. Let's call a roll. Mr. Speer. No. Ms. Kremski. Yes. Ms. Demby-Burger. Point of clarification. I got here at 6.06, so I don't know when you started, if I'm eligible to vote. No, you're eligible to vote. You were here mostly, son. Okay. Thank you. Boss told me. I vote yes. Mr. Korman. No. Mr. Freeman. Yes. Mr. Plass. Yes. Mr. Goldstein. Yes. All right. Looks like it's in there. So, next order of business. This is PP24-0010, an ordinance of the City of Plantation, Florida, pertaining to the subject of zoning and land development, updating and amending the plan, Commercial Development B7Q District Land Development Regulations. Staff, if you would. Good evening, board members, city attorneys, city clerk, and Restrepo Planner 2. I'm presenting today the Co-Amendment Section 27-92A5B, Banner Commercial Development District to allow residential uses north of Sunrise Boulevard, and to increase the allowed height to buildings containing residential from, uh, to eight stories. PCD zoning district regulations are in place to allow flexibility and incentive to excellence in physical, social, and economic planning. Plantation has two, two different type of PCD zoning district, residential and commercial. This ordinance is pertaining to B7Q, Planet Commercial Districts. This is the existing areas, um, zone B7Q. The B7Q regulations allow residential uses only in these areas. Plantation Midtown and south of Sunrise Boulevard between North Pine Island Road and University Drive. The proposed code amendment will include the north side of Sunrise Boulevard. The applicant represents the owner of a property's own B7Q located on this area, north side of Sunrise Boulevard. Like I said before, the amendment includes to increase the height from five stories to eight stories. And staff recommends approval. Thank you. The applicant is here to answer any questions. Any questions from the dais? All right. Looks like I'm that guy again. Um, so if we go to Exhibit A, page 112 of the packet, not of whatever it is that you've done there. Um, in talking about Section 27-92, Paragraph 5B2, it says, Plan commercial, commercial development districts shall not have residential structures or usages other than hotels, motels, except within one. Within central plantation, established plantation midtown as defined by the adopted city comprehensive plan, which may have residential uses developed on parcels no greater than 10 acres in size or two within that portion of plantation, which is north of Cleary Boulevard, abutting Sunrise, south of whatever. So my question is, does that first pair or that first section within the central plantation, which limits it to no greater than 10 acres of size, apply to this particular parcel, which the background says is 14.7 acres? Okay. Give me a moment to... I'm aware of that, but I want to know. So your question is whether central plantation includes... No. My question is within central plantation, i.e. plantation midtown, this only applies if the lot size is 10 acres or less. That would be correct. But you go north of it, there's no limit on lot size. Is that correct? That would be correct. So hypothetically speaking, all of that northern portion that opens up in the top left-hand corner there can now be applied to what we're rewriting here, correct? Yes. So everything that's in right there can be with these new rules? That's correct. So we are talking about taking buildings from 65 to 95, which says excluding rooftop equipment, so technically higher than 95 feet. Yes, for air conditioners, yeah. So they can build eight stories to 95 if we approve this. Last time 8601 came up, there was an attempt to go from 65 to 75 feet. So now we're saying we're going to go to 95 feet. Correct. And 95 feet can be anywhere up there. Along, well, the north side. It would include the north side. Is this also part of the belief in the comprehensive plan that we need to bring more density to this particular part of the world? This is very much a part of the vision of where the comprehensive plan is sort of going. As we look at – and there are several reasons here. As we look at how we're going to grow within the city, we're going to, as we get new residential development, and we begin to look at more smart growth options, TOD-type options, this is the type of growth you're going to see. This is going to protect our single-family, the character of our single-family neighborhoods, and move growth to these major arterials where transit stops. It's time for us to begin to shift the paradigm of how we're developing within the city to more smart growth and transit-oriented options. You're going to begin to see – as I drive around Broward County, I can tell you, I drive home every day. I go up into Coral Springs, they just ride at Coral Springs and sample eight stories right there for their mixed-use project. I was just having lunch with my wife a couple of weeks ago in Boca, right along Federal Highway. I think that actually, because it was stepped back, I think it did actually exceed eight stories, but on the front before the step back, it was eight stories. Even driving down 441 near Sterling Road, I think it is, they have two new towers, eight stories. So you're going to – this is going to become very typical. But as I look at the character, and as I say, as I drive home every day up north, the university, it does not look out of character, you know, with the development surrounding it. There is some development that's existing at, like, three or four stories in terms of office buildings, which is the same thing that we have along this corridor. As you look at this corridor, also, we have the Plantation Point office park where, you know, the old Motorola site now. We're going to start getting proposals for – in fact, just a potential residential development that we're looking at there. We have a proposed residential project where the Bank of America is. So the character of the Sunrise Boulevard corridor is going to change. And the other thing we want to be cognizant of here is, as we look at Broward County, their long-range primo, you know, plan, which they presented here to our council several weeks ago, does call for rapid transit. There's even a possibility. They're looking at either the Sunrise Boulevard corridor or the Oakland Park Boulevard corridor as a potential long-term light rail. And so, you know, we need to begin to make sure that we get on the same page with our transportation options and our residential options as well. So, you know, so as we look at this corridor, one of the things that the Comprehensive Plan is going to recommend is as we look at this corridor as transit-oriented development corridor. So this is very much in line with the vision that we're laying out within the Comprehensive Plan. I was looking at the same thing. