The Pasco County Planning Commission favors changes to the county’s land use plan, to allow greater flexibility within two villages in the Villages of Pasadena Hills (VOPH).
The planning board voted unanimously at its July 7 meeting to recommend approval of the request to the Pasco County Commission, which has final jurisdiction.
Initially, the request had been on the board’s consent agenda, meaning it would be approved as part of a bundle of items without discussion, unless someone objected or had questions.
Planning Commissioner Jonathan Moody asked for the item to be pulled so he could learn more about the request.
The Villages of Pasadena Hills is a special planning area, with its own financial plan.
The district was formed with the aim of creating an orderly way to develop a large area of land in East Pasco, through the creation of a series of specific types of villages.
The proposed changes would apply to Village L and Village M, which are east of Curley Road and north of the Zephyrhills Bypass, according to a memo in the planning board’s agenda packet.
The purpose of the amendment is to provide greater flexibility in the land use mix within each of the villages, and allow more opportunity for more compact areas of development in and around village centers, the memo says. The amendment is necessary to achieve the proposed density for Village L and Village M that is assumed in VOPH’s financial plan.
The current Type 3 Village requirements also would effectively prohibit the build-out of the two villages to their planned density and frustrate the ability to design the villages in accordance to the land use vision plan, the memo adds.
Attorney Clarke Hobby, representing the applicant, told the planning board: “The only reason this plan amendment is before you is when we started working on this project, we realized that we think there was an error in the village typology,” he said.
A Type 3 Village requires a neighborhood edge, which is not more than two units per on 70% of the entire village, Hobby said.
That limitation would result in being able to achieve roughly 40% less than the village entitlements, which amounts to about 1,800 units, Hobby said.
“That’s about a $20 million hit on the VOPH financial plan,” the attorney estimated.
The change that’s being requested would “keep the same entitlements, but allow us to have a more neighborhood general, neighborhood core area as opposed to just a sprawling area of not more than two units per acre, which is not efficient,” Hobby said.
There was no other public comment at the meeting.
The land use change is the first part of the process. The land also would need to be rezoned before it could be developed. A rezoning request is being pursued for the designation of a master-planned unit development.
Published August 03, 2022