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I was looking at our – No, that's what he was pointing out. Okay. This is a little different. Well, this is what he was referring to here. Okay. So the new three on that same page, underneath there, or Roman number three, height of all buildings containing residential uses, which are located outside of Central Plantation, as defined in the City Comprehensive Plan, shall not exceed eight stories of the maximum height of 95 feet. All right. So that's all buildings outside of Central Plantation, only within BQ7 or B7Q. Yes, right now. And as I said, right now, B7Q is the zoning district that we have. As we develop the Comprehensive Plan, we're probably going to be creating a new land use designation and a new zoning designation as well. Could you go back to the map that had all B7Q on it? One more or two more. Keep going. That one. And the other stuff that's east of University and also the stuff that's Broward and Knob Hill. That's B7Q outside of Central Plantation. East of University. So right here. It's B7Q outside of Central Plantation. Would that paragraph apply? In other words, could an eight-story building go at the corner of Knob Hill and Broward? Knob Hill. Broward, go down. And Broward. Keep going down. Right there. That's B7Q according to your map. And according to that paragraph that I just read. Potentially, yes. Height of all buildings containing residential uses, which is outside of Central Plantation, is now 95 feet. So arguably, a 95-foot building could go there if somebody bought it and city council were to pass it through. Is that correct? Potentially, yes. Okay, so you see what I mean about how these things are being written as far as opening up holes? If you want to isolate it out to that central portion, the Midtown area going all the way, including north of Sunrise, fine. That does fit into the character that you're talking about. But there are other pieces of orange on this map that potentially could be attacked under that one. And considering what we are about to see, the Live Local Act. I was just about to tell you, the Live Local. Sorry, I want to make the clarification. It says, shall not have residential uses within the Central Plantation or in this area. Central Plantation. Where are you looking at? Which paragraph are you looking at? And the height is only applied for a residential uses bill. Within Central Plantation. Which two are you looking at here? Yes, yes, yes. Okay, except within the Central Plantation or in that one. Yes, you're correct. So, in other words, they can't use that there. So, you're correct. That's correct. My apologies. I was looking at the wrong thing. That's correct. Except for hotels, motels, within the Central Plantation. That's correct. Well, can I ask a clarification? So, I just want to make sure, because that knob, Helen Broward, was a great point that you brought up. So, I was reading this as it had to be north of Cleary Boulevard abutting Sunrise Boulevard. So, it's B-7Q and that only northern geographic area. Is that correct? Yes, yes. That's a huge difference. Yes. Well, and like I was saying, what we're doing here, one of the things that we're looking at is kind of where we're going with the comp plan and the vision that's kind of being laid out and what we're looking at along that Sunrise Boulevard corridor. So, okay. Any other questions from the – oh, Joshua, sorry. Yeah, so, I, in theory, support the ideas that you've espoused and, you know, what you're trying to get to here. So, I just – I'm not up on the changes with Live Local. So, I just wanted to understand, is this going to have any unintended consequences by permitting this, like, you know, I know that there's radiuses of things that are allowable when you increase height and density in certain areas. So, in theory, the only residential height we're changing is that part north of Sunrise. Right. So, with Live Local, if there are industrial, which is pretty much up in this area – or commercial or mixed-use within a one-mile radius, then, yes, it would affect the height. It would now allow that height as well. But only if it's within a mile of – I don't know. That's correct. And we're going to talk about Live Local next. I'm going to update you on – We'll have to vote on this one first. I'm for anything, as long as I can look down into Rob's house. Yes. That's right. But, yeah. But that's the thing that I want people to realize, though, because a lot of times we're just looking at our local zoning code with some of the preemptions that we're getting with Live Local. It's already a different game out there. I mean, a lot of us have some level of comfort because they feel that development as they know it now, but the legislature has just ripped the cover off that. Sure. I just want to make sure that we're not doing things that we don't – unintended, that's all. Right, right. I understand. Yeah. But, Danny, on that same kind of note, the Live Local, if we do that now, we're just giving them more power within the mile. Yes. I mean, right now they can't do anything. But we have to look at the land uses that are within that mile that would be applicable. So you don't – I mean, when you go down kind of university, there's a little commercial up in this area. But as you start coming down, there's some commercial – I'm getting kind of near – I think it's up in this area right here. But as you come down here, most of this is residential already. So as you start looking at that mile radius, it's going to be limited. And you have some commercial right here as well. But the rest of this, until you get out here, which is beyond a mile, is, you know, is residential. So you're going to be limited up in that area. So there are a few parcels that would be applicable. But that's kind of the point. You don't want to walk out and look at an eight-story building when you live in a single-family home. Well, the new Live Local does have some provisions with regard to single-family residences, which brings the height down, if it's adjacent to single-family residential. So the amended version, version 2.0 of the Live Local, that was one of the major complaints that there were developments that were close to single-family residential. So there are some limitations that would limit it to, I think it's, is it a quarter mile? A quarter mile instead of the mile, or three stories would be the highest. So it does significantly limit the height. So if it's adjacent to single-family, they do have some provisions on at least two sides, then it does significantly reduce the height there. Okay, thank you. Quick question. The new building that just finished, next to Denny's, on University and, I think, North Marcano, on the west side? On the west side, yes, the Lena. How tall is that? Six stories now. It started off as five stories. They came back to six stories. So it's probably about 75 feet, probably somewhere in there. Well, that's within the mile radius, so they can already build at least that. That is the height right now that the Lena is, right. I think that's the tallest building with the mile, unless they somehow meet a mile of that northern part of Midtown. That is correct. Okay. Do you happen to have the mile, like, sketched out or no? Not on this, do I, but not of this area, not from that area, though. Yeah. And so this says, the height of all buildings containing residential uses, which are located outside of Central Plantation. And again, Central Plantation is the Midtown? Yeah, Central Plantation, yeah. The definition pretty much is Midtown. So the only place that this eight story, that this height requirement would apply to, is the red above sunrise? Yeah, we're looking at this area, I think it says above Cleary. Is that the way it reads? Yeah. Yes. North of Cleary, above the sunrise. But most of that in here is pretty much, you know, residential. Right, but I'm saying the new height restriction would only apply to those red, basically. That's correct. It would apply there. There's some, well, are we thinking, talking live local or just this ordinance? Because I'm, I'm going to make sure I'm. Well, I'm asking whether the height restriction applies, this height restriction applies to which parcels? Okay. Yes. It's B7Q. I think this parcel is B7Q. That's B, this is all B7Q, right? Yes. Would Motorola be in within that mile? Yes. Motorola, if we're going back to live local, yes, yes. Motorola would be within the mile. And that's industrial. So then that could be filled with eight story buildings. Yes, which probably is what's going to happen. Yeah. But when you say filled with it, I mean, I mean, I don't, you're not going to see the rest of the site developed as residential. I mean, we've, we've had discussions with the developer. There's, there's actually more office that's also being looked at for that site. Probably said that about AT&T, too. I'm sorry? I said they probably said that about AT&T when they built that, however long ago in that sunrise. Quite possibly. Any other questions or comments from the days from the gallery? Bill? I think I'm going to make Danny feel a little better and say something that Quinton probably doesn't say. So I'm going to give you the developer's version of live local. So live local, I get calls all the time to do live local projects. I tell them, forget it. Well, Bill, why forget it? Well, first, you have to meet the economics of having a project that has 40% of affordable housing units. Second, while you do get some benefit for the height, it says that you have to comply with the remaining portion of the code. As you all know, through seeing my site plans over all the years that I've, if I don't have, the over and under is usually 10 for the number of waivers that, quote, don't meet the code. And live local specifically states that those type of restrictions are still in place. Now, I mean, at some point, could the legislature change that if enough local communities tried to avoid affordable housing? Well, that's possible. But there, the chances of anything being live local here in plantation, at least it's coming through my office, is zero because I'd end up at the Supreme Court arguing whether or not, you know, I met the intent of the code, even though I didn't meet 10 provisions of it, I wouldn't meet loading zones, I wouldn't meet the drive aisle, all the, even your basic ones, I wouldn't meet the parking requirements. So, from the perspective of live local, I don't really think that's a concern, quite frankly, anywhere in plantation at this time. It's just very difficult economically. It's not impossible, but it's very difficult economically. And then you combine that with the requirement to comply with the code. What it really requires is, as I tell everybody, it can't be a cram down. So, what it means is, is if I come into a local government and they say, yes, we'd like to see your project, what everybody else is talking about today is, well, what if we don't want it? And how do we stop it? And I understand that. And I would say that there's single-family residential right next to Motorola's site in the back off of Marcano. So, I don't think that is going to apply. It had both, the new update has both single-family as a zoning district and single-family as an actual use. So, even if you're on multifamily, but you had a single-family home, it would still be restricted. But I do want to talk about the ordinance a little bit, just more philosophically than anything else. Because this corridor on Sunrise Boulevard, you basically have five properties on that corridor. You have, and I'm going from east to west, north of Sunrise Boulevard. So, you basically have, I call it the corner parcel, which used to be Fuddruckers and other things. And then right next to it, you have the Jacaranda Plaza. Well, for some members of this board, you were here when I came in within the last two years for a complete redo of that shopping center. We changed out some of our tenants. We've added additional tenants. Certainly, there's going to be no reasonable likelihood of any development there any time in the future, particularly for something that has to then carry the cost of 40% affordable housing. But just in general, next to it is basically the Social Security office and an office development, both of which I did years ago. But the office development is a condo. It's not changing anything unless you have every condo owner say that they agree. Then you have the AT&T site. It's been abandoned for many, many years by AT&T. It was originally a training facility. They don't train anymore. When I first saw that site, I got to go there. They had the poles where you practice going up the pole with your sling, or I guess there's probably a name for it. So the concept of this district is just changing in this particular corridor. And with the transit that's coming in, we just think this will be an excellent way to move that corridor forward. There's no intent to allow the eight stories outside of that district. The residential is restricted in B7Q to only those properties that are within basically University and Pine Island Road from the city's limits at the north to the city limits at the south. And so with that, we'd like to get your support for this. Certainly, the support for the change of the district boundary. If you want to restrict the height, I think it ought to be there. I agree with staff wholeheartedly. But in reality, I can ask for a waiver of the height, and I'll still be asking for a waiver of the height. And just to give you a glimpse of the future, because same as the last one, you'll actually see the site plan, the conditional use, and all the other approvals probably six to eight months from today for that specific site. And so, but it's a planning tool to move some of the density to a building, not on Sunrise Boulevard, closer to it, and provide single family in the back. That's what we were asked to do. That's why we came up with this revised concept. We took out the office building, you know, because we had questions from one of our neighbors about having an office building there. So we took, so you'll see a new plan when you do see it, and this is just an opportunity to allow us to do it. It still has to, we still have to get the rezoning approval, the approval for conditional use, site plan, and a host of other approvals that will go with it, and a waiver list. So with that, I hope you allow this to move forward with your recommendation of approval. Thanks. One question for you. Sure. Was the 85-foot request yours or staff's? Who came up with that number? We did. 95. We did. Sorry, eight-story, 95-foot. And that was out of your office, presumably because of plans for whatever. Is there needed this height? If you want to reduce the, again, we're not arguing this particular site, but if you want to reduce the height elsewhere, which is what we were asked to do, then that was the trade-off that we did. We basically moved the density to the center forward of the property, furthest away from both the residents immediately to the north of us, also to the office building to the east of us. And on the west, we back up to basically a retail service area. I'm just curious why you think those other parcels up there, when they're redeveloped, wouldn't go for the same 95 height? If they redevelop, then they may go for that. I think it's appropriate for the area because of the transit that's coming in. I'm not suggesting that it's not appropriate or we're the only ones, but the reality of you seeing a site plan on any of those sites is slim and none for the, I call it the five-year planning, you know, for five years. All right. Any last couple? Matthew McIntosh, 601 Northwest 82nd Avenue, Plantation, Florida. I support the rezoning. The pre-owned plan is coming along. We're doing the work, reaching out to the cities on that side of the streets. So I think having more housing there would be a good thing. And, you know, if we want to preserve the single-family neighborhoods, then that means we're going to have to put more of the housing in the center of the district. So we're going to have to have a higher height there. If we want lower height in the center of the midtown area, then we're going to need to spread the development further throughout the city. And I don't think that was the intention that I'm appearing. So it's either we go high here or we go lower and then increase the height throughout the single-family neighborhoods. Thank you. All right. Any other questions, comments? Comments are closed. Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion to second. Please call the roll. One. Sorry. Staffs. Motion to approve staff's version of the ordinance. You want to second that one, Josh? Second. Okay. We have a motion to second to approve staff's version of the world. Please call the roll. Mr. Spear. No. I'm sorry. Ms. Krimsky. Yes. Ms. Demby-Burger. No. Mr. Corman. No. Mr. Freeman. Yes. Mr. Plass. Yes. Mr. Goldstein. Yes. All right. Congratulations. Last item up for bid tonight is going to be the Live Local presentation. How many slides you got, Michael? Oh, so many, Clinton. You're here for like another hour and a half. It's actually me. That's even worse. I thought I was giving you some solace there, but okay. I'll make this as painless as possible. This should be a fun discussion, actually. You guys aren't going to sing again, are you? No. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. I was trying to open up. Were you there? No, I didn't talk. Yeah, they did. Yeah, I'm looking at the slide. I was like, yeah. When we did our thing with the council, but yeah, we are, you missed that show. So, yeah. So, let's talk Live Local Act, or as we like to call it, Live in La Vida Local. So, that's the changes that we have. So, before I get into it, and what I really want to do is kind of go back and, you know, just kind of talk about the version two, what I call the most recent version of Live Local. But to do that, I want to kind of go back and kind of recap what the legislature did in 2023, so you can kind of see what the, you know, what the changes are. This is probably not something that you guys live and see every day like I do, so I want to just kind of give you a quick recap. So, just the Live Local Act became effective, you know, initially last year on July 1st, 2023, so we're about a year in. There's, and to be quite frank with you, there's quite a few proposals that are starting to pop up around the state. I've actually talked to some developers because I initially thought that, which I'll get into in just a moment, kind of that 40% requirement was probably going to be a bit onerous on some developers, but what, at least for those developing in the moderate income category, some of the developers have actually given me some feedback that the difference, especially given the AMI here for Broward, that the difference in the rent for market rate versus that moderate category is not that different, maybe about $100, $200 difference. So, a lot of them are now really beginning to kind of take a look at utilizing, you know, Live Local as an option to develop. But we have not had a proposal come through the city, although I just talked with someone about a potential proposal. When I go to my planning director's roundtable meeting with some of the other planning directors in the county, there are several other cities in the county that have received, you know, proposals. So, you know, there's some leeway that's being made. So, just to go back, so the Live Local Act, we also call it SB 102 when it was initially passed, is a statewide housing strategy that aims to increase affordable housing opportunities within Florida's communities. And basically, it proposes to do that in several ways. So, the first thing that the legislature did was they increased funding incentives for affordable housing. So, they provided a lot more money for some of the different programs, particularly even that Florida Housing does. So, we've seen some of these programs funded at levels that we have not seen before. So, kind of indicating their commitment to affordable housing. The second thing that they kind of looked at, too, was creating tax credits for affordable housing. So, there were some ad valorem, you know, credits that were available to developers. And also, for those developers building affordable housing, they were now eligible for sales, you know, the sales tax, you know, credits as well. And then, finally, the area that consumes, I guess, most local governments is, you know, the land use controls or, you know, what we call local government zoning preemptions that were sort of approved as part of the Act. So, basically, the basic, when we look at the preemptions, so, basically, what the Act is saying is that the initial Act said that it allows multifamily development on parcel zone. This is what we were just talking about, commercial, industrial, mixed use. If at least 40% of the residential units are affordable, as you find in Section 420 of the statutes, for a period of 30 years. So, this is basically what developers have to meet before they can even consider, you know, looking at some of these other preemptions. So, secondly, there was that height restriction that the legislature basically said that if you meet that first criteria, then now you're eligible for some of these other preemptions. And the height basically said that you would now be eligible to build up to a height of the highest building within a one-mile radius. So, that was under the 2023 version. Also, it encouraged local governments to provide parking reductions for those developments that were located within a TOD or near a major transit stop. Now, there was some concern in that initial version because it said major transit stop. It left a lot of local governments to try to figure out what's a major transit stop. So, it was never defined. So, a lot of cities had to start coming up with their own definition of what a major transit stop was. So, there were some issues with that first version with regard to major transit stop. And then, with regard to density, the act pretty much said that the maximum density that was available, if you met the criteria, was the maximum density permitted in the city. So, this is what a lot of local governments became concerned about was that, you know, they were increasing heights, increasing density. So, you know, that was the concern. And then, basically, it took away the approval process, so it didn't have to go through, like, this board doesn't have to go before the city's local planning agency and not even the city council for approval. It allowed these developments to go through administrative approvals. Now, I think, as Mr. Laestrom did indicate, that if they asked for other variances and stuff outside of these preemptions or what have you, then it opened up, you know, a whole new door, and then they had to go through some of those, you know, it could cause it to come before this board and to the council. I think you... Just a quick question. I thought that it applied to community facility, too. Is that not the case? I'm sorry? I thought that it applied to community facility, also. No, it's just in terms of the zoning categories, it's just commercial, industrial, or mixed use. Okay. The density provisions, maximum permitted in the city. 25. Right. But if somebody utilizes flex, they can go to the county of max of 50. Yeah, we're going to talk about... Okay, if you're going to hit that, then I'll wait. Talk about what the... Inversion 2.0, we'll get to that because that was something that they clarified. Because that, just to let you know, that was a very good question because there was some concern in some communities as to whether, you know, the hot, that restriction was with the density bonus programs or, you know, outside of the bonus, the density bonus programs, potentially allowing them to go higher or what have you. And it was the initial version did not really speak to that. They did come back and do some clarification of that in version 2.0. So this was a map that we had talked about when we looked at those different land use categories. So this kind of shows you the city's commercial categories, you know, industrial and mixed-use categories. So these are basically the properties that are kind of available for a developer to... if they wanted to come into the city of Plantation, utilize it, all of these properties would be open and applicable for a live-local development. Sorry, all the way over to the left. Where is that exactly? That's out near Sawgrass where you have Best Buy and... What else is out there? What's my grocer? Yeah, fresh market. Fresh market. Thank you. So, yeah. So the legislature, of course, updates live-local under Senate Bill 328. So, you know, that was passed. The governor has, of course, signed it into law. And so the bill amends the live-local, some of the live-local's land use preemptions, which we'll talk about. It also kind of expounded upon the property tax exemption, the missing middle property tax, which I'll touch briefly on. And, again, they, you know, continue their commitment to particularly the Hometown Hero program. And there are some other programs. And you can see that it did fund it again at that $100 million. In addition to SB 328, the 2024 legislative session also, they passed another tax package under HB 7073, which kind of goes in tandem with the Live Local Act, dealing with the, specifically, the missing middle property tax exemption. So it creates a new affordable housing property tax exemption as well. So I know that's a concern for a lot of local governments because they're concerned about their tax base with some of these exemptions. So live-local 2024. So some of the changes that they did, one of the first changes that they did was that they modified language in the Live Local Act that limited proposed multifamily developments to rental developments, you know, only. So initially in that act, they only were looking at rental developments. So new language allows for a split multifamily ownership and rental development as long as at least 40% of the total units are rental and affordable. So now you could have a development which potentially has, you know, townhomes for purchase and also rental in the mix as well. So as long as it still meets that 40%, you know, so, and what the language actually looks like, the, up top is the version one. It says, it amends the phrase, if at least 40% of the residential units in a proposed multifamily rental development are for a period of at least 30 years of forward-wise defined in S420. Well, if you, the new language now reads, if at least 40% of the residential units in a proposed multifamily development are rental units, that for a period of at least 30 years affordable as defined. So it kind of, you know, makes some modifications there in terms of the type of development that, you know, can be done. Something they touched upon, as I said, there was still some local governments that, when Live Local was passed, were still kind of giving some pushback on it. And one of the ways that they did this was with floor area ratio. So they started kind of modifying floor area ratio a bit, which can kind of have some pressure on the density, intensity of a proposed use. So the legislature came back and I can tell you, I think that, I think that Live Local is a clear indication to local governments that they feel that we've kind of been in a way and part of the housing crisis that we have now as part, partly blame for local governments that have kind of limited the number of, you know, density and development or what have you. So I think this is a clear indication that they're going to keep coming back as long as we keep giving them pushback. So what they did here was they added new language to Live Local to address floor area ratio. Previous version of the bill did not have floor area ratio standards. So the new language provides that local governments cannot limit floor area ratio of a proposed development below 150% of the highest currently allowed floor area ratio on any land where residential development is allowed. And the jurisdiction under the jurisdiction under the LDRs. So that's, that's something that they've changed as well. Quick question on that, because, so there's preemptions for both the height and density and for FAR. Right. In a case where the city regulates both, like we do in Midtown, which one takes precedence? Is it the smaller one or the bigger one? So, I mean, we would have to look at the combination and whatever. I would say the smaller one would, would, would take precedence. Okay. I have an attorney here who might have a different opinion on that. But before I made the call to him, that's, that would be my interpretation. Yeah, I think, I think, I think we'd have to look at it a bit further, but I think consistent with what the intent of it is to, to allow these as much as possible. So, to go for the greater, probably not be consistent, but we'd have to study that a little bit more, depending on the project, because every project is a little bit different, as you know. Right. It's just because in Midtown, the limiting factor really is the FAR, not the height or the density. I believe the maximum FAR in Midtown right now is 1.12. So, this provision would make it around 1.6-ish. I think that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. So, maximum density and height changes. So, they did make some changes here, too. So, one of the things they did was they clarified that maximum density, this goes to, I think, Mr. Corman's question. So, the maximum density and height allowances do not include any bonuses, variances, or other special exceptions provided in the jurisdiction's LDRs as incentives for development. So, the previous version of Live Local did not provide any direction with regard to bonus density, variances, or special exceptions. So, just a couple of notes in that regard. So, the amended act clarifies that the highest currently allowed density and height provisions do not include any building that, one, was approved under the previous version of the bill. So, that's one change that they did note. Or has received a bonus variance or other special exception for density. And, number three, the amended act further clarifies that if a development qualifies for a density, height, or floor area ratio bonus pursuant to the jurisdiction regulations, then the local government must administratively approve such bonuses, such bonus without further action by the governing body. So, that was some of the clarification that they made with regard to bonus density. So, you can potentially add the bonus density, you know, on top of the, you know. The benefits of Live Local. Right. Live Local. Right. If you have those provisions within your code, you have to allow the development. So, if we've got a density of 10 per acre, yet the city maximum is 25, they can build to 25 without having to use flex, or if they use flex, then they can go to 25? Like, what's the? Well, what this is basically saying, let's take the bonus density, for example. They could build up to that maximum, and then they could still take advantage of the bonus density if we had the bonus density as part of our, you know, like for right now, like in our comp plan, we don't necessarily have to do the county's bonus density. It's something that we're looking at as part of the comp plan, then we would have to allow them to do so. So, those are the changes there. Like, I think, for instance, like if we had something that said, you know, if you include affordable housing, you can build two stories higher, then you would have to apply that bonus to the, anything that was Live Local also. Right, right. And my question, just for clarification, is that once you build those extra units, that doesn't, like maybe your development now is below that 40%, but you still qualify. I restate that, and I'm sorry. So, this is a question of the order, the order of application, the PEMDIS of the development process. So, first, the development comes in proposing 40%. Then, it's Live Local Act eligibility determination. Right. And then, if we have bonus density ordinances or whatever, we apply that, but that doesn't remove the eligibility of Live Local Act. Or, because that bonus density puts that project below 40%, it removes the Live Local eligibility status. That's my question, the order here. I wouldn't say it removes the Live Local eligibility. They could, you know, as long as they were, I mean, I'm not sure I understand the third point. Let's use the Geller Amendment as an example, right? Because for every workforce housing unit, you get six bonus market units. So, let's say someone came into a place with 10 density. It goes up to 25, whatever, because of Live Local. But 10 of those 25 units have to be at least workforce housing. Yes. But then the Geller Amendment would allow them to get six bonus units for every one affordable unit. So, that's an extra 60 units per acre in this case. So, now the project is 85 units per acre. Is it still Live Local project? Yes. Okay. That was my question. Thank you. So, there are some maximum height changes as well. As new language to live locally, it allows local governments to limit the maximum height, allows that the proposed development is adjacent to this. This gets to what we were talking about with regard to single family. It's adjacent to, on two or more sides, a parcel zone for single family residential use. That is within a single family residential development with at least 25 contiguous single family homes to 150% of the tallest building on property within a quarter mile, as opposed to the full mile. So, it does begin to, it could potentially really bring the height down, the proposed development, or three stories, whichever is higher. So, they're, you know, they did recognize that going out that full mile radius could kind of capture some much higher buildings because you could be in an area that has, you know, some lower density. So, kind of pulling it back within that quarter of a mile is going to have some downward pressure on the height near residential development. So, that was a big change. That was one of the things that I think a lot of local governments did have some concern over as well. Parking. So, there was a couple of changes they made to the parking. I talked about that transit stop thing. So, it reduces the buffer for local governments to consider reducing parking requirements from one-half mile of a major transit stop to a quarter mile of a major transit stop. So, they did kind of, so, this will establish a lower buffer and encourage reducing parking requirements for projects near any transit stop, not just a major transit stop. So, the language went from major transit stop to transit stop, but it reduced the buffer as well. And then, there are some other changes. Requires local governments to reduce parking requirements by 20% for proposed developments within one-half mile. This is a new thing now called a major transportation hub. That have available parking within 600 feet of the proposed development and eliminates parking requirements for a proposed mixed-use residential development within an area recognized as transit-oriented development area. So, this sort of sets a definitive standard for parking reductions for developments meeting this threshold. So, by 20%, and then, you know, if there's, if parking is available within 600 feet. So, it kind of gives a much more definitive, you know, criteria here. Previous versions recommend that local governments consider reducing parking when this threshold was met. Major transportation hub, in terms of the definition now, they do have a definition as to what this means. So, local governments don't have to try to figure out, well, what's a major transportation hub. So, the act defines major transportation hub as any transit station, whether bus, train, or light rail, that is served by public transit with a mix of other transportation options. So, you know, and then, finally, the available parking within 600 feet of the proposed development may consist of options, such as on-street parking, parking lots, or parking garages available for use by residents of the proposed development. So, there, it made some, you know, modifications and provides clarity in terms of what is considered parking within that 600 feet as well. So, for us, a major transportation hub is the bus station that's right behind the library there, I assume, because it's... That would definitely be a major transportation hub. So, what we're talking about is within a half mile of that, this parking reduction can be enacted. That's correct. What's the distance to the Broward Mall property? Broward Mall is... Yeah, yeah, required, yeah. Yeah, so... It's probably within that half... It's very close. I think it would touch the property itself, if not the entire parcel. There's portions that at least would be... To that point, is there any clarification on if a piece of the parcel touches it, or does it have to lie entirely within the half mile? If I were interpreting that as the planning director, and, of course, I always pull my legal staff in, I would say if it touches the parcel, then it's eligible. Yeah. I, yeah. So, then there's a non-conformity provision that was put in. It clarifies that developments authorized with the preemption are treated as a conforming use, even after the sunset of the preemption statute, and the development affordability period, unless the development violates the affordability term. So, if the development violates the affordability term, the development will be treated as a non-conforming use. This was a concern because there was a time frame on the actual Live Local Act, and then the 30-year period as well. So, there was a question as to whether we get all these preemptions, we build this, and then after that, you know, 30-year period, are we now considered legally non-conforming because the Act is no longer there. So, this sort of clarifies that, you know, the non-conformity provision. So, they did add some language here to kind of clarify that. But, the important thing to remember here, too, though, is that once it's trying to hold these developments, hold their feet to the fire, that they must provide that, you know, the affordable housing component for that 30-year period. If they violate that, then they no longer fall under that protection. Vested right provision provides an applicant who submitted an application, written request, or notice of intent to utilize the mandate before the effective date of the bill. may notify the local government by July 1st, which has passed, of its intent to proceed under the prior provisions of the mandate. So, they had a decision as to whether they wanted to go under the previous or the new version for a certain period of time there. So, that's pretty much the changes, the major changes to really note with regard to the preemptions. There are some property tax things as well that some local governments are concerned about. So, the Live Local Act created a new affordable housing property tax exemption called the Missing Middle Property Tax Exemption, a multifamily middle market exemption. The Missing Middle Exemption provides two different tiers of exemptions for developments that have 71 or more units to households that earn up to 120% of AMI. So, if you have that 71 or more and you, you know, meet that 120 of AMI, then units within an eligible development that serve households between 80 to 120 AMI can receive 75% property tax exemption. But, it's only on those units that are considered the affordable units. Units that serve households below 80% AMI can receive a 100% property tax exemption for those units that meet the affordable housing criteria. So, if there was 71 in this instance and it was 120, then they would get 75. If there was 71 that met the 80%, then they would get 100% exemption for that. And then, there are some other provisions with regard to this tax exemption. Extends exemption eligibility to developments with no more than 10 affordable units if located within an area of critical state concern. So, there are some car ballots for that. Clarifies exemption only applies to affordable units within eligible development. That's pretty much what I was just describing. Provides how property appraisers shall determine the value of an affordable unit. So, it kind of gives some direction to property appraisers there. And authorizes property appraisers to request and review additional information if necessary. And so, this was one of the issues that I know a lot of property appraisers had raised with the first version and some of the property tax. Do we have any areas of critical state concern in the city? No. All right. From my understanding, the only area of critical state concern is the keys. Yeah. Because that's about evacuation. There are other areas. There are? Yeah, in the state. There are some areas up in the central and I know there are some areas in central Florida and I believe there are a couple in the panhandle too. But the keys does fall into that. And then one other thing, the Live Local Act, you know, as I said, it does combine with HB 7073 property tax exemption. So, they did kind of combine these two. So, the Florida legislature passed House Bill 7073, which set forth opt-out provisions to the missing middle property tax exemption. So, there are some ability for opt-out for some taxing districts. The opt-out provisions enable certain taxing authorities to be able to opt-out from the 80 to 120% AMI exemption under the following criteria. The taxing authority must be in a county in which the number of affordable and available units for households at or below 120% is greater than the number of households at the income level, as determined by the most recent Schoenberg Center studies. An ordinance to opt-out from providing the property tax exemption must be approved by two-thirds vote of the local government. Any properties within an opt-out jurisdiction that were previously approved for the property tax exemption would be allowed to continue to benefit from the exemption. Per the 2023 Schoenberg Center, an annual housing report taxing authorities, they identified that taxing authorities within 50 of Florida's 67 counties can opt-out. So, there are, you know, there are some in several counties that can opt-out. And then HB 7073 also creates a new 100% property tax exemption for the Florida Housing Finance funded permanently affordable housing. So, it does, so it's things that are funded under FHFC can also get 100%. Sorry to have so many questions. But how does this apply to CRAs? Because the city has two CRAs that are a taxing authority, and they collect a portion of the property taxes in Midtown and in Gateway. If a live local project comes in, and they get that 75% exemption for the affordable units, is that proportional to how much the CRA also is going to decrease? Like, are both going to decrease 75% or would the CRA be, like, the first to go of that 75%? Does that make sense? Yes. Well, if they qualify, I don't think, and I have to go back and really look at this. I'm not so sure our CRA would even qualify, given, because in this county, plantation, I doubt that we, the housing need. But I'd have to really take a look at that. I'm not sure, but I don't want to give you misinformation on that. I'm not sure. Okay. So, just to clarify the obvious, Broward is not one of those 50 counties? I don't think it, my conjecture is that no. So, the point I'll make, too, is that those CRAs will sunset well before any of these units could ever be built. So, it's sort of a mental health shot. That's, yeah, that's a good point. We don't have many years left, you know. So, yes. So, very good point. Okay, Quentin, so this was the last slide, so you can, and then just, you know, as I said, it was a hometown hero program. They continue to fund that at $100 million, kind of still showing their commitment. So, that's in a nutshell just, you know, just some of the highlights of that. There's a, I mean, you can kind of dig into that, and if you want to go through it with the fine-tooth comb, but that sort of just gives you a highlight of the changes. I just want to ask, so none of these programs or plans are on your radar for the city of Plantation right now? Nobody's filed an application or sought to benefit from this in Plantation at this point now? Nobody has officially filed. I've had a preliminary discussion with one developer. Thank you. So, would you give your opinion as to the statements made by Mr. Laystrom earlier in this meeting as to whether or not Plantation would have the authority to deny such applications based on other criteria besides height and FAR and other things like that, other variances that a potential developer would be seeking? If I remember, let me just kind of go back. I think he was indicating that if they were asking for other variances, I think he was pretty much saying that it's going to be very difficult for some developers to kind of meet, to just take advantage of those exemptions without asking for other variances or what have you. And yet, potentially, the city would have to look at the criteria, follow that, and if we felt that the development did not, like if there was other variances or what have you, if they did not meet the hardship criteria, then absolutely it could be denied. I guess my last question, sorry, Quentin, has to do with – I'm just saying sorry. I was just saying sorry. There was a slide you had up there with regards to the rental properties and numbers that could go in there that you could – if the units, the rental units are the ones that are subject to live local. So if somebody came in with a mixed type of development that had a dozen townhomes on the same plot in the same project as, hypothetically speaking, a 95-foot building, and they said the rental units are going to be in the 95-foot building, but the ownership units are going to be on the side, does that – would this – would Live Local enable them to sidestep everything, provided they could come in line with all of our codes? In other words, no variances. So that would be a mixed-use development. Well, I think it would be – I mean, ownership and rental. Yeah, well, it's still residential. I mean, I'm sure somebody could put a sushi store in, like, the bottom corner of the rentals and figure out a way where the – a small corner of the bottom of that one unit could be retail, presumably. Would that enable them to sidestep all of – in other words, allow for administrative approval of the project so that it never comes before us or council? If it was just limited to – if they took advantage of just the preemptions that were there and they weren't asking for any other, you know, special exceptions or variances or what have you from the city, then absolutely. So what's the – just my last little piece of the puzzle here, then – what's the notification requirement since there's administrative approval only? Does the – do our existing notification radii exist if it's a Live Local act? There's – So in other words, construction starts on a project and the neighbors are like, when the – did this get approved? That could potentially do that. But there would be – in this case, because there's no public hearing, the public – the notification is associated with the – with the public hearing process. So there's no public hearing process, so there would be no notification. Now, I guess the city could – it doesn't hurt if the city just informs residents through whatever means, you know, on its website or whatever, that Live Local, you know, property has been approved. Is that a gap in our code, since we were talking earlier about how codes can often get rewritten very quickly? Is that a gap with regards to notification boundaries that we need to think of with regards to somebody who's coming in with Live Local? Not that it would actually change what's going on, but just that we have a provision that says, look, this particular project is using a different set of rules. Be aware, it's coming. In essence, I mean, I guess, yes, that could be your message, but the question is, do we owe it to our residents to have something in our code that provides for notification regardless of the process that the approval is granted by? So I would tell you that as a planning director, I would probably support, you know, getting information out there once at least it's passed, because it has – it does still have to go to development review. We still have to confirm and look at, you know, make sure that it meets all those criteria and it's not, you know, that they're not asking for, you know, other approvals that are outside of those bounds. But I would absolutely say that, yeah, there should be some mechanism through, you know, whether we're putting stuff out on the city's website or shooting things out through our normal course of action, just to let people know that we have a live local – I think it would be something as long as legal would tell me there's no problem. I don't think that there would be a problem with that. I don't think you could mandate the developer pay for it. I'm not saying necessarily that the developer would have to pay for that, but within the boundary, I think there's got to be a mechanism in place to send, even if it's just targeted through water bills or something that falls within a certain radius, would that be something that would be code feasible for our attorney? Well, when you put something in the code, that means it's required. Right. There's no legal requirement for the city to notify of already approved administrative items. So whether the city takes the responsibility to make notification of certain things through other means like the newsletters that it puts out, different things of that nature, I don't see a problem with that, but what happens if the city doesn't provide the notice pursuant to the code? What happens to the project? I don't think you can make that contingent upon any development approvals or authority if it's otherwise approved by right. I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with you. I'm simply asking because I know in every other regard, there have to be notifications based upon the radii, based upon whatever it is, whether it's a zoning change or practical difficulty or whatever it may be. So I just wonder if there is a potential mechanism to put into the code, a notification requirement on something like this. Otherwise, I think we do a disservice to the citizens. Because a project like this, while it may or may not provide the benefits a developer or somebody within the city actually wants, you can't ignore the fact that if an eight-story building is going up on a piece of property right across the street from you, all because it's under this live local, I would just want to know about it, I guess, is the better way of doing it. So if there is a mechanism that we can think of to enable that, I just think that would be good for our residents overall. I think that's a policy decision to make notification. I would just caution making it a requirement for staff because it really can't directly relate to the development because the statute, you know, has exempted that from the requirements of the public hearings, which is where the requirement comes. And if you put it to that and not other administrative items, you could see some issues with that. Well, that goes towards public hearings. So are the notifications the notification that there's going to be a hearing or the notification that the project is coming? That's the only time the city provides public notices when there's public hearings, unless it's just a general information that the city puts out. So there's no, the notice you're insinuating that you want is a legal notice. Of a public hearing or of? Of a public hearing. Okay. Now, the city provides notices of different events like activities in city parks and things of that nature all the time. That's not legally required. But obviously the city still does those things, whether it's at a city council meeting, whether it's on the city's website, whether it's through a newsletter from departments or administration. So there's ways for a notice to be provided to the public on different activities within the city that isn't legally required or code-based requirements. But it's a general policy that the city has implored to keep residents informed of different things. And it does cost the city money to put things on the water bill, by the way. Well, yeah, that I'm aware of. But it was just a particular thought that popped into my head. But as you were just talking, to that point, since it is policy and since somebody from your office is at every city council meeting, my advice would be an update to let them know that this has gone through because I would argue the city council members are probably going to start getting phone calls if a project like that breaks ground and there was nothing out there. So we have one council member here. If anybody else is listening, my advice would be to think about how you want to solve that particular problem moving forward. Well, no, a point well taken. And just like we, for example, we just had 4th of July festivities and we notified our residents of, you know, the 4th of July events or what have you through our website, through different mechanisms. I mean, the city could do something very similar to that, just notifying people that a Live Local project was just approved at this address. This is basically, you know, what it proposes, you know, so many units, you know, what have you. And maybe even, you know, kind of show a rendering. There's nothing, I don't think that there would be anything wrong with that. And like I said, a point well taken. I think most residents would want to know since there is no other process outside of development review process that the project is going through. Well, I have full confidence that y'all will figure that out. That's all, that's all I have. So anybody else? Comments from the days? Questions? Anything out there? In that case, the meeting adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.